Caring Mathematics Instruction: Middle School Students’ and Teachers’ Perspectives

We do not attempt to operationalism our own specific definition of caring mathematics instruction, because the purpose of this study was to investigate what caring meant to middle school mathematics students and teachers, as captured in their voices. However, to orient the reader and to frame our interpretation of our results, we share our general perspective on the construct of care: Along with Noddings (2005), we believe that the moral and social development of students is among a teacher’s responsibilities. When teachers support students’ learning of mathematics through discourse and interaction, they also help students learn to relate to one another. If care is modeled through a teacher’s actions, students may have opportunities to learn to both enact and receive care in a psychosocially healthy manner.

Teachers could enact interpersonal care or academic care. By interpersonal care, we mean relational acts of care in which the teacher works to understand the student from the perspective of the student (Mayerhoff, 1971). This is similar to what Noddings (1984, 1992) refers to as “engrossment” or “feeling with” another person. Engrossment is not about one’s own feelings. Rather, it occurs when the teacher is taken up with what the student is feeling; when a teacher accepts students’ feelings and acknowledges the relevance of students’ experiences. We think of interpersonal care as aligning with the social dimension of the mathematics classroom. When we say academic care, we mean the aesthetic care that addresses technical aspects of teaching and learning. This might include, for example, the teacher working with students to create a “shared intellectual space” where teachers work to share with students their understanding of a concept while simultaneously working to understand students’ understanding(s) of a concept (Goldstein, 1999). Some aspects of aesthetic / technical care are likely to be unique to mathematics teaching. It is also likely that interpersonal care could be a significant part of the work of a mathematics teacher.

Prior research indicates that students describe caring teachers as those who provide both academic care and interpersonal care, all directed and personalized to individual students rather than the group of students. Students say that caring teachers know their students well, are academically helpful, and hold and communicate high expectations for behavior and achievement (Alder, 2002). Also, caring teachers show a personal interest in students’ emotional well-being in and out of the classroom, are available to students, provide scaffolding to students, and give students chances to succeed (Garza, 2009). Caring instruction also can be defined as when teachers are fun, communicate a sense of humor, and provide help with academic work (Hayes, Ryan, & Zseller, 1994).

Critically, students’ perspectives on caring instruction align with motivational outcomes. Wentzel (1997) found that middle school students who perceived that their teachers cared for them put forth higher academic effort. These students described caring teaching, in part, in terms of democratic interactions, such as respect and equitable treatment. Additionally, adolescents who perceived positive teacher-student relationships also held positive school-related affect (mediated by feelings of school belonging), and their feelings of academic efficacy and school belonging were positively related to final semester grades (Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996). Students’ perspectives on caring instruction and positive teacher-student relations are, therefore, important for their motivation and learning.

Research situated specifically in mathematics classrooms highlights that caring mathematics instruction involves knowing and understanding students’ mathematical thinking and building upon their mathematical thinking when teaching (academic care). A noteworthy example of research on care in mathematics classrooms is Hackenberg’s (2005, 2010) conceptualization of mathematical caring relations, which are ways in which teachers cognitively decenter toward their students’ mathematical thinking and become more in tune with students’ feelings of stimulation and depletion while they engage with mathematics. Stimulation involves a burst of excitement or energy (e.g., a response to a new curiosity or insight), and depletion involves a decrease in energy or a feeling of being taxed (e.g., a moment of struggle or frustration). In complement to Hackenberg’s analyses of caring mathematics instruction, Averill and Clark (2006) captured teachers’ and students’ voices about caring mathematics instruction. Their findings converged with Hackenberg’s conceptualization of mathematical caring relations, as students and teachers reported that caring mathematics teachers work to know and understand their students and work to be in tune with their students’ mathematical thinking. Hackenberg (2005, 2010) illustrates what it looks like for teachers’ to be in tune with students’ mathematical thinking and Averill and Clark (2006) provide evidence that teachers and students are aware of and value this form of caring mathematics instruction. However, most articles about caring instruction do not account for subject matter; thus, additional analyses of teachers’ and students’ perspectives and awareness of care in mathematics classrooms are needed.

