This paper explores how teachers respond to students` participation in the classroom and what personal interpretations and political discourses shape their practices.

The spread of constructivist ideas (Richardson, 2003, Sorensen and Robertson, 2017) and concern for teaching thinking (Harpaz, 2015), makes teachers` response to students` participation in the classroom, an important field of action and research topic.

Pedagogically the teachers` response to students` participation in the classroom is defined in different ways, mirroring different higher order theories. These understandings could be placed on a spectrum depending on how teachers are imagined to relate to their students` thinking. As following, on one end of the spectrum teachers` are expected to be responsive to their students thinking (Dyer și Gamoran Sherin, 2015, Robertson et al., 2016). In a slightly more structured view, teachers are imagined to scaffold learning, meaning to support and eventually fade from problem-solving (Wood, Bruner and Ross, 1976, Stone, 1998, Van de Pol et al., 2010, Reiser and Tabak, 2014, Boblett, 2012), or to give feedback that effectively guides students to an expected result (Kluger și DeNisi, 1996, Black și Wiliam, 1998, Hattie și Timperley, 2007). Finally, on the far end of the spectrum, as part of direct instruction, teachers` response should be corrective and premeditated (McMullen și Madelaine, 2014).

Previous research suggests that in practice teaching is a bricolage of actions that direct and facilitate the construction of knowledge. Studies show teachers directing their students thinking during interactive teaching (Coffey et al., 2011, Myhill and Warren, 2005, Dyer and Gamoran Sherin, 2015) or being responsive in the midst of direct instruction (Chin, 2006, Tiilikainen et al., 2019). This research investigates how the teaching bricolage is looking like in a school from a marginalized urban area and a political setting where teachers are portrayed as the problem and the salvation of education (România Educată, 2019, Kitchen și alții, 2017[1], Banca Mondială, 2020).

The purpose of this research was twofold. Firstly, I aimed to explore and describe teachers` practices on responding to students’ participation in the classroom. Secondly, I was interested in the interpretations and discourses that shape these practices.

The research and analysis assumes that teaching practices are ideas, activities and ways of relating enabled and constrained by cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements (Kemmis, 2019). In relation to the social-political arrangements, teachers are seen as both agents and subjects of dominant discourses (Ball, 1993, Ball et al., 2011) and their practice is seen as a result of teachers` sense-making (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009). The teachers` middle ground is a metaphor describing the practices that take shape at the interaction of teachers` identity and their social-political arrangement. The tensions, congruencies and conflicts identified in the teachers` practice and identity narratives, were used to map the discourses and interpretations that shape the response to students` participation in the classroom. 

In order to capture the practices and teachers’ identity narratives I opted for a qualitative methodological approach (Creswell, 2014), more specifically, an ethnographic, multiple case study (Stake, 2006, Parker-Jenkins, 2016). This approach allowed me to investigate the cases extensively, by mobilizing techniques and ethnographic intuition. The research includes 6 cases representing 6 teachers who teach Mathematics or Romanian Language and Literature to 7th grade classes, in the same school (S.M.). S.M. is a school with close to 2000 students, located in a marginalized urban area (Atlas of Marginalized Areas, 2015). The school was selected based on its size, making possible to include several teachers in the research. I selected 5 classes (7th grade) out of 9, 4 teachers of Romanian Language and Literature out of 6 and 3 teachers of Mathematics out of 5. The classes and teachers were selected so that I obtain the highest overlap of teachers and classes and also to ensure a good representation based on students` notoriety among teachers. The ethnographic fieldwork consisted of non-participatory observation and semi-structured interviews with teachers, students and other key informants. The fieldwork was conducted in 2019, during 2 months. During this time, almost daily, I observed the teaching activity while sitting in the front, middle or back of the classroom, alone or next to a student. During the breaks, I spent time mainly in the teachers` recreation spaces, engaged in investigative discussions. The data mainly consists of notes and reflections I took during lesson observation and after, in the field diary. The interviews were meant to clarify and deepen the field notes. The interview grids were adapted onsite based on previous observations related to each case. Most interviews took place in the school library or recreation areas, as far as possible, in the absence of people who could increase the incidence of socially desirable responses; thus, for example, all interviews with students took place in the absence of teachers. Overall, the data were collected through 16 visits to the school, 36 useable hours of observation out of 42 performed, 11 semi-structured interviews with teachers and 10 semi-structured interviews with 22 students. The informed consent of all those involved was obtained, respecting the ethics policy of the University of Bucharest. Of the people approached, one teacher left the study close to the end of the fieldwork.

Ongoing analyses suggest that when students hesitate, stop or make mistakes in solving tasks, the teachers respond through various forms of support: guided questions, clues, explanations and demonstrations, reformulation of the task. In all the studied cases the support is recurrent, varied, to some level interactive and rather part of drill and practice. Teachers do not describe their practice in abstract pedagogical language, like ‘responsive teaching’, ‘scaffolding’ or ‘feedback’, but in terms of ‘helping’ their students to learn. Even so, their practices differ depending on the degree of independence given to students, the investigation of students` thinking and responsiveness to students` ideas. The teachers’ identity narratives suggests that their ideas and practices are shaped by the memories of their own learning experiences as a students and their effort to fulfill the expectations related to the 8th grade national exam. Although in Romania, teachers` salaries and distribution of schools` resources are not conditioned by students` exam performance, teachers feel part of a performativity culture (Ball, 2003). As a result, even teachers who value giving independence to their students, investigating their thinking and responding to the ideas, feel adequate only if they prioritize drilling and practicing exam exercises. Also, they rationalize support and become more directive as a response to the time constraints created by the exam. The main way teachers discipline themselves in relation to the exam is an improvised lesson planner that may diverge from the official one, but keeps them on track with preparing their students for the exam. These observations confirm previous research on the effect of evaluation, showing that teachers are more inclined to opt for direct instruction and lectures (Au, 2007, Aydeniz and Southerland, 2012) and drilling (Smith, 1991, Firestone, Mayrowetz and Fairman, 1998, Valli and Chambliss, 2007) in response to high-stake testing.

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