An examination of discourse analytic methods in the context of mathematical group work

Abstract

In recent decades, mathematics education scholarship has promoted a shift from traditional teaching and learning approaches to novel approaches that privilege peer-to-peer collaboration. To mobilize researchers towards advancing scholarship on collaborative learning, scholars need to understand the methodologies available to them for examining group work. In this study, I synthesize and critically examine discourse analytic methodologies for analyzing group work in mathematics. Using a systematic review methodology, an initial 576 articles were considered, and 31 articles met the inclusion criteria for analysis. Articles were separated according to their research foci and methodologies were synthesized and critically evaluated. The review provides researchers with methodological options for analyzing group discourse in mathematics.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning
• mathematics/numeracy
• research methods
• discourse analysis
• collaborative learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Any letters occurring after * were included in the search.

2 The participants could be learners of any age, as long as they were positioned as learners.

3 Publications which analyzed online group work or other non-face-to-face formats were not considered in this analysis.

4 I only included empirical articles which generated claims based on a physical sample of students. However, some articles that tended to be more theoretical were included if they utilized a physical sample of students as a vignette or to explain their theoretical principles.

5 This study did not explicitly name their theoretical grounding ‘situative theory’, but the core ideas from the paper were consistent with the situative perspective.