What does collective learning mean? how to achieve it in the mathematics classroom?

Abstract

In this article I address the question of what collective learning means and how to foster it in the mathematics classroom. I suggest that spatial proximity (real or virtual) is not a sufficient criterion to characterize collective learning. Students can be enclosed in the four walls of a classroom (real or virtual) without learning collectively. Characterizing collective learning requires revisiting the idea of the activity in which such learning occurs. Based on key ideas from the theory of objectification, I suggest that this activity has to fulfill two conditions. First, it must be directed towards the satisfaction of a collective need: to reach a common object of learning, which is progressively revealed to the consciousness of the students through the joint work of teachers and students. Second, the activity is developed through an interaction among students and between students and teachers that sets in motion social relations of a special ethical type: social relations of a communitarian ethics that includes commitment, care for the other and responsibility. These ideas are presented on the basis of examples from mathematics lessons.