Interaction and learning in mathematics classroom situations

An analysis of one ten minute episode in which three seven year-old students engage in collaborative small group activity is presented to explore the relationship between individual learning and group development. Particular attention is given to the establishment of a taken-as-shared basis for mathematical activity and to the attainment of intersubjectivity. From a perspective which treats communication as a process of active interpretation and mutual adaptation, learning as it occurs in the course of social interaction is characterized as a circular, self-referential sequence of events rather than a linear cause-effect chain. In addition, the relationship between individual learning and group development is such that the students can be said to have participated in the establishment of the situations in which they learned.