It is also important to look at caring instruction in the context of middle grades mathematics classrooms in particular, because prior research indicates that students’ attitudes and motivation tend to become more negative as they move into the middle grades (Eccles et al., 1993; Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000; Wigfield, Eccles, & Roderiguez, 1998; Zarrett & Eccles, 2006). These changes have been explained as a mismatch between middle school practices and adolescents’ needs. For instance, Eccles et al. (1993) observed that when students moved into middle school buildings in sixth grade, their teachers provided students with fewer decision-making opportunities and introduced ability grouping. These students reported lower academic efficacy in middle school. However, Roeser et al. (2000) observed that students reported improvements in their sense of academic efficacy and value for academics from seventh to eighth grade if they perceived that their teachers were emotionally supportive of them, perceived that their teachers had positive regard for their academic ability, and perceived that their school’s curriculum was meaningful. Thus, caring instruction appears to serve as a mechanism that supports positive motivation at a critical time period in school when students’ motivation might otherwise decline.

Prior research suggests that students may not necessarily notice or appreciate teachers’ attempts to enact care for them (Rolón-Dow, 2005; Webb, Wilson, Corbett, & Mordecai, 1993). Reciprocity of care is considered to be an essential element of care, particularly when relationships have unequal power dynamics, such as relationships between teachers and students (Noddings, 1992). Reciprocity involves both perceiving care and receiving care offered by the person being cared for. Below, we elaborate upon perceiving and receiving care in classrooms generally and mathematics classrooms in particular.

Whether or not a student experiences care from his or her teacher is shaped at least in part by whether the student, as an intended recipient of care, perceives or notices that his or her teacher is attempting to enact care for him or her. If teachers and students have similar perspectives on care, it is likely that students will notice the care that their teacher attempts to enact. We highlight students’ voices in this paper with respect to perspectives on care, because listening to students can provide educators with insights to inform instruction and increase its efficacy, as education is for students (Levin, 2000). Students’ voices need to play a more prominent role in discussions about schooling than they have historically (Cook-Sather, 2002).

Research that examines both teachers’ and students’ perspectives about affective dimensions of classrooms, such as perspectives on care, are not common and are usually not set in mathematics classrooms. One exception is the work of Middleton (1995); he studied teachers’ and students’ conceptions of what makes mathematics motivating. His results indicated that most teachers were not aware of what students thought was motivating to them. The results also suggest that teachers who did know their students well (in terms of what was motivating to them) were more effective at motivating their students during classroom instruction.

A teacher may intend to enact care, but unless the care has been received by a student, the student will not feel cared for. In her work with Puerto-Rican young women who attended a U.S. high school, Rolón-Dow (2005) illustrated that students who perceived care differently from their teachers were less likely to feel cared for by their teachers. The high school teachers’ definitions of care were primarily academic / aesthetic / technical, while the students’ definitions for care also included interpersonal / authentic / relational components. Additionally, Rolón-Dow incorporated critical race theory to interpret these differential perspectives on caring and to explain why young women did not feel cared for by their teachers. In this study, it was clear that students and their teachers did not have aligned definitions for caring. In particular, teachers, as members of a majority race, articulated dominant “stock” narratives focused on how race/ethnicity affects the level of care present within students’ families and the community while students articulated counternarratives around how race/ethnicity affects the care offered to students.

But Rolón-Dow’s analysis also suggests that diverging definitions are not enough to explain why students may not feel cared for. From Rolón-Dow’s perspective, teachers at this school could have gone further to listen to the students’ stories and learn about their realities, in particular attending to the historical and political underpinnings surrounding the circumstances of students’ families and communities, to how racialized beliefs inform ideological standpoints, and to students’ perceptions of the role race/ethnicity, gender, and class play in their lives. Teachers’ lack of attention to these issues in this school, coupled with definitions of care that differed from their students, served to explain why students did not feel they received care from their teachers. Thus, Bartell (2011) writes that knowing students well and understanding their lives requires explicit attention to issues of culture, race, and power and not viewing students through a deficit lens.

The research question guiding this study was the following: According to middle school students and their teachers, what is caring mathematics instruction? We captured students’ and teachers’ voices through interviews to represent a range of detailed instructional practices that provide opportunities to care for learners while also supporting their learning of mathematics content. Accounting for both students’ and teachers’ perspectives afforded the potential to consider what is mutually valued and noticed by both teachers and students and what might be uniquely valued or noticed by each group.

