Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task…

Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task…

As institutions strive to improve teaching and learning for all, educators must consider equitable instruction. This includes equitable distributions of authority and agency among students. The authors define distribution of authority as shared opportunities for decision-making in enacting mathematical tasks and agency as the power to carry out…

Over the last few decades, there has been an international focus on productive talk in science classrooms, requiring teachers to use more dialogic practices with their students. Studies promoting a dialogic approach propose that students have conversations in small, student-led groups. However, the literature in education and science education…

Learning analysts often consider whether learning processes across time are related (1) to one another or (2) to learning outcomes at higher levels. For example, are a group's temporal sequences of talk (e.g., correct evaluation [right arrow] correct, new idea) during its problem solving related to its group solution? I show how to address these…

The Problem: The purpose of this study was to explore the association between the knowledge competencies and the job tasks among Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialists (CTRS) who are working with the senior population in the State of California by asking the following questions: (1) To what extent are CTRS using the principle of group…

Multilevel modeling is used to examine the impact of teamwork interest and group extraversion on group satisfaction. Participants included 206 undergraduates in 65 groups who were surveyed at the beginning and end of a requisite term-length group project for an upper-division university course. We hypothesized that teamwork interest and both…

What is the best way to allocate students to small teams in those economics courses that rely on small group work to enhance individual student learning? While experts in collaborative learning provide many suggestions, little empirical work has been done. This article begins to fill the gap. It examines whether a variety of characteristics of the…

The basketball players sit in a corner of the cafeteria. The rockers hang out near the stage. The ditchers and smokers congregate near the school gates. The JV football players and cheerleaders? They're near the field. This is how students at California's Hawthorne High described the typical lunch period at their school. In doing so, they also…