About

Jennifer Langer-Osuna is an Associate Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the nature of student identity and engagement during collaborative mathematical activity, as well as how authority and influence are constructed in interaction. She has developed theoretical and analytic tools to capture the construction of marginalization and privilege in patterns of student engagement, and the spread of ideas in student-led collaborative work. Her work has been published in various academic outlets including the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Journal of the Learning Sciences, and Review of Research in Education. Her program affiliations include Mathematics Education, Learning Sciences and Technology Design, and Race, Inequality, and Language in Education. She is actively involved in research related to student interaction, authority relations, and collaborative dynamics in mathematics education.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Pedagogy
• Computer Science
• Ecology
• Social psychology
• Engineering
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Public relations

Selected publications

• “I’m Telling!”: Exploring Sources of Peer Authority During a K-2 Collaborative Mathematics Activity

  Studia paedagogica · 2021 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science

  This article draws from a study on the construction of authority relations among K-2 students across 20 videos of collaborative mathematics partnerships, from three classrooms in one elementary school. Drawing on positioning theory, we explore how authority relations between children affected collaborative dynamics. In particular, we trace how children drew on both adult and peer sources of authority and the effects on peer interactions during collaboration. Through three vignettes, we show how students' deployment of adult authority through the perceived threat of getting in trouble can overpower peer resistance and shut down possibilities for shared work. We also show how peer resistance was productively sustained when the threat of getting in trouble was less directly connected to the teacher, and instead students positioned themselves and one another with intellectual authority.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• "I'm Telling!" Exploring Sources of Peer Authority During K–2 Collaborative Mathematics Activity

  Proceedings of the 2021 AERA Annual Meeting · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “So what are we working on?”: how student authority relations shift during collaborative mathematics activity

  Educational Studies in Mathematics · 2020 · 41 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Mathematics education
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the role of off-task activity on students’ collaborative dynamics.

  Journal of Educational Psychology · 2020 · 34 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Mathematics education
  • Cognitive psychology

  Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task participation across 12 collaborative problem-solving sessions in a fourth grade classroom during a collaborative inquiry unit on place value. Results show that the majority of instances functioned to support the collaborative problem-solving process. Further, off-task participation often succeeded in shifting collaborative dynamics after on-task bids to shift dynamics failed. Off-task activity seemed to introduce new storylines that served as discursive tools to navigate local social hierarchies. We close by situating an understanding of the resources that students bring into collaborative learning through off-task activity within conversations on inclusive pedagogies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

  PublisherDOI

• Can off-task be on-track?

  Phi Delta Kappan · 2019-04-29

  article

  Collaborative learning requires a lot of talk. Although not all student talk may be related to the task at hand, some off-task talk is actually productive, as it enables students to negotiate how they will work together, gain attention of fellow group members, and draw others into joining the work. Emma C. Gargroetzi, Rosa D. Chavez, Jen Munson, Jennifer M. Langer-Osuna, and Kimiko E. Lange observed 4th-grade students working in groups on math exercises and saw multiple seemingly off-task conversations that, in fact, ended up bringing the group together. For example, students who were excluded used off-task talk to get others in the group to pay attention to them. Groups also used off-task talk to ensure that everyone in the group had a role in the solution. The authors offer guidelines for determining when to intervene when students engage in off-task talk.

  PublisherDOI

• Addressing Equity and Diversity Issues around Expansion, Displacement, and Growth in Mathematics Education.

  Proceedings of the ... PME Conference · 2019-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Rethinking loafers: Understanding the productive functions of off-task talk during collaborative mathematics problem-solving

  International Conference of Learning Sciences · 2018-01-01 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Exploring the central role of student authority relations in collaborative mathematics

  ZDM · 2018-07-19 · 31 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Productive Disruptions: Rethinking the Role of Off-Task Interactions in Collaborative Mathematics Learning

  Education Sciences · 2018-06-13 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper confronts the myth that all off-task interactions in mathematics classrooms is detrimental to learning. To do so, this paper first explores links between participation, learning, and identity in mathematics education research that points to the importance of positional resources. Positional resources are related to identity processes and carry central functions that regulate learning and doing mathematics together. The paper then frames off-task behavior as an important positional resource in collaborative mathematics learning environments. With these ideas in mind, the paper then closes with new questions for research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Authority, Identity, and Collaborative Mathematics

  Journal for Research in Mathematics Education · 2017-04-17 · 66 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The field of mathematics education research has seen a resurgence of interest in understanding collaborative learning because students in K–12 classrooms are increasingly expected to make sense of mathematics problems together. This research commentary argues for the importance of understanding student authority relations in collaborative mathematics classrooms. How intellectual authority becomes constructed, organized, and distributed among students has implications for both mathematics learning and the development of mathematics-linked identities. This research commentary suggests directions for future work to gain clarity on the mechanisms that undergird the distribution of authority in order to support powerful mathematics classrooms.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emma Gargroetzi

  The University of Texas at Austin

  5 shared

• Rosa Chavez

  5 shared

• Jen Munson

  Northwestern University

  4 shared

• Indigo Esmonde

  3 shared

• Randi A. Engle

  3 shared

• Kimiko E. Lange

  2 shared

• Maxine McKinney de Royston

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2 shared

• Faith Kwon

  1 shared

Labs

• Jennifer Osuna LabPI