In undergraduate mathematics education, students’ collaborations have gained a reputation as a “good” learning practice. A more complex image emerges once collaborations are construed as an arena where cognitive, social, and affective matters intertwine in ways that can spur and halt learning. In this study, I take a close look at an interaction of two first-year students who engaged in a sequence of routine problems about dot products presented in a computer-based learning-support system. The commognitive analysis of the interaction revealed an asymmetrical structure: one student led the mathematizing, while his partner appeared ready to follow since he was not familiar with the content. Throughout the interaction, the follower repeatedly declared that he was learning, but the analysis foregrounded his systematic avoidance and refusal to engage in the mathematical activity. I account for this pattern by drawing on dominant narratives of the value and positive impact of collaborative learning, leaving little space for the possibility that collaboration is not learning conducive. The findings are leveraged to advocate for complexifying the discourse on collaborative learning in the context of undergraduate mathematics education.

Bio

Igor' Kontorovich is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland. His research concerns mathematics learning and teaching at the university level, including secondary-tertiary transition, undergraduate and graduate studies. In his research, Igor' aims to offer theoretically-grounded and empirically-based insights to improve student learning experiences. His projects with colleagues from Canada, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, and the UK have been funded by many international funding agencies. The projects' findings have been shared in more than eighty research publications.