Students in K–12 classrooms are increasingly expected to make sense of mathematics problems together. This talk will focus on student authority relations as a key interactional component of collaborative mathematics classrooms. How intellectual authority becomes constructed, organized, and distributed among students has implications for both the process of collaborative sense-making and the development of mathematics-linked identities. The talk closes by grounding this work in a professional development study meant to support elementary teachers’ capacity to create equitable and productive collaborative mathematics classrooms.

Jennifer Langer-Osuna's research focuses on the nature of student identity and engagement during collaborative mathematical activity and the ways in which authority and influence are constructed in interaction. Her current work, supported by an IRiSS faculty fellowship and the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching, focuses on understanding and supporting productive and equitable collaborative mathematics problem solving among elementary students. Her work has been published in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Journal of the Learning Sciences, Mathematics Teaching and Learning, ZDM, Mathematics Education Research Journal, Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education, among other outlets.

She earned a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. from University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley.

The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education introduces its 2016-2017 Brown Bag Lunch series, a monthly presentation on topics related to equity in education. The series is free and open to the public.