Social and sociomathematical norms in an advanced undergraduate mathematics course

Abstract This paper extends analyses of social interaction patterns that have been successful at characterizing elementary and secondary school classrooms to the learning and teaching of undergraduate mathematics. Using data from a classroom teaching experiment in differential equations as an example, we document the social and sociomathematical norms regarding explanation and discuss how these norms were constituted in this specific case. We focus on the social norms that students explain their thinking and try to make sense of other students' thinking and, for first-order differential equations, we document the sociomathematical norm that explanations be grounded in an interpretation of the rates of change. The analysis makes explicit certain social aspects of classroom environments that contribute to the conditions that make meaningful learning of mathematics possible.