Are We on the Same Page? Modeling Linguistic Synchrony and Math Literacy in Mathematical Discussions

Mathematical discussions have become a popular educational strategy to promote math literacy. While some studies have associated math literacy with linguistic factors such as verbal ability and phonological skills, no studies have examined the relationship between linguistic synchrony and math literacy. In this study, we modeled linguistic synchrony and students’ math literacy from 20,776 online mathematical discussion threads between students and facilitators. We conducted Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) to calculate linguistic synchrony within each thread. The statistical testing result comparing CRQA indices between high and low math literacy groups shows that students with high math literacy have a significantly higher Recurrence Rate (RR), Number of Recurrence Lines (NRLINE), and the average Length of lines (L), but lower Determinism (DET) and normalized Entropy (rENTR). This result implies that students with high math literacy are more likely to share common words with facilitators, but they would paraphrase them. On the other hand, students with low math literacy tend to repeat the exact same phrases from the facilitators. The findings provide a better understanding of mathematical discussions and can potentially guide teachers in promoting effective mathematical discussions.