This study was conducted in four middle school mathematics classrooms in the MidAtlantic region of the United States. Teachers were recruited to participate in this study if they had taken a graduate or undergraduate university course in mathematics education, taught by the second author, that emphasized issues of equity in mathematics teaching and learning, including the importance of developing knowledge about students’ lives in and out of school and building upon knowledge of students’ strengths when teaching mathematics. Participating teachers included all of the teachers who responded to an e-mail invitation to participate in the study. Each teacher chose one class period to be the focus for this study.

The four classrooms were situated in three different middle schools. The four teachers were Ms. Alpha, Ms. Beta, Ms. Gamma, and Ms. Sigma. These teachers each had 3 or fewer years of teaching experience at the time of this study. All four teachers identified as White. Ms. Alpha and Ms. Beta taught eighth grade at the same school. Ms. Gamma taught seventh grade. Ms. Sigma taught sixth grade.

Between four and six students from each of the four classrooms participated in this study (N = 22). The first criteria for selecting student participants was whether students gave assent and parents gave consent for the researchers to interview the student. We intended to purposefully select six students from each classroom based upon a range of criteria: To capture a range of students based on how well the teacher knew the student (some students the teacher knew well and some that she did not know as well) and a range of male and female students. In doing so, we hoped to capture a range of students’ perspectives and to capture a variety of perspectives that differed from their teachers. However, in two of the four classrooms, we could only work with the limited number of students who gave consent. Sixteen of the participants were female and six were male.

Racial demographics of our sample of students reflected the demographics of their classrooms, and, in turn, the school. In Ms. Sigma’s sixth grade classroom, six students participated; four self-identified as White, one as Asian, and one as Black. In Ms. Gamma’s seventh grade classroom, four students participated; three self-identified as White and one as Black. In Ms. Beta’s eighth grade classroom, six students participated; three self-identified as Black and three as White. In Ms. Alpha’s classroom, six students participated; three selfidentified as Black, one as Trinidadian and Puerto Rican, and two as White.

The data for this research report were generated from three interviews with each of the four teachers and one interview with each of 22 middle school students. The first author conducted the interviews with Ms. Alpha, Ms. Beta, and their students. The second author conducted the interviews with Ms. Gamma, Ms. Sigma, and their students. One-on-one interviews with the teachers occurred after classroom observations and lasted about 45-60 minutes in duration. These interviews addressed topics such as how teachers planned to enact care for their students, how they attempted to get to know students, what they learned about students as they tried to get to know them, and how they used knowledge of their students when teaching mathematics. One-on-one interviews with each student lasted approximately 25-35 minutes each. These interviews addressed topics such as descriptions of good mathematics teachers, descriptions of caring mathematics teachers, and the nature of their relationship with their current mathematics teacher. Interviews with students and the final interview with each teacher occurred within the same 3-week time period during the last month of the school year.

Following Hayes, Ryan, and Zseller (1994), we conducted our analysis by clustering similar concepts into groups to determine descriptions of enactments of care. Interviews were analyzed initially through a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), during which researchers recorded each caring behavior mentioned by an interviewee as a component concept. Each interview was read by two out of three analysts. If there was a discrepancy between analysts about identifying a behavior and labeling it as a component concept, a consensus was reached. Usually two passes through the data were needed to reach consensus, but a third round of negotiation was conducted as needed.

Our starting categories for describing enactments of care were broad: interpersonal or academic. Then, within each category, we created more specific component concepts for enactments of interpersonal or academic care. Similar component concepts were then clustered into concept groups to capture thematic relationships,

Participants’ perspectives on mathematics teachers’ enactments of care provide an image of what caring mathematics instruction looks like in middle school mathematics classrooms, as perceived by those individuals engaged in the reciprocity of that care. Middle school teachers and their students reported some similar perspectives about how mathematics teachers enacted care for students, but other perspectives on enactments of care were unique to either students’ or, less commonly, teachers’ perspectives. Below, in the first section of our results, we illustrate enactments of caring mathematics instruction that emerged from our analyses of teachers’ and students’ voices. We also explore ways in which caring teachers do or do not support students’ learning of mathematics, according to students.

