Exploring How Power Is Enacted in Small Groups

This paper presents an analysis of the enactment of power during group discussions in high school mathematics. The class studied was working on introductory calculus using a collaborative learning approach. In analysing a group discussion, I first traced the flow of ideas, looking at when and by whom a new idea was introduced, and how others responded. I next divided the transcript into “negotiative events” and looked at how transitions from one event to the next came about. These analyses made it clear that some students had more power than others to influence the course of the discussion, but that this was not related to their mathematical capabilities.