You mean what? Commognitive Conflict in Resolving Contextual Logarithm Problems

Students’ approaches to solving contextual mathematics problems involving logarithms vary significantly due to differences in their prior mathematical understanding. These differences may trigger commognitive conflict during the interpretation and reasoning processes when students attempt to construct mathematical meaning from contextual situations. This qualitative study aimed to explore how commognitive conflict emerges as a mechanism of mathematical interpretation in students’ discourse while solving logarithmic contextual problems. Twenty students participated in the study and were grouped based on their performance. One student was selected as the main research subject for an in-depth analysis. The findings reveal that commognitive conflict appeared in two discourse components: terminology literacy (words use–literate/WU-L) and colloquial language (words use–colloquial/WU-C). In the WU-L component, conflict emerged when students attempted to connect contextual information with formal logarithmic terminology but relied on incomplete conceptual schemas. Meanwhile, in the WU-C component, conflict arose from students’ reasoning processes in interpreting logarithmic rules and conditions through informal language structures. These conflicts indicate that commognitive tension is not merely caused by insufficient prior knowledge, but also by students’ attempts to negotiate meaning between everyday discourse and formal mathematical discourse. The study contributes theoretically to commognitive research by demonstrating how discourse shifts and interpretative reasoning shape students’ mathematical understanding in contextual problem solving. Therefore, strengthening conceptual understanding and discourse-based learning may help reduce commognitive conflict in mathematics learning.