According to these middle school students and teachers, caring mathematics instruction is comprised of four concept groups. These concept groups are thematically related groupings of the most frequently mentioned component concepts across the sample (mentioned by at least two students). The four concept groups that described caring mathematics instruction in this sample were as follows: (1) Teach so that every student’s learning matters (academic care); (2) Communicate high expectations for students (academic care); (3) Create a welcoming and inviting classroom community (interpersonal care), and (4) Engage students in learning mathematics (academic and interpersonal care). Table 1 summarizes what teachers and students reported about how middle school mathematics teachers enact care for their students.

Concept groups are indicated by the italicized titles in the table, and the component concepts are labeled as either interpersonal or academic care.

Caring middle school mathematics teachers monitor every student’s learning, explain mathematics thoroughly in ways that are connected to students’ thinking, and take time with individual students. This concept group is composed of four component concepts of academic care. One component concept was described by both teachers and students: reach every student. Three other component concepts were reported by students: explain mathematics thoroughly, understand how students think, and take time with students. Students are not overlooked by caring mathematics teachers and caring mathematics teachers provide instruction that responds to the needs of individual students.

Both teachers and students spoke about how caring mathematics teachers make an effort to reach every one of their students. All four teachers addressed this point. When asked to describe a caring mathematics teacher, Ms. Alpha said,

Ms. Gamma spoke similarly about making an effort to meet the needs of all her students when she said,

These teachers reported that they enacted care for their students by trying to check in with each of them, recognize who is struggling, and to be available for everyone in ways that meet their academic or interpersonal needs.

Almost all of the students [19 out of 22] from all four classrooms also spoke about caring teachers’ efforts to reach all students. Noah [Ms. Beta’s student] said that a caring mathematics teacher was someone who “asked if I ever needed help with something like after school… they always help me … if I have a question she [current teacher] will answer it for me . helps other students out.” Ariana [Ms. Alpha’s student] said that a caring teacher would “pull us aside so that we can learn it at our own pace, at our own level. That’s a caring math teacher in my opinion.” Eva [Ms. Gamma’s student] described her most caring mathematics teacher as follows:

Peyton reported, “[Ms. Sigma] tells you that she cares by, like, helping you with everything that you need help on.” These quotes represent ways in which students described how caring mathematics teachers help all of their students by checking in with them and monitoring their learning, thus enacting academic care for learners.

Three other descriptions of enacting care that aligned with reaching every student came from students’ voices: explaining mathematics thoroughly, understanding how students think, and taking time with students. Seven students from three classrooms described that mathematics teachers enact care for their students by explaining mathematics thoroughly. Mariah [Ms. Alpha] for example, states that a caring teacher “Would teach it and she would explain it and if you don’t understand, she would explain again. She explained it thoroughly.” Ariana also said, [Ms. Alpha] “Explain[ed] it in a way that the students understand.” Building on Ariana’s point, two students in two teachers’ classrooms mentioned that caring teachers understand how students think. Jordan [Ms. Sigma’s student] said that her teacher was a caring mathematics teacher because she encouraged students to use strategies that made sense to them.

So, not only do caring teachers explain thoroughly, they connect to and build upon students’ thinking by encouraging them to develop solution strategies. Three students in two teachers’ classrooms spoke about how caring mathematics teachers take time with individual students to make sure they understand. Ariana [Ms. Alpha’s student] described a caring mathematics teacher by saying, “She does take the time. She always does . she’ll go back in class and really explain it.” Taking time with individual learners appeared to be more than making sure that every learner understood, but it also involved communicating that each individual is worth the teacher’s time. With a variety of descriptions of a caring mathematics teacher, students emphasized that such teachers enacted care by trying to understand students’ thinking and explaining to them and spending time on them.

Caring teachers communicate that every student matters in a variety of ways: by striving to reach every student and not letting any student fall between the cracks, by thoroughly explaining mathematics when working with students, by working to understand how students think about mathematics, and by taking time with each student. These are all forms of academic care that combine to demonstrate to students that they matter to teachers, according to these middle school students. The teachers were aware of the importance of reaching every learner, based on what they reported in the interviews, but they may not have been aware that the other component concepts communicated care to students.

