To appear and to be: acquiring the genre speech of university mathematics

This paper builds on a recent area of research in mathematics education that focuses on mathematicians' perceptions of students' learning and reflections on their own teaching practices. This paper explores first year university students' enculturation in the genre speech (Bakhtin, 1986) of mathematics, as perceived by mathematicians reflecting on the written work of their students. It draws on an LTSN-funded study and the methodological tool is focus group interviews. The paper explores students' approaches to mathematical writing; difficulties in conceptualizing the necessity of mathematical proof for statements that appear obvious; and it also explores the mathematicians' pedagogical practices towards assisting the students overcoming these difficulties. The paper does so by employing a novel narrative approach weaving the participants' comments and the authors' reflections into the more general context of the relevant literature. This paper was peer-reviewed and presented at an international conference with a 50% contribution by Iannone.