Collaborative problem solving, when students work in pairs or small groups on a curriculum-related task, has become an increasingly common feature of classroom education. This paper reports a study of a topic which has received relatively little attention: how teachers can most usefully intervene when students are working in a group, but have…

The development of reason has long been an important aim for education. This is possibly reflected in the emphasis on the importance of explicit verbal reasoning in definitions of "Exploratory Talk", a concept that has had some influence on classroom teaching. In this paper I argue from transcript evidence that, while Exploratory Talk is a…

It is often claimed that working and talking with partners while carrying out maths activities is beneficial to students' learning and the development of their mathematical understanding. However, observational research has shown that primary school children often do not work productively in group-based classroom activities, with the implication…

Examines two sets of classrooms in Mexican preschools over a period of a year to see why one set of classes improved significantly in independent problem solving when compared with children in matching classes. Differences in two sets of data were explored with a method for investigating classroom talk that combines qualitative interpretation with…