Practitioners’ experiences with collaborative learning among students in mathematics support centres

Practitioners in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been adopting and developing the practice of Mathematics Learning Support (MLS) services for the last forty years. These services vary in size and operation, but at the core of many is a MLS centre: a room dedicated to helping students with queries, which is resourced with tutors, worksheets, whiteboards, and so on. While generally these services are designed around one-to-one interactions, students in some institutions use these centres as collaborative study spaces. Inspired by this spontaneous collaborative learning among students, this exploratory mixed methods study aims to investigate the potential active utilisation of collaborative learning by mathematics support practitioners. This article examines themes developed from a recent series of interviews with practitioners on this topic.