Enhancing mathematical discourse

This study investigated the effects of e-mail conversations between teachers and students on learning graphing. Participants were two classes of ninth-grade students (boys and girls) who were exposed to Excel software by using metacognitive instruction. One class (n =25) was exposed to e-mail conversation (EXCEL+E-MAIL) and the other class (n =25) was exposed to whole class conversation (EXCEL). Results indicated that the EXCEL+E-MAIL students significantly outperformed the EXCEL students on graph interpretation and graph construction. In particular, the effects were observed on students" ability to explain mathematical reasoning. Furthermore, qualitative analysis of the e-mail messages indicated that the EXCEL+E-MAIL students used different levels of discourse in their e-mail messages than the EXCEL students