Together in adidactic situations – Student dialogue during reciprocal peer tutoring in mathematics

Abstract

This paper presents a mixed methods analysis of mathematical and social interaction, when the teacher has performed a devolution of a task to pairs of students in a setting of reciprocal peer tutoring. Using data from the project: SYKL in Math (Systematized Reciprocal Peer Tutoring in Mathematics), we quantify the dialogical content of 28 video recorded peer interactions. Based on the quantitative findings, we have selected two cases to provide a detailed qualitative analysis of how students engage with the milieu of SYKL in the beginning of the project, and towards the end. We see how the roles as tutor and tutee, together with affordances of the milieu, provide and channel feedback through the student dialogue. It is seen how conversational actions interact to change and establish socio-mathematical norms beneficial to the learning of mathematics while engaged in processes of enquiry.