Developing a community of collaborative learners: Reconfiguring roles, relationships, and practices in a high school mathematics classroom

In recent decades, there have been a multitude of reform efforts in mathematics education in the United States. One major focus of these efforts has been to effect classroom-level changes. Specifically, efforts have aimed to create more collaborative and student-centered environments, where students have opportunities to reason and construct their understandings as part of a community of learners (NCTM 1989, 2000). While there is evidence of the success of these reforms, traditional models of instruction particularly on the high school level still dominate the educational landscape (Kawanaka & Stigler, 1999; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999).; An assumption of this study is that this limited success can be attributed, in part, to a lack of understanding of the nature of the practices in these communities, as well as an underdeveloped understanding of the roles teachers and student must enact to successfully organize and participate in these practices. Through an in-depth longitudinal case study of a collaborative high school mathematics classroom, I sought to deepen and extend our understanding of these practices and roles. My inquiry was guided by the following questions: What is the nature of the practices in collaborative classrooms? What roles do these practices require of teacher and students? How do the collaborative learning practices develop over time? Videos and observations of lessons across the school year, interviews, surveys, and classroom artifacts were the primary sources of data used to address these questions.; The analyses presented in this dissertation link the teacher's instructional strategies and efforts to organize a productive learning environment with students' participation in a community of collaborative learners. Two conceptual frameworks are developed. One proposes a conceptualization of the teacher's role in supporting students' participation in collaborative learning practices. The second proposes a model for the process by which the class's members develop the capacity and disposition to participation in collaborative inquiry practices. The findings confirm the complexity of the role of teachers in reform-oriented classrooms, and extend our understanding of the nature of mathematical learning practices organized in these classrooms. In addition, the models suggest the importance of understanding students' interpretations and perceptions of classroom practices.