#116: Building Groupwork Moment by Moment: A Preliminary Typology of Social Bids in Secondary Mathematics Classrooms

Groupwork is often touted as a tool to support mathematics students to build on their own thinking rather than learning concepts by rote, yet supporting robust cooperative sensemaking is a difficult problem of practice. As part of a study on how teachers learn to facilitate groupwork, we explored how students build a foundation for successful collaboration. Using the sensitizing concept of bids for connection, we analyze how cooperation is established and maintained by students in secondary mathematics classrooms. We see this as adjacent to work on belonging and rightful presence, while bringing notions of sociomathematical norms into conversations about trust and social cohesion. Importantly, however, we focus on the interaction order rather than on social structures to see what we might add to analyses of status and authority at an alternate scale. Preliminary findings include an initial typology of bids, and possible implications for facilitating groupwork in mathematics classrooms.