Jennifer M. Langer-Osuna’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

This paper explores peer interactions in an elementary mathematics classroom (ages 9–10) where the teacher intentionally shared authority with her students and supported them in learning to share authority with one another. Authors examine how students shifted between shared, concentrated, and contested social and intellectual authority relations in partner and small group work during a three-week unit on place value. Findings show that (a) students were able to share both social and intellectual authority, and did so often; (b) the distribution of social authority was more dynamic than that of intellectual authority; and (c) when groups shifted into shared intellectual authority, shifts were usually preceded by a student making some aspect of the collaborative task public. We connect these findings to research on authority in mathematics classrooms that serve racially and linguistically minoritized students and offer directions for future work.

Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this paper explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task participation across 12 collaborative problem-solving sessions in a fourth grade classroom during a collaborative inquiry unit on place value. Results show that the majority of instances functioned to support the collaborative problem-solving process. Further, off-task participation often succeeded in shifting collaborative dynamics after on-task bids to shift dynamics failed. Off-task activity seemed to introduce new storylines that served as discursive tools to navigate local social hierarchies. We close by situating an understanding of the resources that students bring into collaborative learning through off-task activity within conversations on inclusive pedagogies.

Collaborative learning requires a lot of talk. Although not all student talk may be related to the task at hand, some off-task talk is actually productive, as it enables students to negotiate how they will work together, gain attention of fellow group members, and draw others into joining the work. Emma C. Gargroetzi, Rosa D. Chavez, Jen Munson, Jennifer M. Langer-Osuna, and Kimiko E. Lange observed 4th-grade students working in groups on math exercises and saw multiple seemingly off-task conversations that, in fact, ended up bringing the group together. For example, students who were excluded used off-task talk to get others in the group to pay attention to them. Groups also used off-task talk to ensure that everyone in the group had a role in the solution. The authors offer guidelines for determining when to intervene when students engage in off-task talk.

How students build mathematics knowledge together in classrooms is of central concern in research focused on the role of language in learning and doing mathematics. This paper explores how students compose mathematics knowledge together in relation to the social construction of influence. Drawing on the influence framework (Engle et al. in J Learn Sci 23(2):245–268, 2014), core interactional components are made salient: gaining access to the conversational floor and interactional space, being perceived as intellectually meritorious, and being positioned with social and intellectual authority. Of these, being positioned with social and intellectual authority is argued to be most important. This paper highlights both the centrality of authority and its discursive nature and connects these ideas to collaborative mathematics activity. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical generativity of focusing on the functions of language in mathematics classrooms, in addition to its forms, to better articulate discursive mechanisms at play during collaborative mathematics learning activities.

This paper confronts the myth that all off-task interactions in mathematics classrooms is detrimental to learning. To do so, this paper first explores links between participation, learning, and identity in mathematics education research that points to the importance of positional resources. Positional resources are related to identity processes and carry central functions that regulate learning and doing mathematics together. The paper then frames off-task behavior as an important positional resource in collaborative mathematics learning environments. With these ideas in mind, the paper then closes with new questions for research.

The field of mathematics education research has seen a resurgence of interest in understanding collaborative learning because students in K-12 classrooms are increasingly expected to make sense of mathematics problems together. This research commentary argues for the importance of understanding student authority relations in collaborative mathematics classrooms. How intellectual authority becomes constructed, organized, and distributed among students has implications for both mathematics learning and the development of mathematics-linked identities. This research commentary suggests directions for future work to gain clarity on the mechanisms that undergird the distribution of authority in order to support powerful mathematics classrooms.

This article describes a study of how students construct relations of authority during dyadic mathematical work and how teachers’ interactions with students during small group conferences affect subsequent student dynamics. Drawing on the influence framework (Engle, Langer-Osuna, & McKinney de Royston, 2014), I examined interactions when students appropriated their peers’ ideas during collaborative mathematical problem solving and noted that each moment tended to follow particular interactions around authority. Notably, social and intellectual forms of authority became linked in ways that were directly related to how students’ ideas and behaviors were evaluated by the teacher. I close by discussing how the study of authority and influence offers fertile analytic ground to generate new understandings about collaborative student work in mathematics classrooms.

In this chapter, the authors examine the trajectory of the literature on race, culture, and identity in education research through the past century. The literature is first situated within its historical and conceptual foundations, specifically the dehumanizing legacy of scientific racism, the early efforts by African American scholars to rehumanize marginalized members of society, and the emergence of identity as a construct in the social sciences. The authors then explore the body of education research—from the mid 20th century to today—focused on the relationship between cultural and racial identities and students’ experiences with schooling. They close with a vision for the next era of research on this critical topic.