A stratified learning zone is an undesirable classroom dynamic that may emerge in the implementation of collaborative construction projects. In the SLZ, labor is divided and associated with individual students such that they become “type cast” into a particular task that may or may not foster the development of mathematical knowledge. More formally, the SLZ is a design-engendered non-continuousness hierarchy of students’ potential learning trajectories along problem-solving skill sets, each delimited in its conceptual scope, and all simultaneously occurring within a classroom. In comparison, the term continuous learning zone depicts a space wherein students can each embark from a core problem, sustain engagement in working on this problem, and build a set of skills wherein each accomplishment suggests, contextualizes, and supports the exploration and learning of the successive skill, so that a solution path is learned as a meaningful continuum. [read more]