Student interactions during class activities: a mathematical model

Abstract This paper aims at bridging Mathematical Modelling and Mathematics Education by studying the opinion dynamics of students who work in small groups during mathematics classrooms. In particular, we propose a model which hinges upon the pioneering work of Hegselmann and Krause on opinion dynamics and integrates recent results of interactionist research in Mathematical Education. More precisely, the proposed model incorporates the following features: 1) the feelings of each student towards the classmates (building upon the so-called \I can" -\you can" framework); 2) the different levels of preparation of the students; 3) the presence of the teacher, who may or may not intervene to drive the students towards the correct solution of the problem. Several numerical experiments are presented to assess the capability of the model in reproducing typical realistic scenarios.