Epistemological investigation of classroom interaction in elementary mathematics teaching

In everyday teaching, the mathematical meaning of new knowledge is frequently devalued during the course of ritualized formats of communication, such as the "funnel pattern", and is replaced by social conventions. Problems of understanding occurring during the interactively organized elaboration of the new knowledge require an analysis of the interplay between the social constraints of the communicative process and the epistemological structure of the mathematical knowledge. Specific aspects of the problem of meaning development are investigated in the course of two exemplary second-grade teaching episodes. These are then used to develop and discuss decisive requirements for the maintenance of an interactive constitution of meaning for mathematical knowledge. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.