"Squash, tilt, drag, split, turn..." An intervention study examining children's collaborative talk and reasoning about shape, space and measure
type: CreativeWork
description: The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effect of collaborative work on primary-age children’s reasoning about shape, space and measure. Children’s early development in these areas of mathematics has been well researched but the difficulties older children experience are less well charted. Method: An intervention study was carried out with two Year 5 classes in a South London primary school using a naturalistic experimental design with two parallel classes as the intervention and control groups. The intervention class undertook two iterations of group work while the control class worked individually across the two sessions. An innovative pre- to post-test measure was developed using the Rasch Analysis partial credit model. This consisted of two sets of six similar and overlapping think-aloud tasks. The design of the group work was informed by both sociocultural and socio-cognitive conflict theory: ground rules for talk were used in the intervention class and the children were grouped in triads with differing ideas (elicited from their pre-test responses). Novel features were included to increase the likelihood of all children encountering challenge to their initial ideas: a) the children were prompted to reflect on the certainty of their joint or individual answers at the end of the first session; b) the children all had the chance to consult written clues in the second session, at the cost of a point per clue. Analysis: Quantitative comparison of the children’s progress from pre- to post-test was complemented with qualitative analysis of the children’s use of language across the study. Transcripts of the children talking about the shape, space and measurement tasks were coded for imaginative expressions to explore whether imaginative forms were associated with more sophisticated reasoning about shape, space and measure. The children’s group talk was coded for exploratory features of language to evaluate the impact on the children’s reasoning of the prompt to refl…
abstract: The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effect of collaborative work on primary-age children’s reasoning about shape, space and measure. Children’s early development in these areas of mathematics has been well researched but the difficulties older children experience are less well charted. Method: An intervention study was carried out with two Year 5 classes in a South London primary school using a naturalistic experimental design with two parallel classes as the intervention and control groups. The intervention class undertook two iterations of group work while the control class worked individually across the two sessions. An innovative pre- to post-test measure was developed using the Rasch Analysis partial credit model. This consisted of two sets of six similar and overlapping think-aloud tasks. The design of the group work was informed by both sociocultural and socio-cognitive conflict theory: ground rules for talk were used in the intervention class and the children were grouped in triads with differing ideas (elicited from their pre-test responses). Novel features were included to increase the likelihood of all children encountering challenge to their initial ideas: a) the children were prompted to reflect on the certainty of their joint or individual answers at the end of the first session; b) the children all had the chance to consult written clues in the second session, at the cost of a point per clue. Analysis: Quantitative comparison of the children’s progress from pre- to post-test was complemented with qualitative analysis of the children’s use of language across the study. Transcripts of the children talking about the shape, space and measurement tasks were coded for imaginative expressions to explore whether imaginative forms were associated with more sophisticated reasoning about shape, space and measure. The children’s group talk was coded for exploratory features of language to evaluate the impact on the children’s reasoning of the prompt to refl…
author: Scarsbrook, Jane
language: eng
keywords: intervention study, collaborative learning, mathematics education, reasoning, imagination, metaphor, shape, space and measure, geometry, primary education
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-02-20
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:01Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.89355