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Engaging students with pre-recorded ‘live’ reflections on problem-solving with Livescribe pens

This pilot study, involving PGCE primary student teachers, applies Livescribe pen technology to facilitate individual and group reflection on collaborative mathematical problem solving (Hickman 2011). The research question was: How does thinking aloud, supported by digital audio recording, support student teachers’ understanding of problem solving? This was informed in part by Mercer’s (1995) consideration of the value of ‘exploratory’ contributions to dialogue. The study ultimately aims to encourage student teachers to reflect critically on their own problem solving; it may both inform and enhance the later design of learning situations in school. To this end, groups of six students were recorded thinking aloud whilst solving problems taken from primary mathematics materials. A think-aloud protocol (T-AP), informed by the work of Ericsson and Simon (1993) and a follow-up stimulated recall interview (SRI) were employed to capture these reflections. The T-AP recording was closely followed (within one week) by an SRI opportunity in which participants listened to the recording and were asked to provide additional details about problem solving strategies (essentially ‘making up for’ any deficiencies in the original T-AP). Rather than using a traditional digital audio recorder, Livescribe pens were used (a Livescribe pen is a pen-based audio recorder that captures writing in time with speech using proprietary paper). Via the Livescribe desktop software in the SRI, participants are able to listen to their original spoken contributions, with writing animated on screen in time with the audio. Transcripts of both the original T-AP and subsequent SRI were compared and contrasted to consider the contribution of Livescribe to this process. Initial results indicate that the Livescribe SRIs allow some further opportunities for participants to reflect upon problem solving strategies and beneficial ‘exploratory’ (Mercer 1995) contributions that, in some cases, had not been apparent in the T-AP. For instance, in one discussion, students were considering the instruction ‘‘Make as many three digit numbers as possible with 25 beads on one abacus’’. The single verbal contribution ‘nine’ had been accompanied by the writing of three columns on the paper, following the design of the original problem sheet; the second student contributor quoted below then proposed nine as a suitable starting point to find the different possible answers using the table.