As mobile phone technology becomes more advanced, so too does its presence in everyday life. Research has shown, for instance, that students are using their mobile phones in classroom settings, a practice that holds both potential advantages and disadvantages. In group work, these interactions may have consequences for group dynamics in that…

This study explored how to integrate cooperative skills training into learning tasks in the area of writing. Cooperative learning sessions, aimed at developing both cooperative and cognitive skills, were created and conducted in two elementary school classes (Grade 2, age 7-8). Pupils' teamwork interactions were videotaped and analysed.…

Recent research on problem-based learning (PBL) has shown that students need support when dealing with conflicting ideas in PBL-tutorial discussions. In the present study, we examined tutor facilitation during tutorial discussions, and particularly how the facilitation helped students to collaboratively resolve conflicts on knowledge. The study…

This article troubles the established discourse of free choice and free play in early childhood education, and develops post-structural approaches to theorising children's agency in the context of institutional and relational power structures. It is widely accepted that planning a curriculum based on children's needs, interests and patterns of…

Research has addressed what instructional conditions may inhibit or promote scientific argumentation. Little research, however, has paid attention to interpersonal factors that influence collaborative argumentation. The present study examines the ways interpersonal factors affected group dynamics, which influence the features of collaborative…

We use the theory of communities of practice and the concept of accountable disciplinary knowledge to describe how a learning community develops in the context of an upper-division physics laboratory course. The change in accountable disciplinary knowledge motivates students' enculturation into a community of practice. The enculturation process is…

This article is based on a study focusing on how structured learning communities can promote reflective awareness and professional development, through collaborative analysis of professional experience. As participant-observer, the researcher used recorded observations as well as individual participants' reflective writing as data. Of importance…

Studies of primary education within the UK have shown that small groups can feature within classrooms; however, equivalent research within secondary education remains scarce. Research has established effective group work approaches, yet secondary teachers may encounter difficulties employing approaches tied to parameters embedded within primary…

The authors investigate how conversational routines, or the practices by which groups structure work-related talk, function in teacher professional communities to forge, sustain, and support learning and improvement. Audiotaped and videotaped records of teachers' work group interactions, supplemented by interviews and material artifacts, were…

This article examines mathematics teacher collegiality by focusing on both the ways in which teachers interacted as critical colleagues in a long-term professional development project and the evolving role of the teacher-educator-researcher as the facilitator of this project. The professional development collaboration comprised two phases: one…

One of the most important benefits of computer use within educational settings has been described as its potential for use in collective activity. However; there is a need to take a closer look at the apparently unproblematic picture of children's actual cooperation around the computer. The purpose of this research was to study positions and…

There is a large number of relationships between organisms in communities, and these relationships comprise the following types: predation and parasitism, commensalism, protocooperation and mutualism, neutralism, amensalism, and competition. The possible effects of the relationship between two species are that one or the other can benefit (+),…

The authors investigated the microlevel processes of collaborative reasoning in heterogeneous peer dyads working on an open-design task in elementary geometry. Special attention was paid to the nature of student social interaction, problem-solving strategies, and mathematical language and how they shape collaborative problem-solving processes.…

The purpose of this research was to understand fifth grade children's cognitive behavior as they wrote, solved and then, in small groups, shared original math story problems. Research questions examined children's: (1) beliefs about math in this problem-writing classroom, (2) math story problem-writing behavior, (3) difficulties with their…