Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) is an impactful pedagogy in maths classrooms but it is rarely used, particularly in the younger years of schooling in primary maths classrooms (Luckin et al., 2017). OECD reports and PISA testing (Program for International Student Assessment [PISA], 2015) have highlighted the importance of both collaboration and problem solving as crucial 21^st century skills in diverse classrooms. Cooperative Learning (CL) is one type of pedagogy that helps to develop collaboration and by using CPS in classrooms, teachers can aim to develop their students’ social and cognitive skills. Cooperative learning is a pedagogy designed to ensure all students participate to meet a common goal and has five essential elements to ensure it is effective (Gillies, 2003; Gillies & Ashman, 1996; Johnson & Johnson, 1994). It enables students to develop the skills of collaboration and be a resource for each other’s learning, so provides the opportunity for students to collaborate in problem solving activities. Both collaborative and problem-solving skills are essential especially as teachers need to be “better at preparing students to live and work in a world in which most people will need to collaborate with people from different cultures, and appreciate a range of ideas and perspectives” (OECD, 2017, p.5).

The paper explores the importance of supporting teachers’ learning and practice with CPS. Theories of learning (Piaget, 1959; Vygotsky, 1978) have shown clearly that children learn through collaboration (Williams & Sheridan, 2006). Cooperative Learning (CL) is a pedagogical approach that reflects the importance of a collaborative culture which allows students to develop both cognitive and social outcomes (Gillies, 2003; Johnson et al., 1990; Slavin, 1995). Teachers need to therefore plan activities that require their students to be engaged in dialogue, consider different perspectives, encourage tolerance and respect and develop interpersonal relationships. Problem solving activities also promote these skills and this research project examines the issues around Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) as one type of collaborative activity in classrooms to develop these skills and competences as a best practice pedagogy in maths.

The PISA 2015 framework defines CPS competency ‘as the capacity of an individual to effectively engage in a process whereby two or more agents attempt to solve a problem by sharing the understanding and effort required to come to a solution and pooling their knowledge, skills and efforts to reach that solution’ (Fiore et al., 2017, p.2). Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is composed of two main elements: collaborative, involving sharing or social aspects alongside knowledge or cognitive aspects. Thus, the primary distinction between individual problem solving and collaborative problem solving is the social component. This involves the use of communication, shared identification of the problem, negotiation and the management of relationships.

CPS is different to from other forms of collaboration having a group goal that needs to be achieved with the solution requiring problem solving, needing team members to contribute to the solution, and evaluation required to see whether the group goal has been achieved. It is important to ensure that there are various roles as well as ensuring activities of the team members are interdependent so that a single person cannot solve the group goal alone. The collaborative activities therefore require communication, coordination, and cooperation.

This paper examines how a small teacher team developed effective collaborative problem solving (CPS) lessons in their primary maths classrooms. It explores the following research question: How are teachers able to explore the use of effective CPS maths activities in a Professional Learning Network (PLN) and explore their students’ cooperative skills using a proactive action research approach?

The participants were a team of five primary school teachers who taught in a small primary school in a regional city in Australia. The team all taught in the same stage (age group) of students who were between 10 and 12 years old. All teachers were keen to explore CPS in Maths and see what kind of difference it could make to their students’ cooperative skills. As a teacher team, they also explored the benefits in being a part of a PLN. After a series of professional learning sessions with teachers that focussed on CPS maths implementation and resources teachers were asked to undertake one CPS lesson a week in their classroom. Proactive action research methodology was used (Schmuck, 2006) with the teachers learning about this approach in two sessions of two hours professional learning sessions that also covered: What is collaboration? What is CL? What is collaborative problem solving (CPS)? How can I use CPS in my maths classroom? How can I share my learning in a teacher team to develop my understandings of CPS? What do I notice about my students’ CL skills after implementing CPS in my classroom? It is important in a proactive action research process for teachers to consider how they can move their class forward as they try out this new pedagogy as well as determine how to support each other in the team. The participants were also connected through a closed Facebook group as a PLN to allow the researchers to see how the teacher team encouraged “knowledge sharing and creation as well as the development of new practices and the joint trial and refinement of these practices” (Poortman et al., 2022, p.96). Teacher reflections were also collected once a week from each teacher by email or through a shared Google Drive. The teacher team also came together for a final focus group interview to collect their final reflections on the project and also allowing analysis of how teachers collaborated in a PLN. They learned about teacher collaboration as their students learned about student collaboration. The researchers then examined the focus group transcript and teacher reflections using reflexive thematic analysis (TA) (Braun & Clarke, 2006). As highlighted by Byrne (2022), ‘The reflexive approach to TA highlights the researcher’s active role in knowledge production (Braun and Clarke 2019). Codes are understood to represent the researcher’s interpretations of patterns of meaning across the dataset’ (p.1393).

We explored the types of social skills required in CPS as reported by the teachers and how these were developed during the CPS maths activities as they explored their approaches to CPS teaching and learning in their action research cycles. Their reflective observations, as well interactions with other teachers in the team, allowed them to make sense of the pedagogy and consider how others understood the process of introducing CPS. Cycles continued throughout the process of experimentation with many teachers demonstrating their understanding of the need for development of explicit teaching of social skills. Some of them used specific techniques to teach these skills, which had been taught to them during the PD sessions. Skills and strategies they observed included turn taking, everyone doing their part / allowing everyone to contribute/ accountability/ delegating, sharing resources or workload as well as mention of active and equal participation. As the teacher team developed their skills in CPS in Maths they also utilised each other in a PLN experimenting with CPS in terms of grouping sizes and realising the need at times step back to allow for failure also encouraging their students to reflect and encourage perseverance in solving CPS tasks. They often shared resources, recommendations, experiences and strategies with each other on the Facebook page as well as verbalised how they would retry activities in different ways to see which ones worked better. The Facebook Group allowed them to see the activities as well as learn about them. Being a part of PLN helped them develop trust as they were involved in common structured activities together, as they implemented CPS in their classrooms. It also invigorated them as teachers and ensured that as a well-functioning PLN they were more likely to be reflective and willing to innovate (Stoll & Seashore Louis, 2007).

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