Abstract
There is a long tradition in mathematics education that deals with analyzing the role of social norms to mathematical learning processes as well as the notion of individual factors influencing these processes. The epistemological extension of conducting different theoretical approaches in order to capture both individual and social aspects of learning has offered many new insights when combining individual-cognitive and social perspectives. This paper introduces a theoretical framework, which puts individual commitments and inferences to the fore in order to analyze processes of individual concept formation and the discursive practices. Within this perspective, the social and the individual are no more dualistic poles that refer to different underlying principles when analyzing mathematical learning. Instead, the emergence of new individual commitments will be explained within the discursive practice of acknowledging and attributing commitments. In this perspective, the social and the individual dimension of concept formation can be explained within one coherent theoretical perspective. The theoretical framework will be illustrated by empirical examples from a design research study on algebraic concept formation processes.
