Abstract

This article presents a design experiment in which we explore new structures for classroom collaboration supported by a classroom network of handheld graphing calculators. We describe a design for small group investigations of linear functions and present findings from its implementation in three high school algebra classrooms. Our coding of the problem-solving efforts of six student focus pairs in this environment over the course of several class sessions indicates that these students tended to move from exploratory and visual to more analytic means of establishing lines of a specified slope. As they adopted these analytic approaches, they were also more likely to enact their strategies jointly. In closer examination of emerging analytic strategies in episodes selected from the work of one of the pairs, we argue that the processes by which these students discovered the need for coordinated action on their respective points, and came to establish mathematical meaning for the relations between their coordinate locations as slope, were overlapping and intertwined. (Contains 4 footnotes, 3 tables, and 9 figures.)

Citation

White, T., Wallace, M. & Lai, K. (2012). Graphing in Groups: Learning about Lines in a Collaborative Classroom Network Environment. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 14(2), 149-172. Retrieved August 8, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/110990/.

This record was imported from ERIC on April 19, 2013. [Original Record]

ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.

Copyright for this record is held by the content creator. For more details see ERIC's copyright policy.

Keywords

• algebra
• Classroom Environment
• Experiments
• Graphing Calculators
• Handheld Devices
• High Schools
• Investigations
• Mathematical Applications
• Mathematical Concepts
• Mathematics Instruction
• problem solving
• teaching methods