From uncertainty to dialogue: Visualising collaborative noticing and mathematical intuitions in students' narratives within probability learning

This study explores the critical role of language and communication in fostering collaborative noticing practices that display mathematical intuitions within probability learning. Through an analysis of student interactions, I show how the joint articulation of ideas and the exploration of shared doubt enable intuition, often perceived as an object that is held and a solitary experience, to become a socially shared and co-constructed process. The observed collaborative dialogue concerns shared content and form, constructing a joint narrative architecture that enables common understanding and allows the group to notice, examine, and reshape their intuitions. Collaborative noticing when working with probability problems facilitates the surfacing, interrogation, and transformation of student mathematical intuitions, often displaying previously unconscious cognitive contents and processes. I argue that collective narratives about mathematical intuitions offer unique opportunities to communicate what would often be imperceptible individually. This research highlights that intuition is continuously reconstructed through the embodied and situated dialogue of shared mathematical experience. Findings show that language and interaction are fundamental for making explicit, noticing, and reflecting upon intuitive responses, particularly when these are challenged. Playfulness, affective safety, humour, and shared doubt emerge as catalysts, facilitating a progressive shift from individual to collective reasoning, demonstrating that intuition is not a static certainty but a dynamic, socially mediated process.