Ellie Gacuzana

MAED 4416

Student Interview Reflection

I interviewed a sophomore student at my local math tutoring center to investigate the various
thought patterns she had upon being presented with a task. I chose this student because, although I
knew she struggled in school, I also had observed her strong visual acuity which I thought could be
useful in completing the chosen task at hand, and I was curious to see how well she was able to
articulate her thinking. I have also been tutoring this student multiple times per week for over a year, so
we had developed a good rapport.

I spent a few weeks choosing a task and settled on a task dealing with area that I felt was open-
middle enough to have a variety of entry points. I worked through the task myself in multiple ways in
addition to looking online and seeing other student answer submissions. I also developed and read a few
guiding questions I could ask if I felt it necessary.

After gaining consent and explaining the purpose of the interview, I presented the task to the
student and she began working. I encouraged her to think out loud so I could understand her thinking,
and she first explained that she was trying to see how she could “show it as half.” She drew a few trial
squares with the trapezoid, such as in Figure 1, and said that she was trying to make it look “like this
[Figure 2].” I asked her if her Figure 1 was accurate, and she said it looked like it, but she wasn’t sure. I
reminded her of the second part of the task showing the other inscribed quadrilateral, and she decided
it probably wasn’t accurate.
 She continued to try to rotate the figure, and I provided a cutout version of the figure so she
could more easily manipulate the parts. She identified that the problem was with the “slanted angles” of
the trapezoid. After a few more minutes, I asked her if there was another way to represent half, and she
responded with Figure 3. Although I knew it was slightly off-topic, I did ask her if she was sure the figure
did represent half of the circle, because it wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but she did explain that
she was going in “each direction the same amount,” which I did find to be a valid argument.

As a final question I asked if there were any lines she could draw, as this helped when I
presented the task to another student at a previous time, and she started to try to draw the trapezoid
inside of the square again. I then thanked her for her time and the insight she gave me and concluded
the interview.

She had a good grasp on the concept of area, as well as what half of the square looked like. I
was also surprised at her Figure 3 and the discussion that ensued. Next logical steps for instruction
would include expanding on the different representations for half, such as showing a figure cut
diagonally. It could also pose a good opportunity to revisit the concept of the area of a triangle
(especially if movement toward an algebraic argument was sought after). Additionally, investigating
composite figures, specifically how breaking up a figure can help us tackle each individual part more
easily than the whole put together, could prove useful to solve not only the task at hand, but other
geometric tasks.

The student’s use of both the simpler case (Figure 2) and the more complicated case (Figure 3)
demonstrate her use of the geometric habit of mind Investigating Invariants as she decided how the
representation changed in each figure. In my questions about her Figure 1 and Figure 3, she exhibited
Generalizing Geometric Ideas. Firstly, she compared the first part of the task to the second part and
decided her method of rotating the trapezoid would not work every time. Secondly, she explained her
argument for why her visual showed half, and in doing so provided a generalized method for producing
a line that would cut a shape into halves every time (“A Framework for the Geometric Habits of Mind”).
 I feel that I mostly engaged in interpretive listening throughout the task, with a few instances of
hermeneutic listening. I pressed her to explain her reasoning or her actions as she drew invariants or
rotated and manipulated the figure. I was “listening to what the [learner was] saying…[and I] was also
listening for particular responses” (Davis, 1997). However, she often surprised me by giving answers I
was not expecting, and in a few instances we had a few discussions in which the roles of teacher and
student were conflated. Specifically, during our discussion of Figure 3, I felt that my “role was one of
participating” (Davis, 1997) and one of learning as she explained the figure, which is indicative of
hermeneutic listening.

That being said, I was slightly hesitant to become too much of a collaborator in this
circumstance because I didn’t want to take over student thinking by suggesting my own ideas. This
brought up an interesting reflection for how I will listen in my own classroom. I think that occasionally
choosing tasks without knowing the answer (as in, not even knowing possible answers) could be risky,
but could also open the opportunity to become a co-learner with my students. However, I also recognize
that there will definitely be opportunities where students present solutions I did not foresee, and
hermeneutic listening will occur then as well. Additionally, I can see the importance and value of
exercising all types of listening with my students, and I feel that interpretive listening often helps myself
evaluate student understanding and allows the student to develop critical reasoning and discourse skills.

Overall, I learned about the student’s mathematical understanding by further observing the
visual nature of her ideas as she tried to rotate, reflect, and recreate the inscribed quadrilateral inside of
the square to derive a visual representation of half of the square. Next instructional steps would be to
explore other representations of half, tie to previous knowledge of the area of a triangle, and consider
how the shape could be broken up and possibly rearranged. She demonstrated Investigating Invariants
and Generalizing Geometric Ideas during her thought process, which tells me that she is exercising her
geometric habits of mind with this task. Additionally, I mostly exhibited interpretive listening during her
explanation, but there were a few short discussions in which I partook in hermeneutic listening as well.

References

“A Framework for the Geometric Habits of Mind.” (n.d.). Shasta County of Education.
https://www.shastacoe.org/uploaded/Dept/planetarium/SCMP_Math_Grant/Sent_to_Web_Page_3-21-
11_November_16_Content_Day-A_Framework_for_Geometric_Habits_of_Mind.pdf.

Davis, B. (1997). Listening for differences: An evolving conception of mathematics teaching. Journal for
Research in Mathematics Education, 28(3), 355-376.