Sense making in the context of algebraic activities

This article concerns student sense making in the context of algebraic activities. We present a case in which a pair of middle-school students attempts to make sense of a previously obtained by them position formula for a particular numerical sequence. The exploration of the sequence occurred in the context of two-month-long student research project. The data were collected from the students’ drafts, audiotaped meetings of the students with the teacher and a follow-up interview. The data analysis was aimed at identification and characterization of the algebraic activities in which the students were engaged and the processes involved in the students’ sense-making quest. We found that sense-making process consisted of a sequence of generational and transformational algebraic activities in the overarching context of a global, meta-level activity, long-term problem solving. In this sense-making process, the students: (1) formulated and justified claims; (2) made generalizations, (3) found the mechanisms behind the algebraic objects (i.e., answered why-questions); and (4) established coherence among the explored objects. The findings are summarized as a suggestion for a four component decomposition of algebraic sense making.