Cooperative Learning: Structuring Group Interactions

Cooperative Learning: Structuring Group Interactions

There is some evidence that carefully structuring the interactions among students in cooperative groups can be effective even in the absence of group rewards. For example, Meloth and Deering (1992) compared students working in two cooperative conditions. In one, students were taught specific reading comprehension strategies and were given “think sheets” to remind them to use these strategies (e.g., prediction, summarization, character mapping). In the other group students earned team scores if their members improved each week on quizzes.Acomparison of the two groups on a reading comprehension test found greater gains for the strategy group (also see Meloth&Deering, 1994); Berg (1993) and Newbern et al. (1994) found positive effects of scripted dyadic methods that did not use group rewards; and Van Oudenhoven, Wiersma, and Van Yperen (1987) found positive effects of structured pair learning whether feedback was given to the pairs or only to individuals.Ashman and Gillies (1997) found better performance among students trained in specific cooperative learning skills and strategies than among untrained students. They also found that children trained in cooperative learning skills were consistently more helpful and inclusive of their
peers and that the differences were maintained over the 12 weeks of the study.Webb and Farvier (1994) also found better achievement and helping behaviors among Latino and African American students but not among White or Asian students who received training in academic helping skills.

Research on reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984) also shows how direct strategy instruction can enhance the effects of a technique related to cooperative learning. In this method the teacher works with small groups of students and models such cognitive strategies as question generation and summarization. The teacher then gradually turns over responsibility to the students to carry on these activities with each other. Studies of reciprocal teaching have generally found positive effects of this method on reading comprehension (Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Palincsar, Brown, & Martin, 1987; Rosenshine & Meister, 1994). Chapman (2001) compared structured group interaction (resource interdependence) to individual learning and to structured group interaction with group-interdependent reward. She reported that structuring group interactions was superior to individual learning and that the addition of group goals and individual accountability did not further enhance these effects. Such findings make it clear that the effects of group rewards based on the individual efforts of all group members in cooperative learning are largely indirect. They serve to motivate students to engage in the types of behaviors, such as providing group mates with elaborated explanations, that enhance learning outcomes.

The research by Meloth and Deering (1992, 1994), Berg (1993), and others suggests that students can be directly taught to engage in cognitive and interpersonal behaviors that lead to higher achievement, without the need for group rewards. However, there is also evidence to suggest that a combination of group rewards and strategy training produces much better outcomes than does either alone. Fantuzzo, King, and Heller (1992) study, cited earlier, directly made a direct comparison between rewards alone, strategy alone, and a combination and found the combination to be by far the most effective. Further, the outcomes of dyadic learning methods, which use group rewards as well as strategy instruction, produced
some of the largest positive effects of any cooperative methods, much larger than those found in the Berg (1993) study that provided groups with structure but not rewards. As noted earlier, studies of scripted dyads also find that adding incentives adds to the effects of these strategies (O’Donnell, 1996). The consistent positive findings for Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC; Stevens et al., 1987), which uses both group rewards and strategy instruction, also argue for this combination.

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Cooperative learning, reading comprehension strategies, cooperative learning skills, reciprocal teaching, direct instruction, individual accountability, Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC)