While there is widespread uptake of Number Talks (NTs) in elementary classrooms, limited research examines their effectiveness in fostering meaningful mathematical learning. Matney et al. (2020) describe this gap as a “black hole” (p. 247), noting the complexity of NTs due to five rapidly occurring, essential components: (1) creating a supportive classroom environment and community, (2) fostering productive classroom discourse, (3) the teacher’s role in questioning and supporting student reasoning, (4) the role of mental math, and (5) designing purposeful computation problems. This study addresses this gap by investigating NTs enacted in Nova Scotia schools in Canada through an inquiry-based professional learning project involving 16 elementary teachers across two Regional Centres for Education. Over three full-day sessions, teachers co-planned and observed NTs, producing video data for analysis. Drawing on Maturana and Varela’s (1992) enactivist perspective—which emphasizes learning as a dynamic, collective process—we explored the question: How do teachers’ and students’ interactions during Number Talks, viewed through an enactivist lens, reveal processes that contribute to an understanding of the efficacy of Number Talks? Our findings suggest that NTs hold potential for teachers to elicit and legitimize students’ mental math strategies and for students to recognize, connect, and build on one another’s ideas. These interactions illustrate how deeper mathematical thinking can emerge even within brief instructional windows. This study contributes to the emerging literature on NTs by reframing the discourse on NT efficacy and highlighting the potential of NTs, viewed through an enactivist lens, to foster collaborative and meaningful mathematical learning in elementary classrooms.
