Session Information
24 SES 06, Utilising Student Collaborative Problem Solving in Mathematics to Study the Social Essentials of Learning
Symposium
Contribution
Theoretical Perspective: Learning in social settings involves complex processes that require research designs and analytical techniques that are sensitive to its multifaceted nature and open to multiple construal (Clarke, 2001). Collaborative problem solving creates the situation whereby students have to negotiate meaning overtly in a social setting. This negotiative process simulates the learning that takes place in schools and other social environments (Mercer & Howe, 2012). This paper reports on a study that was conducted in a laboratory classroom that has the capability to capture classroom social interactions with a rich amount of details using advanced video technology. The analysis connected forms of student learning product to the social deployment of student mathematical and negotiative expertise that led to those learning products. Method: The research was conducted in a laboratory classroom equipped with 10 built-in video cameras and up to 32 audio channels. Two classes of Year 7 students (12 to 13 years old; N = 50) each with their usual teacher participated in a 60-minute session involving three separate problem solving tasks. The students attempted the first task individually, the second task in pairs, and the third task in groups of four to six. The laboratory classroom facility allows the generation of continuous video and audio records of problem solving and associated learning for every student in the class. All student written work was also collected. This paper illustrates its key points by drawing on the written solutions, transcripts, and video record from a single group of four students with two female and two male students. Results: Each form of data, student written solutions, transcripts of student-student dialogue, and video records offers distinct insights into the products and negotiative processes underlying collaborative groupwork in mathematics. Our analysis suggests that meaning negotiation in mathematics classrooms can be usefully distinguished as social, socio-mathematical, and mathematical. All three modes co-exist in an entangled form in the negotiative interactions documented in the mathematics classroom. We envisage all three as both constitutive of learning and as providing a potential entry point for teacher instructional intervention (or scaffolding). Each must be accommodated in a social theory of learning and each represents one avenue to improved learning outcomes in our mathematics classrooms. All three must be studied in situ and in relation to each other as they occur in authentic classroom activity.
References
Clarke, D. (Ed.). (2001). Perspectives on practice and meaning in mathematics and science classrooms. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Mercer, N. & Howe, C. (2012). Explaining the dialogic processes of teaching and learning: The value and potential of sociocultural theory. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 1, 12-21.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.