Regulative routines and their relation to the process of de-ritualization in mathematics learning

There is wide agreement that regulations are an important part of students’ learning. However, there is lack of theorizing and methods that look at the intricate relations between regulations and the mathematical content of learning. In this study, our goal is to develop a theoretical and methodological lens for looking at regulations in students’ discourse, from a commognitive point of view. We develop the Discourse Mapping Diagram (DMD)—a tool for micro-analytical examination of regulative routines in relation to the structure of the mathematical task. To exemplify the potential productiveness of this tool, we apply it to the case of a 7th grade student as she attempted to solve an algebraic problem. We show, through the DMD, that the student’s regulative routines grew in the process of solving the problem hand in hand with the process of learning, which we operationalize, according to commognition, as a process of de-ritualization (moving from procedure-orientation to product-orientation). In that way, the DMD allows us to observe the inextricable nature of regulative routines and mathematical routines in students’ learning.