Effect of gender, participant type, and subject type on student and teacher perceptions of teacher oral communication behaviour in the mathematics classroom

Teacher and student communication behaviour in the mathematics classrooms can significantly affect students’ mathematics thinking and understanding.This study assessed the effect of gender (male/female), participant type (teacher/student), and subject type (algebra/geometry) on perceptions of teacher communication behaviour in the mathematics classroom. The design for the study was a sequential explanatory design, comprising 550 (250 male and 200 female) students in the algebra lessons, 500 (250 male and 250 female) students in the geometry lessons, 11 (5 male and 6 female) teachers in the algebra lessons, and 11 (6 male and 5 female) teachers in the geometry lessons, who were randomly selected from a school district in the central region of Ghana. The quantitative data consisted mainly of teachers’ and students’ responses to the teacher and student versions of the Teacher Communication Behaviour Questionnaire (TCBQ). The qualitative data consisting of teachers’ and students’ responses to the open-ended questions, helped to explain the effect in the quantitative data. The results indicated that of all the dependent variables: Totaltcbq, Encouragement And Praise, Understanding And Friendly, Controlling, And Challenging, only participant type had an effect on Encouragement And Praise, with students having a greater effect than teachers.A major implication of this study is that teachers must realise that encouraging and praising their students should form a major part of their professional practice in order to improve students’ mathematics understanding.