PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Here’s What You Do: Personalization and Ritual in College Students’ Algebraic Discourse
Page: 1662
We present results of a discourse analysis focused on college algebra students’ uses of personal and impersonal language, references to endorsed mathematical routines, and inferences about mathematical objects in responses to a small-group problem-posing activity. We analyze students’ responses with respect to selected dimensions of the arithmetical discourse profile of Ben-Yehuda et al., and provide evidence of a positive association between impersonal language and the presence of object-level mathematical statements and precise uses of algebraic terminology.