ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we describe the nature of productive collaboration and how teachers may contribute to the promotion of effective collaboration by the roles they play. We believe that the quality of students' discussion during group activities is an important and underexamined component of the collaborative learning process. We believe that three aspects of the teacher's role in the classroom can inform our understanding of how peer collaboration contributes to student learning: instruction provided to students prior to group work, the teacher's monitoring practices during group work, and the teacher's beliefs about learning and collaboration.
