Identifying routines in the discourse of undergraduate students when defining

Abstract

In this paper, we study how undergraduate students define 3D geometrical solids. With this aim, we have identified the routines that are present in the discourse of the students when describing and defining these solids. These routines are one of the properties that characterise the mathematical discourse in the theory of commognition (Sfard 2008). Our results show three different types of routines. The first type is related to the process of describing the solids, the second one to the process of defining the solids and the rest of the routines have a transversal nature. All of them together give us a global vision of the mathematical practice of defining of these undergraduate students. For instance, it seems that some of these students do not have a clear idea of what a definition is. Moreover, there are also differences between the discourse of students when defining 2D figures and the discourse of students when defining 3D solids.