Examining the Impact of Collaborative Problem-Solving on Mathematics Performance in Facilitated and Unfacilitated Teams

• In Event: Advancing Equity in Assessment Through Small-Team Collaboration in Mathematics

Abstract

Objectives
Collaborative problem-solving (CPS) competency is not just an asset but a need for the modern society that we live in (Fiore et al., 2017). In educational settings, CPS can support learning outcomes, especially for those from marginalized communities and minority populations (Lou et al., 2001; Jeong et al., 2019). However, working with others can sometimes present challenges (Authors, 2015). We seek to explore the extent to which human facilitation of collaborative activities can support performance relative to unfacilitated collaboration.
Theoretical Framework
Learning is a socially constructed process (Vygotsky, 1978), as individuals can learn with the help of others. Social facilitation can be a tool to further this process (Schuman, 1996). Facilitators, whether parents, peers, or educators, that are well trained to guide groups during the collaboration process can increase team productivity and contribute to less down time (Offner, 1996). Specifically, productive talk moves can be a strategy to encourage students to think deeply, articulate their reasoning, and listen with purpose (Michaels & O’Connor, 2012).
Methods, Data Sources, and Analyses
The study included a four-phase intervention as described in the session introduction with 45 9th grade students completing all parts of the study. During the collaborative tasks, facilitated and unfacilitated teams worked in an online platform and communicated via a text chat box. The chat data were coded for the presence of CPS skills from a CPS ontology (Authors, 2020) with three facets and nine CPS skills (communicative participation: sharing information, establishing shared understanding, maintaining communication; social regulation: negotiating, monitoring; task regulation and activity: exploring and understanding, representing and formulating, planning, executing). Inter-rater reliability for the coding of individual skills was Kappa = .65. T-tests explored differences between and within facilitation conditions on task scores.
Results
Across facilitation conditions, communicative participation was displayed the most (facilitated: M = 9.54; unfacilitated: M = 14.67) followed by social regulation (facilitated: M = 6.04; unfacilitated: M = 5.76) and task regulation and activity which occurred very infrequently (facilitated: M = .79; unfacilitated: M = 1.57). Patterns of means showed that the unfacilitated condition displayed more communicative participation behaviors than the facilitated condition and this was driven by more off-topic communication among students in the unfacilitated condition. Scores on the collaborative task were not different between conditions, t(42) = 0.98, p = .33, d = .30. Change in performance from the first individual task to the final individual transfer task for each condition was not significant (facilitated: t(23) = 1.96, p = .06, d = .40; unfacilitated: t(20) = 1.51, p = .15, d = .33), though the pattern of means showed increase in scores for the facilitated condition (first task M = 4.58; final task M = 5.38).
Scholarly Significance
CPS provides student agency by allowing students to become active participants and constructors of their knowledge, and peer facilitators can help promote these benefits in making sure team members stay on task and have their ideas acknowledged. This work can contribute to understanding how CPS with trained human facilitators can support mathematics performance.

Authors

• Jessica Andrews Todd, Educational Testing Service

• Brenda Valdes, Stanford University