PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Mathematicians’ collaborative silences
Page: 837
In this paper I re-analyze the transcripts from Smith (2012) to investigate silence in mathematicians’ collaborative work. I provide an existence proof that silence, at times, forms a significant aspect of mathematicians’ embodied work. Based off a discussion of the nature of embodied interaction, the paper concludes that it is likely that silence forms a significant aspect of mathematicians’ collaborative work, more generally, both in discovering new mathematics, and in ordering the mathematicians together toward the task of discovering new mathematics. Because this use of silence is different from that of everyday conversation, this raises important pedagogical questions regarding students’ apprenticeship into the mathematics profession.