PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
Undergraduate learning assistants and mathematical discourse in an active-learning precalculus setting
Page: 930
Undergraduate learning assistants (ULAs) are becoming more popular in mathematics classrooms. With this growth, there is a need to understand ULAs’ roles in the classroom. Using a four-level distinction from univocal (ULA was the only voice in the conversation) to dialogical (ULA was fostering group discussion), we investigated the discourse between ULAs and students while in an active-learning setting. Our conjecture was that much of the discourse would fall in either univocal or dialogical; however, the ULAs’ discourse was an array of all four ratings. We attribute this to the ULAs recognizing the “intellectual need” of the students in the moment.