Dialectic between Forms of Variational Thinking and Forms of Collaboration in the Classroom

This article addresses forms of variational thinking in third-grade students in relation to forms of collaboration present in the classroom. In the first part of the document, we frame the research problem based on two elements: a review of some research trends that have been developed around variational thinking and the need to study the semiotic means of objectification that students use when solving tasks to identify the ways in which joint meanings are constructed, in relation to forms of collaboration in the classroom. Subsequently, we mention some important categories of objectification theory, which will be used as input for data analysis. The research was carried out with a group of three third-grade students from a public school, whose work and interaction allowed us to analyze the two categories of interest for this article, finding that individualistic forms of collaboration generated factual generalizations, whereas genuinely joint forms of collaboration coincided with contextual generalizations. We therefore point out that there is a dialectical relationship between forms of variational thinking and forms of collaboration.