To Disagree, We Must Also Agree: How Intersubjectivity Structures and Perpetuates Discourse in a Socially Mediated Mathematics Learning Environment

Multi-level analyses in a socially mediated middle school mathematics classroom reveal how intersubjectivity serves to structure and sustain the discourse while students collective solve a three-dimensional reasoning task. Speech events frequently exhibited co-occurrence of both positive and negative forms of intersubjectivity. This shows that interlocutors need not agree or converge on a single solution to exhibit intersubjectivity. Indeed, speakers appear to need a shared understanding to express substantive disagreement. Those with competing interpretive frames rarely changed position, but they came to articulate their disparate positions in more conventionalized and accessible ways. Convergence was evident at the discourse level, however, with establishment of a common basis for communication and representation. In this way, we see how knowledge socially accumulated, mediated by the interactions of the whole classroom discourse. Intersubjectivity also appears to play a significant role in perpetuating the discourse. In this way, students exhibited chaining of Initiation-Demonstration-Evaluation/Elaboration (IDE) triads that contrast with the IRE patterns more common in traditional classroom settings. Advancements in understanding of the nature and role of intersubjectivity during whole classroom communication have the potential to contribute to both the theory and methodology of socially mediated learning.