Research on Student Interaction in Peer Collaborative Problem Solving in Mathematics

Collaborative learning based on mathematical problem solving is an important way of organising teacher teaching and student learning. Two-peer collaboration is more common in classrooms. This study explored the characteristics of and differences in the interactive performance of high and low academic performance students by analysing the collaborative mathematical problem solving processes of heterogeneous peer students in seventh grade. Nine peer groups with the highest academic gap among 54 are purposefully selected for the current research. The study found that high academic performance students produced a significantly higher amount of discourse than low academic performance students, and that there were significant differences in indicators such as order, negation, and explanation. When the gap between the two peers’ academic performance decreased, peer-to-peer communication was more equal, and low academic performance students actively participated in the problem solving and gradually fought for task initiative.