Collaboration is an increasingly popular topic in mathematics education due to its potential to foster students' learning. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the semantic philosophical theory of inferentialism and its value for investigating students' collaboration. We suggest that Brandom's inferentialism can serve as a valuable…

Math and English Language Arts (ELA) are two major areas that continue to show gender achievement gaps in U.S. students. Given the importance of peer relations in academic success, the degree of gender integration in classrooms in early elementary school may shift student interest and performance to lessen these gender gaps. We tested the…

This study examined how two small-group discourse types (Reflective and Exploratory) supported the inclusion and enacted levels of cognitive demand of students who typically struggle with mathematics in real-world, task-based assessment activities. The study focused on 11 fifth-grade students within a larger study involving 97 fifth-grade students…

One objective of mathematics learning is to solve problem and to communicate idea to get a solution. Human life is inseparable from social activity, including cooperation. Similarly, in mathematics learning sometimes students need friends to discuss with in solving mathematics problem. Cooperative learning model can be an alternative to bridge the…

Students are expected to learn mathematics such that when they encounter challenging problems they will persist. Creating opportunities for students to persist in problem solving is therefore argued as essential to effective teaching and to children developing positive dispositions in mathematical learning. This analysis takes a novel approach to…

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) (2014) sets forth that children learning science and engineering practices in the early years lays "the foundation for a progression of science learning in K-12 settings and throughout their entire lives." So, it is important to build upon children's natural curiosities and expose them to…

This paper describes an after-school club aimed to engage elementary students in project-based learning by integrating mathematics and literacy connections within a community-based topic. Building on students' backgrounds and interests, researchers created the Community Super Investigators (CSI) Club as part of an after-school program to explore…

This study explores the characteristics of after-school program activities at a charter school in the Southeast US highlighting students' experiences with and gains from these after-school program activities. A qualitative case study design was employed to understand students' views and opinions regarding the activities and their learning…

In this paper, an attempt is made to determine if peer collaboration increases student achievement in teaching elementary mathematics. Empirical evidence and philosophical problems with constructivist epistemology are considered. Two things are argued: first, it is reasonable to think, for elementary mathematics, peers collaboration is useful…

With regard to transfer, is it better to provide pupils with ready-made representations or is it more effective to scaffold pupils' thinking in the process of generating their own representations with the help of peers and under the guidance of a teacher in a process of guided co-construction? The sample comprises 10 classes and 239 Grade 5…

How do students who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) participate in classroom mathematics? To investigate this question, I collected recordings of primary school EAL students as they worked with peers on a mathematics classroom task. Drawing on theoretical and methodological work in discursive psychology (Edwards, 1997), I…

The authors explored the relationship between motivation and affect in upper elementary mathematics classes from the perspective of flow theory. They also investigated the relationship between students' motivation and teachers' instructional practices. Students' reported classroom experiences formed 4 factors--Social Affect, Personal Affect,…