A Study of Conflict Discourse in Mathematical Collaborative Problem Solving

Conflicts are more common in collaborative problem solving and can be a prelude to effective collaboration. In this chapter, 35 four-student groups from the project are selected for analysing conflict and negotiationConflict and negotiation in the process of collaborative problem solving through discourse analysis theory. Results of this study suggested that conflict and negotiationConflict and negotiation play a critical role in effective collaborative problem solving. In a general sense, conflict and detente are two common states in interpersonal communication, as well as two normal states of discourse choice (including speech act, sentence, vocabulary, etc.) and linguistic power game in the context of language use. Implications for collaborative learning in mathematics classrooms were discussed from both teacher and student perspectives.