ABSTRACT
Researchers have conducted numerous studies on the interactions of individuals within groups, however, there has been little research on phenomena occurring between groups of learners in classrooms. This exploratory study identifies and categorizes different events occurring between members of different learning groups in three ninth-grade physical science classrooms. Distributed cognition is used as a framework for describing how inter-group interactions serve to diffuse ideas throughout the collective, how these interactions influence the processes and products of students' work, and how characteristics of learning tasks themselves afford or constrain different kinds of inter-group interactions.
