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part of the speech acts (70%) indicated a cooperation with the partner. In
group work in the classrooms, in which groups are not constituted in a strict
way like in research experiments, social interactions are less frequently
based on well-delineated conflicts. Collaborative processes may take place.
Proposals made by one student may be improved by the partner and trans-
formed into more sophisticated solutions. New approaches toward a solu-
tion may be elaborated from proposals made by whatever students and
overcome the simple addition of ideas. Robert and Tenaud (1989) could
confirm this claim in a long-term teaching-learning experiment on geometry
for 17- to 18-year-old students in which students regularly worked in
groups. The group work was organized in interaction with systematic
institutionalization phases made (after one or several sessions of group
work) by the teacher not only about the mathematical solving strategies
linked to the problem but also about the generalization of methodological
points.
What are the features of group work favoring this phenomenon of a social
construction of a higher-level solution than the individual proposals? I
would like to refer to the notion of "zone of proximal development" pro-
posed by Vygotsky (1985, p. 269), the zone of possible conceptual states
reached by the student when interacting with an adult or a more advanced
partner. It seems that it is possible to extend some characteristics of this no-
tion to the case in which a group of peers is collaborating on a joint task.
The two main characteristics in which scientific concepts differ from every-
day life concepts, are (according to Vygotsky, 1985, p. 287) "the awareness
and the voluntary aspects" of their genesis. Cooperating with others
contributes to the development of these two characteristics through the
explaining and refuting processes social interaction requires: Coming to an
agreement on a common solution with others requires at least making one's
own approach explicit, possibly comparing it with the approach of the