Affective elements are an important factor in mathematical collaborative work, but the complexity of the affective domain makes it hard to construct analytical tools that can reliably capture all the relevant elements. Goldin’s (2017) tool of motivating desires is constructed to address the challenge of investigating affective elements taking in to consideration the complexity of these elements. Motivating desires as a theoretical lens describes students’ in-the-moment classroom engagement with mathematics, acknowledging several domains dynamically influencing each other in complex ways, including cognition and metacognition, motivation, affect and meta-affect, and social interactions with the teacher and with peers (Goldin, ibid.). Engagement, however, can be separated into two elements: participation and identification. These two do not always go hand in hand (Lawson & Masyn, 2015): a student might participate in the learning activities, but yet not identify himself with the learning object. Goldin’s “motivating desires” draw on an engagement framework that includes the elements listed above, but without distinguishing participation and identification. Thus, it is necessary to find out the connections between students’ motivating desires and behaviours that represent participation or identification to gain more clarity in identifying the link between motivating desires and engagement structures. In this study, a video recording of students’ group work in mathematics was analysed. Students’ motivating desires (Goldin, 2017) were identified within an excerpt chosen because it included substantial variety in affective elements. The analysis focused on identifying what each motivating desire reveals about students’ participation vs. identification. For example, performing the task through making calculations can be interpreted as indicating Engagement through participating in the cognitive work, whereas interacting with others by sharing mathematical ideas and making jokes can be interpreted as demonstrating Engagement through identification in collaborative mathematical discussion. The research question examined in this paper was: What are the recognizable elements in the video that can be considered as evidence of participation or identification? It was theorized that participation is more related to motivating desires focusing on the object (e.g., focusing on mathematical task by making calculations) and identification to the ones focusing on peers (e.g., focusing on others by contributing to the affective atmosphere by sharing mathematical ideas and making jokes). The investigation will provide an overall clarification of the theory of motivating desires in terms of its correspondence with participation and identification.

Goldin, G. A. (2017). Motivating desires for classroom engagement in the learning of mathematics. In C. Andrà, D. Brunetto, E. Levenson, P. Liljedahl (Eds.). Teaching and Learning in Maths Classrooms. Emerging themes in affect-related research: teachers' beliefs, students' engagement and social interaction. Springer. Lawson, M. A., & Masyn, K. E. (2015). Analyzing profiles and predictors of students’ social-ecological engagement. AERA Open, 1(4), 1-37.