Another way that middle school mathematics teachers enact care for their students is through providing students with challenging learning experiences and high expectations. This concept group contains two component concepts that involve academic care: (a) communicate high expectations and hold students accountable and (b) give students second changes to improve academically. When teachers care for middle school students, they expect their students to be successful, challenge them, and balance the high expectations and challenges with support.

One of the teachers and eight of the students (from three classrooms) spoke about teachers enacting care for students by communicating high expectations and holding students accountable. Ms. Sigma described how she held students accountable.

Ms. Sigma reported that her effort to establish an expectation that all students would be accountable was an act of caring for her students. Ms. Sigma’s students picked up on this, as Grace said, “She showed us that she wants to push us to do our best.” Blake also observed that Ms. Sigma wanted her students to be successful, saying, “She doesn’t want us like not to do our work so we don’t fail that assignment.”

Students in the other classrooms valued when teachers had high expectations for their students as well. Mikayla [Ms. Alpha’s student] wanted her teachers to call her out when she wasn’t engaging in class appropriately.

Sierra also noted that Ms. Alpha would not let her students get away with not doing their best.

Both students and teachers described a caring mathematics teacher as someone who holds high expectations for all students. Students also interpreted being given second chances as an instance of high expectations and caring instruction. Aiden [Ms. Alpha’s student] said:

These students wanted to be pushed to continue to grow as learners and considered being challenged by their teachers to be acts of care.

Caring mathematics teachers hold and communicate high expectations for all of their mathematics learners. These are academic approaches to enacting care for learners. Students reported that they want to be held accountable, but they also want to have additional opportunities to learn from mistakes and continue to grow. In other words, students know that their mathematics teachers care about them if they do not give up on students and communicate that they believe in their students.

Mathematics teachers communicate that they care for their middle school students by creating a welcoming and inviting mathematics classroom community. These classrooms are safe spaces to take intellectual risks. This concept group of caring mathematics instruction contains four component concepts of interpersonal care: (a) know students well, (b) provide emotional support to students, (c) respect students, and (d) make students feel comfortable. Each of the four teachers and 10 of the 22 students (from all four classrooms) reported that caring teachers know their students well.

Ms. Sigma shared Ms. Beta’s perspective that caring teachers know their students well, as she said, “some students have even said, like, they just notice how some teachers care and they want to know about them, and others just, they just kind of like know their name.” Caring mathematics teachers know their students as people, not just as mathematical thinkers. Students spoke about this description of a caring mathematics teacher as well. Mikayla [Ms. Alpha’s student] said,

She also indicated that a caring teacher would get to know students as they change over time.

As she grew and changed over the school year, she wanted teachers to try to continue to know her as she changed.

In addition to communicating with students to get to know them, caring teachers provide emotional support to students. This description was provided by three out of four teachers and by 9 out of 22 students (from all four classrooms). Ms. Beta said, “They [students] know that they have someone to talk to. If something’s not going right or they need to discuss an idea or they need to, I have students that will come in on my planning period.” Caring teachers made themselves available to students for emotional support. Ms. Sigma said, “I know some teachers on my team, but, when they noticed the student is upset, they’ll try to ignore it, and I feel like I try to usually ask them [students] what’s wrong.” She observed that some teachers do not enact care for students in this way.

Students appreciated emotional support that their teachers offered. Mikaylia [Ms. Alpha’s student] said, “I like when a teacher is very, like, there for you.” Noah described Ms. Beta by saying, “She’s to me like also like a friend, a teacher-friend. Like you can like depend on.” Ben [Ms. Beta’s student] noticed that caring mathematics teachers try to communicate with their students about their lives outside of mathematics class.

Although he did not necessarily want to communicate with his teacher, he appreciated the effort that she made. Mia [Ms. Beta’s student] agreed with Ben’s sense that caring teachers reach out to their students, as she said, “Like if they notice that something’s wrong, they’ll like ask you about it or something.” Eva [Ms. Gamma’s student] observed that caring mathematics teachers treated students like one of their own children. She said, “She’s [a caring mathematics teacher] just, like, loving. She treats you like she would treat her own daughter or son… she treated us like we’re family.” Students felt cared for when they received emotional support from their teachers.

