Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis offers an inductive approach to the analysis of classroom interaction. With its roots in ethnomethodology, conversation analysis is underpinned by some key principles that focus on how the learning of mathematics is made visible through teachers’ and students’ interactions. Using the tools developed by conversation analysts, the structures and patterns of interaction within mathematics classrooms can be described to reveal what it means to learn, and what it means to do, mathematics in school classrooms. This approach foregrounds what teachers and students themselves treat as learning and doing mathematics and reveals the multifaceted role of interaction in these processes.