ANALYSING CHILDREN`S LEARNING IN ARITHMETIC THROUGH COLLABORATIVE GROUP WORK

The paper presents an example of collaborative group work with three children aged 6-7 years old, as part of a project to promote cooperative learning situations in young children`s arithmetic. The premise of the project is that participation in collaborative group work will support children's cognitive development in number. Process-object duality models and the notions of reification, encapsulation or "procept" have provided a way of examining the use of processes and objects in learning mathematics. These notions are used in relation to participation in a mathematical activity. This entails the use of two different theoretical perspectives, neo-Piagetian and neo-Vygotskyan, in examining the children's mathematical thinking within a social context.