Respectful teachers also enact care in ways that develop the classroom community. This description was mentioned by two out of four teachers and eight out of 22 students in four classrooms. Ms. Beta said, “They [students] know that I respect them and where they come from and what they do outside of school, then they respect me and where I’m going and things like that. So I think it’s a mutual respect.” Ms. Gamma reported that [caring mathematics instruction involves] “thinking about what’s really happening in your classroom, rather than just jumping to, you know, yell at them [students].” In some ways, providing respect for students was similar to getting to know students as people by understanding their perspectives. Students also spoke about this. Mikayla [Ms. Alpha] said, “I love when teachers communicate and show you respect, and they’ll get respect. I just don’t like when teachers, oh, that student, I don’t like when they assume things.” Students wanted to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Three students (from two classrooms) described that caring mathematics teachers made students feel comfortable. Isabella [Ms. Beta’s student] said that a caring mathematics teacher does not judge the questions that students pose, “when you ask questions, they make you feel like, Oh, it’s OK that you asked that question.” Grace said that Ms. Sigma was a caring teacher because she “makes me feel like I’m welcome in [her] class and then it makes me feel like I can ask her anything, even if it sounds like a really stupid question to ask about math.” Students felt cared for when they felt comfortable to ask questions, felt respected by their teachers, supported emotionally, and noticed that their teachers tried to get to know them.

Caring teachers create a welcoming classroom community by getting to know students well, providing emotional support, communicating respect for learners, and making them feel comfortable. These are interpersonal approaches to care. In a mathematics classroom, it is important to create a classroom culture in which learners feel emotionally safe to take intellectual risks, and middle school students want to feel respected and supported as maturing young adults.

Caring mathematics instruction is engaging, relevant, and often fun, according to these participants. Caring mathematics teachers have good senses of humor. Three component concepts make up this concept group: two descriptions of academic care (engage students and select mathematical tasks carefully) and one description of interpersonal care (have a sense of humor). Both teachers and students reported that caring teachers use engaging instructional methods when teaching. Students said that caring mathematics teachers connect with students by using their sense of humor (interpersonal) and through their selection of relevant and interesting mathematical tasks (academic). Additionally, one teacher reported that she attends to student engagement by monitoring students’ subject-specific affect. The importance of engaging learners was noted by three out of four teachers and 8 out of 22 students in three classrooms. Ms. Beta talked about creating engaging lessons that go beyond the textbook.

Ms. Alpha also said that caring mathematics teachers engage students by saying,

Students valued teachers’ efforts to make mathematics learning more engaging. Vanessa [Ms. Alpha’s student] described a caring teacher as someone who made the effort to make learning fun.

Avery [Ms. Gamma’s students] spoke similarly by saying, “they make activities for us … they make it fun to learn and stuff. Instead of just doing work from textbooks.” Students seemed to notice when teachers put forth extra effort when teaching.

Students observed that a caring teacher engaged her students through her sense of humor; two students in one classroom mentioned this description. Noah [Ms. Beta’s student] said that his teacher was caring and described her as follows: “She laughs. the other teachers, they don’t joke around. And she like, she’s like the kind of teacher you like.”Another one of Ms. Beta’s students, Hailey, said, “She shows how she cares. She’ll joke around with the kids.”

Three students from two classrooms noticed that teachers’ selection of mathematical tasks that were relevant and interesting to students was an act of care. Vanessa [Ms. Alpha’s student] and Ben [Ms. Beta’s student] thought that story problems in mathematics class were more interesting and relatable. Vanessa described a caring mathematics teacher by saying, “He would relate things to the world. He used to ask me, we’re using linear equations. How does that relate to the real world? And he would come up with things they were actually related to.” Ben shared his thoughts on story problems:

Mikayla [Ms. Alpha’s student] had a particularly unique perspective in that she felt more respected as a young adult by the mathematical tasks that teachers selected.

Careful selection of mathematical tasks not only has the potential to engage learners, but it also sends messages to students about how teachers view students, whether or not teachers see students as becoming more mature.

Ms. Gamma talked about engaging her learners by monitoring their subject-specific affect. She noticed if particular students seemed to lack confidence in mathematics or have some anxiety toward mathematics and tried to provide supportive, positive experiences for these students.

Ms. Gamma would provide encouragement by highlighting students’ successes to “boost up their confidence.” She wanted her students to feel less intimidated of mathematics and more confident. This type of caring instruction was different from the general emotional support described earlier, because this sort of affective support was specific to students’ emotions about the subject matter of mathematics rather than their emotional states in general.

