ABSTRACT
The unraveling of the math lesson is a continuously reinvented process, with dozens of decision points at which the teacher moves on to the next activity format, which has only just emerged as a likely follow-on exercise, or switches to another exercise as a result of the drift of pupils’ oral response, the level of pupils’ task engagement, the time remaining until recess or the end of the period, or more likely, all these factors. This continuous readjustment results from what Lévi Strauss (1962) has called, felicitously, “engaging in a dialogue with the situation” as that situation unfolds. To tinker well here seems to depend on how quickly and accurately the teacher can read the situation.
