A complex system analysis of practitioners' discourse about research

Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics, Wntr, 2008 by Randall E. Groth

With this post, Terri shifted the focus of the discourse from generating a list of students' difficulties to proposing an alternative teaching method for introducing the concepts.

With the eighth overall post to the discussion board, Barb V. expressed agreement with Terri's proposed teaching method. She stated,

    Many of the students love to argue, lots of times with me. I agree
    with Terri, what a great thing it would be to empower students to
    logically discuss the grade they think they deserve and be able to
    communicate why they deserve it. Students need to be able to have
    control of something, this would give them a great opportunity to
    have the last word.

This post by Barb became a new hub of conversation within the thread. As shown in figure 2, it elicited four direct responses, and three of those responses generated further strings of conversation.

The first direct response to Barb's post came from Sarah G. She expressed further enthusiasm for the idea, mentioning, "Even students who claim to not care about their grades would be motivated to argue their way to a higher grade." In reply to Sarah, Yvonne P. agreed that the teaching method could be effective, yet said she would not be likely to do it in her own classroom. Yvonne, however, changed her mind after Rhonda W. posted a response to her message and stated she planned to try to have students calculate their own grades. After reading Rhonda's post, Yvonne stated,

    I know that in my previous post I said that I didn't think that I
    would actually do this--but the more I think about it--the better it
    sounds. I think that this would be most helpful for students in the
    beginning of the school year so that they may be able to use that
    line of thinking as the year progresses and will hopefully consider
    how a zero brings down an average.

Sarah G. used the forty-fifth post to the discussion board to support Yvonne's decision and urge others to adopt her position as well, stating,

    We all know that learning is often very different from the effort
    put forth. Either way, grades are so subjective: weighted, total
    points; credit/no credit assignments; the number and value of
    assignments; variations in the use of rubies and the rubrics used.
    No one way will ever be a perfect reflection of what they have
    completed or what they have learned. Why not take advantage of this
    subjectivity and make them think a little about the grade that they
    want?

Kristin S. expressed support for Sarah's position by mentioning in the thirty-forth post, "The combination of being in control of their grade--and the opportunity to argue a point--wow, the students would be in hog heaven."

A shorter sub-thread of conversation was sparked by Maura L.'s response to Barb V.'s post. As shown in Figure 2, the fourteenth overall post to the discussion board was made by Maura in response to Barb's expression of enthusiasm for the teaching method proposed by Terri K. Maura re-expressed her earlier pessimism about the idea, stating,