Caring mathematics teachers engage students in learning mathematics by involving students actively during lessons, incorporating humor, carefully selecting mathematical tasks, and attending to students’ subject-matter specific affect. Engaging students in learning involves both academic and interpersonal instructional approaches. It is noteworthy that students reported the role of mathematical task selection in communicating care (academic care), as teachers did not seem to be aware that this aspect of their instruction would communicate care for learners.

To explore implications of caring mathematics teaching on students’ learning, we examined students’ responses to interview questions about what good mathematics teachers do (in contrast to what caring mathematics teachers do) and whether caring mathematics teaching supports students’ learning. All but two students discussed caring mathematics teaching and good mathematics teaching interchangeably. Students described some of the same instructional practices when describing both good and caring mathematics teachers, and when students talked about caring mathematics instruction, they said that it helped them learn mathematics. However, two of Ms. Beta’s students, Ben and Hailey, did not agree that all caring mathematics teachers were also good mathematics teachers.

Ben: Some teachers really care and pay attention to their students, but then they really can’t teach the material very well. I’m not going to name them.

Similar to Ben, Hailey indicated that she could learn from a teacher even if he or she did not enact caring instructional practices.

It is important to note that among teachers’ instructional practices, caring practices are not necessary to support all students’ learning, from their perspectives. However, because both academic and interpersonal care are closely related in students’ descriptions, it is likely that care, though not strictly sufficient for quality learning experiences, is a necessary component, as seen by students in this study.

This study contributes a framework describing an image of caring mathematics instruction informed by middle school mathematics teachers and their students. Prior research on caring instruction has captured adolescents’ voices on caring instruction generally, but rarely in the context of particular subject matter. Given that middle school students’ perspectives on caring instruction are associated with increased academic effort (e.g., Wentzel, 1997), it is important to understand in greater detail what caring mathematics instruction looks like. Listening to students’ voices, including their perspectives on caring instruction that go beyond what their teachers described, is essential for understanding the nature of caring instruction of which students are aware and value. Prior research illustrates that caring instruction matters for promoting student engagement, but this study illustrates a detailed description of what caring instruction looks like in middle school mathematics classrooms.

Thus, a contribution of this study is that we highlight the multifaceted ways in which middle school students talked about how their mathematics teachers enact care in complement to their teachers’ perspectives on caring instruction. These students appeared to have well-developed perspectives on care, including both interpersonal and academic dimensions.

Certain perspectives on caring mathematics instruction could be viewed through both interpersonal and academic perspectives. Consider the idea of knowing one’s students well. Caring mathematics teachers know students well enough to support them interpersonally (knowing students well enough to be aware of the sort of emotional support that they need) and intellectually (knowing how each student thinks mathematically to provide appropriate scaffolding and explanations), according to our participants. Additionally, the idea of respect was present in multiple ways in the voices of middle school students and teachers. Caring teachers value their learners’ senses of well-being. This value for learners is communicated interpersonally through the high expectations they communicate for learners and by giving their students multiple chances to learn from their mistakes and demonstrate their knowledge. This value for learners is communicated academically by engaging learners through instruction that involves students and mathematical tasks that connect to students’ interests and developing senses of self. Caring mathematics teachers create a welcoming, supportive, and intellectually engaging community for middle school students.

As we will detail here, although several of the findings from this study converge with findings in prior research, this study’s contribution to the literature is the comprehensiveness of its description of caring mathematics instruction. Findings from our study bring together results from a range of studies set inside and outside of mathematics classrooms. We suggest that the results from our study provide a more encompassing picture of the nature of caring instruction in mathematics classrooms than what has been revealed through these previous studies.

Findings in this study validated results from previous qualitative studies about caring instruction that were set in mathematics classrooms Similarly to Averill and Clark’s (2006) research with tenth grade students, our middle school participants reported that caring mathematics teachers know their students well. More specifically, Hackenberg’s work (2005; 2010) with sixth grade students demonstrates that caring mathematics instruction involves decentering to be in tune with students’ thinking and emotional responses to the experience of doing mathematics, and our participants also reported that caring teachers understand students’ thinking and provide emotional support to them. Most of our participants were in grades seven and eight (and a few were in sixth grade). Looking across these studies, the findings that caring mathematics teachers know their students well is relevant for mathematics teachers in grades six through ten.

