Conceptualizing Perseverance in Problem Solving as Collective Enterprise

Abstract

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 perseverance by conceptualizing it as collective enterprise among learners in lieu of its more conventional treatment as an individual capacity. Drawing on video of elementary school children in two US classrooms (n = 52), this paper offers: (1) empirical examples that define perseverance as collective enterprise; (2) indicators of perseverance for teachers (and researchers) to support (and study) its emergence; and (3) evidence of how the task, peer dynamics, and student-teacher interactions afford or constrain its occurrence. The significance of perseverance as collective enterprise and as an object of design in developing effective learning communities, is discussed.

A Multidimensional Framework of Collaborative Groups’ Disciplinary Engagement

“…We operationalize this multidimensional conceptualization in a rubric, enabling the study of distinct engagement dimensions as well as the interrelationships of engagement dimensions that together describe groups' productive (or unproductive) progress. Although extant theory has conceptualized an individual's engagement as multidimensional (Fredricks, et al, 2004), much existing observational research has assessed group engagement narrowly as a single dimension, such as on-task behaviors (Hmelo, et al, 1998;Lipponen, et al, 2013) or disciplinary engagement (Gresalfi & Barnes, 2016;Koretsky, et al, 2021;Mortimer & Oliveira de Araujo, 2014;Sengupta-Irving & Agarwal, 2017). There has been some qualitative research toward investigating interrelations among two dimensions, including socioemotional and metacognitive engagement, socioemotional and cognitive engagement, and metacognitive and cognitive engagement (Isohätälä, et al, 2020;Khosa & Volet, 2014;.…”

Another Step Forward: Engaging the Political in Learning

“…As guest editors, we, too, have skin in the game as regards the learning sciences and research on STEM learning. We know from the research of others (e.g., Gholson, 2016;Gonsalves, Rahm, & Carvalho, 2013;Herzig, 2004;Joseph, Viesca, & Bianco, 2016;Leyva, 2016;McGee et al, 2016), from our research (e.g., Sengupta-Irving & Agarwal, 2017;Vakil & McKinney de Royston, 2019), from our personal and professional histories in STEM, and from the stories our children tell us at night, that the education of minoritized people has only begun to surface the multiplicity of needs, desires, and possibilities for STEM learning. We express political clarity through the curation of voices and perspectives that cut across boundaries of race, class, gender, age, institutional status, STEM disciplines, and regionality (though, as will be discussed, more of the west than anywhere else).…”

A multimodal analysis of college students’ collaborative problem solving in virtual experimentation activities: a perspective of cognitive load

“…The ability to conceptualize and solve problems is a highly valued skill in the knowledge-based, interdisciplinary and distributed work of today (Lin et al, 2015a ; b ). One’s conceptualization of the problem provides the foundation upon which all subsequent problem-solving activity is built (Larson Jr & Christensen, 1993 ; Newell, 2010 ; Sengupta-Irving & Agarwal, 2017 ). Therefore, a CPS case supported by a problem conceptualization activity and a problem-solving activity was provided in this study.…”