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Abstract
With the goal of investigating social construction of mathematics, analysis of classroom discourse is presented from the theoretical perspective of Distributed Cognition and the methodological perspective of cognitive micro-ethnography (Hutchins, 1995a, 2001). Twenty-nine students from two accelerated, sixth-grade mathematics classes were observed in thirty-one, seventy-five minute class periods over the course of three months. Purposive sampling was employed to determine the school, teacher, and classes based on the teacher’s use of discourse, technology, and cooperative learning. Approximately nine DVDs of audio/video data was collected from eight cameras and four microphones, situated on three cooperative learning groups, the interactive white board, and the collective of participants. Using qualitative data analysis software, data was subdivided into clips, and a multi-level cycle of coding was applied using Theiner’s (2018) framework for socially distributed cognition. This theory describes cognition distributed across individuals, environment, and time. From this perspective, the participants in whole-class discourse were viewed as an SDCS (socially distributed cognitive system). The cognitive attributes of the system were then coded with socially distributed cognition emerging on a continuum. In the first round of coding, clips were identified as containing relevant discourse about mathematics. In the second through fifth cycles, Theiner’s framework was applied, in which data were coded for the existence of a shared goal (J1), individual contributions (J2), interdependence (J3), and common awareness (J4). Validity and reliability of findings were strengthened by factors including: an explicit description of the method of analysis, multi-stage coding, collection of a large data corpus, and the use of sequentiality as a criterion for interpretation. Emergent SDCSs were identified at all levels of Theiner’s taxonomy and at times demonstrated characteristics of transactive memory systems. Increased group-level cognition was found to be promoted by decentralization of the teacher’s role as mathematics authority, promotion of classroom discourse, and tasking of SDCSs with the shared task of justification in problem solving. This line of inquiry may provide a foundation for investigating SDCS processes in the construction of mathematics that are analogous to individual processes à la radical constructivism, including: assimilation, accommodation, and reflective abstraction.