Classroom learning as a deritualization process: The case of prospective teachers learning to solve arithmetic questions

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes classroom learning and operationalizes the proposed conceptualization. We adopt the commognitive framework, according to which learning is thought of as routinization and routines are conceptualized in terms of <task, procedure> pairs. To examine the usefulness of this conceptualization, we applied our operationalization to examples from a class of preservice elementary school teachers learning to solve a specific type of questions. We analyzed their suggested solutions during three lessons that were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Progress in classroom learning was evidenced by changes in the participants' tasks, which became closer to the tasks expected in the discourse into which they were being initiated. Progress was also evidenced by changes in participants' procedures for tackling the tasks. Finally, in examining the deritualization characteristics of flexibility, bondedness, substantiability and students' agentivity, we found changes in students' performance.