Productive struggle is crucial to students' mathematics learning. However, it has proven difficult for teachers to sustain struggle when it is productive or make it so when it is not. Studies show that teachers may offer students support when their struggles are productive or even refrain from offering support when students' struggles are…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to understand how and to what extent personality traits, positionality, and content knowledge influence students' susceptibility to persuasion during groupwork. Personality surveys, recorded videos, and semi-structured interviews provided evidence to support the findings. The findings confirmed that…

This article examines the use and application of an ill-structured problem to pre-service elementary teachers in Korea in order to find implications of pre-service teacher education with regard to contextualized problem solving by analyzing experiences of ill-structured problem solving. Participants were divided into small groups depending on the…

Collaborative learning is being used extensively by educators at all levels. Peer-led team learning in a version of collaborative learning that has shown consistent success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Using a multi-phase research study we describe the development of an observation instrument that can be used to…

Collaborative learning assumes that knowledge is constructed through negotiation and discussion. This exploratory study focuses on 2 groups of 3 pre-service primary teachers solving 2 mathematical tasks in a text-based and asynchronous WorkMates learning environment. This case study describes the group processes, and the different patterns of…

Investigates the factors that influence the effectiveness of collaboration on open-ended mathematical tasks. Identifies various phenomena that influence cognitive "lifting", "hovering", and "falling"; that is, improvement, no change, and reduction in levels of functioning, respectively. (Author/MM)

Reports on a 3-year study of patterns of student-student social interaction that mediated metacognitive activity in senior secondary school mathematics classrooms. Unsuccessful problem solving was characterized by students' poor metacognitive decisions exacerbated by lack of critical engagement with each other's thinking while successful outcomes…

Discusses whether verbal interaction is recognized as the source from which co-operative groups draw their power to facilitate mathematical learning. Reflects on a group in a mathematics course for prospective secondary teachers focused on problem solving where silence was commonplace. (ASK)

Investigates the differential effects of cooperative learning with or without metacognitive instruction on lower and higher achievers' solutions of mathematical authentic tasks. Results indicate that students exposed to metacognitive instruction within cooperative learning (COOP+META) significantly outperformed their counterparts exposed to…

This review investigates the use of certain types of interaction in mathematics education. These types include interaction between students, interaction between teacher and students, and interaction between students and learning technology. Student-technology interactions are explained by computer programs that use problem-solving strategies and…

Explores the working group model for mathematics teacher education and presents group investigations from the areas of number theory, probability, and geometry. Argues that by working in groups, sharing ideas, and making and testing conjectures, prospective teachers gain confidence in their own ability to do mathematics and develop a variety of…

Describes the mechanics of group work in the college mathematics classroom specifically group formation, preliminary class work, class and group discourse, individual and group assignments, and impact on test taking. Includes examples from a first-semester calculus course. (JJK)

Discusses group problem solving processes, how status can harm group problem solving, and how the politeness of students' criticisms reflects status. Reports on analyses of the determinants of group solutions, perceived leadership, and biased evaluations during collaborative problem solving in which students attempted to solve an algebra problem.…

Investigated why, contrary to expectations, group performance in a written test of problem solving was not better than individual performance. Examined protocols of students solving problems in groups and concluded that in much of the group discussion, students passed over right ideas in favor of simpler, but erroneous, ideas. (14 references) (MDH)

The hypothesis that when true group tasks feature ill-structured problems, interaction will predict learning that involves higher-order thinking skills was tested with middle school students with a strategy called complex instruction. Complex instruction is designed for heterogeneous classrooms in which teaching objectives are conceptual and…