Teachers’ Perceptions of Student Engagement and Disengagement in Mathematics
Karen Skilling, Janette Bobis, Andrew Martin, Judy Anderson & Jenni WayTeachers’ perceptions of their students’, including whether they perceive them to be engaged or not, influences the teaching strategies they adopt, their responses to students and the efforts they make in the classroom (Hadrè, Davis & Sullivan, 2008). It is therefore important to explore the nature of those perceptions. This study explores teachers’ perceptions of Year 7 students’ engagement and disengagement in mathematics. Thirty-one Year 7 mathematics teachers from ten high schools located in the Sydney metropolitan region were interviewed as part of a larger project investigating student motivation, engagement and achievement in mathematics. Interviews reveal the sources from which teachers’ (‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’) perceptions of student engagement are based and the usefulness of conceptualising such perceptions as a spectrum’ of engagement to disengagement.