Back to NCTM San Diego: Family/Parental Involvement

This is the summary of a presentation given at the 74th Annual NCTM Meeting, 25-28 April 1996, San Diego, CA.

As the classroom teacher, and researcher, in a Grade 5 classroom, for the past six years I have been investigating the talk which transpires as the children work with partners and in small groups to solve challenging non-routine problems. I have paid particular attention to the explanations the students give. Increasingly, researchers have begun to focus upon the social nature of learning and the key role which peers and teachers play in facilitating the learning of individuals. Vygotsky speaks of the zone of proximal development -- the difference between the learning a child can construct on her/his own and what she/he can accomplish with the assistance of someone else (a teacher, a parent, or a knowledgeable peer). For the presentation I will touch upon three aspects: (1) categories of kinds of help children have received from peers, and from adults (teacher, caregivers); (2) instances of collaboration, i.e. situations in which children working together have solved a problem which each child could not solve alone; and (3) the children's attempts to make sense of alternate approaches. I will use as examples the children's work with a number of problems which led a small group in the 1993-1994 year to attain a level of algebraic thinking which had not been reached by previous groups.

Vicki Silver Zack (St. George's Elem. School, Montreal, Quebec)

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