“Social interactions play a critical role in the child’s progress: skills are transmitted

through social interactions, particularly through sharing the process of problem-solving with a

more skilled adult” (Thornton, p. 124). Stephanie Thornton argues how social interactions are of

crucial importance when teaching mathematics in her work Children Solving Problems; she

highlights the importance of how children should be given opportunities to both collaborate with

other children and participate with adults in the decision making process because it allows

children to reach higher cognitive functions. To solidify her claim, Thornton provides multiple

examples whilst drawing on theories from Vygotsky, Piaget, Wood, and more. In this paper, I

will start by discussing Thornton’s argument that the social context affects a child’s problem

solving abilities and then go on to reflect on my own experiences learning mathematics as a

student in order to consider ways I can implement her suggestions in my own classroom.

As the problems children are faced with start to increase in the level of complexity and

difficulty, rather than tackling the problem independently, Thornton mentions that having

children collaborate with others to find a solution will increase the likelihood of a more

successful outcome and direct students to becoming better and more effective problem solvers.

Thornton starts off by explaining how a pair of children who shares the task of solving a problem

is more successful than an individual child working on a similar problem even if both of the

strategies the pair of children initially tried using were not the best; in fact, Thornton goes on to

explain how “interaction between two wrong strategies can speed up the discovery of the right

one” and “could learn a new, more sophisticated strategy than either individual had devised to

begin with” (Thornton, p. 95-96). By jointly solving a problem, children can also learn how to

mediate their conflicting views by engaging in dialogue. In addition to participating in

collaborative activities with peers, Thornton mentions that receiving adult support through the
means of scaffolding, whether it be from a parent or a teacher, is just as if not even more

important in helping a child develop problem solving skills. Scaffolding is most successful when

it is within what Vygotsky terms, the “Zone of Proximal Development”. Content should neither

be too difficult nor too easy for it can result in frustration or boredom respectively. Adults should

provide necessary support by sharing the burden decision making may initially impose on

children to “circumvent anxiety and frustration” and gradually place more responsibility on them

so that they can “explore and make discoveries” (Thornton, p. 102). When guiding students

through the problem solving process, adults need to know that all students are different; they

come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, and have different multiple

intelligences, thus resulting in variations of what they know and what they don’t. Therefore,

adults should provide all the necessary background information needed to solve a problem and

existing knowledge should not be assumed. In fact, false assumptions that students should

already know certain background information can send a negative message that they are

incompetent. The resulting poor performance due to not knowing certain information can

ultimately detract from their confidence and consequentially lead to “learned helplessness”.

Looking back at my experiences as a student after reading Thornton’s suggestions, I can

see how my teachers could have better supported my learning. My memory of early math classes

is very distant but something I do vividly remember is how my 5th grade teacher called me out

one day in class for not paying attention during a lesson. I also remember wondering why I was

forced to pay attention to something I already learned how to do. I was always one step ahead of

everyone in class and material was not cognitively stimulating enough to keep me awake. I was

unmotivated but my teacher saw me as lazy. At one point, however, the material started to get

harder and suddenly, I fell behind. Problems were getting difficult and I started to lose
confidence and by high school, I was struggling to do the math that I was once good at. I became

frustrated. I also cannot recall much group work with other students or direct help from the

teacher, which is unfortunate because I think that such interactions would have helped me to get

back on track. Reflecting on my experience, I understand the importance of providing

individualized instruction to challenge all students within their own Zone of Proximal

Development while also providing necessary guidance when needed.

My supervising practitioner at the Kindergarten classroom that I completed my pre-

practicum is a good example of how I can go about encouraging social interactions in my own

math classroom. Lessons were all structured similarly; after providing instructions and modeling

an example to the entire class, the supervising practitioner would have the children work in pairs

to complete an activity. An example of pair work activity was when each pair was given a

different pile of equation cards that they had to work together to match. The pair was responsible

for coming up with a strategy to successfully pair all the cards. While this pair work was going

on, the teacher would call up one level-based group of students at a time to the rainbow table to

complete a different activity that the teacher deemed appropriate for their level. Having to only

focus attention on a few students provided the teacher with an opportunity to both assess the

students’ understanding and focus on those who needed additional help. The teacher was able to

meet individual student needs and as a result, keep a child from losing confidence in their

abilities. Usually, the group of more struggling students would receive more guidance while

those who were more advanced would receive occasional feedback. I plan on structuring my

math lessons in a similar fashion because I think that this is a good way to ensure that students

are given the opportunity to both collaborate with fellow classmates and get individualized

attention from an adult.

 Learning in math classrooms should be require active dialogue and children should be

given the opportunity to interact with both their peers. Also, while it is hard for teachers to direct

attention to each and every student in a large classroom, it is not impossible and I think it is

important for elementary school teachers to allot time to provide individual supports to all

students. Overall, social interactions in the classroom is necessary when teaching children to

become more mature problem solvers and teachers can encourage these interactions by

incorporating collaborative classroom activities and making an effort to individualize instruction.