Students’ sense-making frames in mathematics lectures

The goal of this study is to describe the various ways students make sense of mathematics lectures. Here, sense-making refers to a process by which people construct personal meanings for phenomena they experience. This study introduces the idea of a sense-making frame and describes three different types of frames: content-, communication-, and situating-oriented. We found that students in an abstract algebra class regularly engaged in sense-making during lectures on equivalence relations, and this sense-making influenced their note-taking practices. We discuss the relationship between the choice of frame, the students’ sense-making practices, and the potential missed opportunities for learning from the lecture. These results show the importance of understanding the ways students make sense of aspects of mathematics lectures and how their sense-making practices influence what they might learn from the lecture.