Two Beginning Teachers' Epistemic Discursive Moves and Goals in Small Groups in Mathematics Instruction

Students' participation in epistemic practices, which are related to knowledge construction on the part of students, is becoming a crucial part of learning (Goizueta, 2019).Research on epistemic practices in science education draws attention to teachers' support of students to engage in epistemic practices in mathematics instruction.The research highlights a need for incorporating epistemic goals, along with conceptual and social goals, into instruction to promote students' epistemic practices.In this paper, I investigate how teachers interact with students to integrate epistemic goals.I examined 24 interaction excerpts that I identified from six interview transcripts of two beginning teachers' mathematics instruction.Each excerpt was related to the teachers' talk about their specific interaction(s) in a small group.I explored how each teacher's discursive moves and goals were conceptual, social, and epistemic-related as they intervened in small groups.I found that both teachers used conceptual, social, and epistemic discursive move but their discursive moves were related only to social and social goals.This paper suggests supporting teachers to develop epistemic goals in mathematics instruction, particularly in relation to small groups.