Abstracts - Earli

cognition, repositories of distributed cognition and cognitive products. Task selection by teachersrepresents the initiation of an instructional process that includes task enactment (collaboratively byteacher and student) and the interpretation of the consequences of this enactment (again, by teacherand student). In this paper, we examine the function of mathematical tasks in classrooms in sixcountries. Utilising a three-camera method of video data generation (see Clarke, 2006),supplemented by post-lesson video-stimulated reconstructive interviews with teacher and students,we can characterize the tasks employed in each classroom with respect to intention, action andinterpretation and relate the instructional purpose that guided teacher task selection and use tostudent interpretation and action, and ultimately to the learning that post-lesson interviewsencourage us to associate with each task. The significance of changes of social, cultural andcurricular setting, together with changes in the participating classroom community, challenge anyreductionist attempts to characterize instructional tasks independent of these considerations. Ofequal interest are differences in learning outcomes arising from the use of fundamentally differentmathematical tasks, such as highly decontextualised or abstract tasks (in Chinese classrooms forexample) in comparison with contextualized or so-called ‘real world’ tasks (for instance, in oneSwedish classroom).Classroom questioning in Singapore, the USA and JapanTeresa Benedict, University of Melbourne, AustraliaDavid Clarke, University of Melbourne, AustraliaBerinderjeet Kaur, National Institute of Education, Singapore, SingaporeThis research project set out to identify and study the different types of teacher questions posed inthree classrooms, namely from Singapore, United States of America and Japan. The study focusedon the teachers’ verbal questioning within a mathematical classroom, and attempted to link thetypes of questions asked to the teachers’ pedagogical goals. The report also identifies the teachers’questioning behaviours and styles, and concludes by describing a pattern observed in thequestioning techniques used. Differences and similarities in the practices of the three teachers wereidentified. Data generation employed three video cameras (see Clarke, 2006), supplemented bypost-lesson video-stimulated reconstructive interviews with teacher and students. This provided arich and detailed documentation of the questioning practices in each classroom. One of the majorconcerns of teachers today is the impact their questions have on their students’ learning outcomeand achievement. Hence, through these studies, we have identified specific questioning techniquesand behaviours of teachers from different classrooms. The high percentage of low-cognitive-levelquestions asked in the classroom appears to be a consistent feature. Other patterns within teacherquestioning will be reported and examined for their possible implications for learning outcomes.Learning mathematics from classroom instruction: Linking lessons to learners’ interpretation ofclassroom events in Germany and JapanYoshinori Shimizu, University of Tsukuba, JapanThis paper reports on the analysis of post-lesson video-stimulated interviews with the students ineighth-grade mathematics classrooms in Germany and Japan. The data analyzed in the currentpaper derived from the Learner’s Perspective Study (LPS, Clarke, Keitel, & Shimizu, 2006). Themethodology employed in LPS offered the teachers and the students the opportunity in post-lessonvideo-stimulated interviews to identify for the interviewer those events in the lesson that theparticipant felt to be significant. In the previous study, by juxtaposing their perceptions ofclassroom events in the sequence of consecutive lessons, discrepancies and agreements betweenteacher and the students were identified. In this paper, by linking the classroom events identified– 414 –