Making Explicit the Analysis of Students’ Mathematical Discourses – Revisiting a Newly Developed Methodological Framework

Sfard and Kieran Kieran, C., Educational Studies in Mathematics 46, 2001, 187–228; Sfard, A., Educational Studies in Mathematics 46, 2001, 13–57; Sfard, A. and Kieran, C., Mind, Culture, and Activity 8, 2001, 42–76] have developed a methodological framework, which aims at characterizing the students’ mathematical discourses while they are working in groups. In this study, I focus on an important aspect of this methodological framework, namely the interactive flowcharts. The aim of this study is to suggest two complementary analyses for the construction of the interactive flowcharts: an additional analysis by means of the analytical construct of contextualization as well as an analysis of types of mathematical discourses. Based on data from a study of how four groups of Swedish engineering students collaboratively construct concept maps in linear algebra. I show that the two complementary analyses make the construction of the interactive flowcharts more coherent and transparent, and hence, more reliable. Furthermore, the two complementary analyses dramatically changed the picture as to whether the studied discourses were to be seen as mathematically productive or not. In the end of the article, I discuss the possibilities of performing the suggested additional analyses within the original methodological framework.