Other findings from this study align with results from other studies about caring instruction not set in the context of learning particular subject matter. Again, the importance of knowing students well occurs in this subset of prior research studies (cf., Adler, 2002; Garza, 2009). Echoing the participants in this study, other qualitative studies not set in relation to learning specific subject matter content also indicate that caring teachers communicate high expectations for students explicitly and clearly (Adler, 2002), encourage students’ academic success and give students chances to be successful (Garza, 2009), communicate respect for their students (Wentzel, 1997), and interact with students by using a sense of humor (Hayes, Ryan, & Zseller, 1994).

We find it noteworthy that our results converged with studies that were not situated in mathematics classrooms, even though our study was situated in mathematics classrooms. Such convergence highlights the importance of teacher-student relationships in the process of mathematics instruction and teaching in general. Interpersonal dimensions of caring instruction, although perhaps not unique to mathematics classrooms, are valuable and integral to the work of mathematics teaching. After all, studies of effective mathematics teaching more broadly also identify caring practices as an important element of high quality mathematics instruction (Jones, Vermette, & Jones, 2012; Wang & Cai, 2007), and this study illustrates what caring mathematics instruction looks like in middle school mathematics classrooms.

Additionally, listening to middle school teachers’ and students’ voices has revealed some components of caring mathematics instruction not highlighted in prior research on caring instruction. One of our unique findings was that mathematics teachers can enact care for learners by selecting mathematical tasks that honor students’ development as maturing young adults, tasks that align with students’ interests, and tasks that are contextualized to support sense making. It is intriguing that multiple students mentioned this enactment of care and teachers did not.

Although many of our results converged with findings from prior research studies, no one prior study included the range of caring mathematics instructional practices communicated by our participants. Also, including this study, the prior research studies are primarily qualitative. For knowledge to accumulate across qualitative studies, it is useful to replicate some aspects of prior research studies to see if findings converge or diverge. Additionally, most of the prior studies were not set specifically in mathematics classrooms, so it was important to examine whether the caring instructional practices were relevant to this subject matter.

The self-report nature of these data may be considered a limitation of this study, as students might not always be aware of the kind of care that they benefit from and teachers might not be aware of the nature of care that students recognize. However, these data provide insights about the aspects of caring instruction that middle school students notice, value, and respond to. Students might be more likely to be receptive to the forms of caring instruction about which they are most aware.

Given the alignment between these data and the findings from prior research, this suggests that future research should move beyond qualitative examinations of the nature of caring instruction and move toward the creation of a survey or observation instrument to measure the prevalence of caring mathematical instruction in middle school classrooms. The content of these survey scales for middle school students’ perspectives on pedagogical care in mathematics classrooms could be structured based upon the findings from this study, as there appears to be some convergence across qualitative studies based on open-ended methods such as interviews and questionnaires.

This framework of caring mathematics instruction has the potential to inform middle school mathematics teachers of ways to enact care for their students in ways that their students might notice and receive as care. Indicators of caring instruction, both academic and interpersonal, were clearly described by these participants, yielding a reasonably clear picture of practices, which can be enacted fruitfully. Given that students and teachers report that caring teachers know their students well, teachers could attempt to get to know their own students to enact care for them, both as people and as mathematical thinkers (Philipp & Thanheiser, 2010), including what counts as caring instruction for their students, and use these approaches to enact caring instruction. Components in this framework are likely to resonate with their students’ perspectives, but it is essential to get to know one’s own students in the process of caring for them and engaging learners.

At a time when students’ test scores are being used as pawns in political decision making to determine funding for schools, it is more important than ever to examine and implement caring mathematics instruction. A revolution of care is needed. To honor students’ school experiences in ways that go beyond characterizing students in the form of achievement scores, in this study we honored students’ perspectives by sharing their voices. We highlighted that an important part of mathematics teaching practice is caring instruction and enacting care can support students’ learning of mathematics. We also intended to honor positive aspects of novice teachers’ mathematics instruction, which contrasts with research that highlights weaknesses in new teachers’ practices. In these ways, we enacted care for our own research participants. Education (teaching, learning, and research) is a relational enterprise.