12.11.06
Current and Past State of the Field
There was a time in cooperative learning research when it seemed that every researcher had his or her own pet method of constructing a cooperative learning group. There was Jigsaw, developed by Aronson, to help social tensions that he saw within schools and get children to generally cooperate and become positively interdependent. Students in groups became experts in a subtopic of the lesson and then reported to their group so that everyone would be reliant on the experts teaching them the subtopic. Slavin had several methods including TAI (Team Assisted Instruction), STAD (Student Teams-Achievement Divisions), and a modification/simplification of Jigsaw, called Jigsaw II. Kagan has a whole curriculum of cooperative learning that includes several different methods including Think-Pair-Share. In Think-Pair-Share, pairs of students learn a lesson, are then asked a question, after time to think each individual student answers the question, and then the pair discusses their answers. O’Donnel, et. al. use Scripted Cooperation to give cooperative groups more structured interactions. Johnson and Johnson use Structured Controversies to give teachers and students a way to discuss controversial issues in the classroom in a structured way. Students research and pick a position on an issue, they then tell others of their stance, discuss the position with others, argue for the other side of the issue, and finally the class comes to a consensus. These are only some of the many methods that were constructed. These methods are still widely used in some cases though many modifications have certainly been made. Many current studies look at other implications for these methods, like whether they increase social interaction, motivation, achievement, or critical thinking.
More recently, there has been a push to find out what the basic parts of good cooperative learning are. The answer depends greatly on the researcher’s perspective. Different types of group methods and activities might focus on building different skills or knowledge within the students in the group. If the researcher were looking to further social skills, he or she would certainly have different ideas about how groups should be evaluated, structured, and what is a successful/good group than someone who is merely trying to increase knowledge, skills, or critical thinking within individual students. The area of cooperative learning is so broad and filled with so many researchers from so many disciplines looking at so many aspects of the issue that there are a lot of available perspectives. There are information processing perspectives, cognitive perspectives that focus on cooperative learning’s ability to cause deeper processing, perspectives that focus on motivation, perspectives that focus on the social aspect, constructivist perspectives, and many others not here mentioned. Generally, most perspectives agree that heterogeneous (usually heterogeneous in skill or ability) groups and positive interdependence are important for good cooperative groups. Occasionally researchers will group students based on interests or in other things that ensure that the group members are peers. Generally, heterogeneity in groups is promoted because the less able students learn from the more able ones and the more able ones solidify their own ideas/skills through teaching them to others. In homogeneous groups where all members have the same skills/knowledge learning can and does occur, but it is usually not as deep as that in heterogeneous groups and the structure of activity would likely be different.
There is still some disagreement as to how groups should be evaluated for optimum learning and fairness. Most if not all of the above-mentioned methods have methods of evaluation associated with them, however, each is different. For example, Jigsaw II and STAD (both methods by Slavin) have individual quizzes/tests as well as a group improvement component to evaluate students. Methods like Structured Controversies do not really have any particular method of evaluation attached to them. They could be graded, ungraded, or in other ways reinforced or not reinforced depending on the teacher’s wants, needs, and knowledge of the situation. Many studies have shown that some individual accountability is needed for successful groups, otherwise bad things like social loafing or focusing on outcomes can occur. However, there is no agreement about the degree of individual accountability needed and how to balance that accountability. Some researchers would go as far as collaborative testing (which has its own debate about how grades should be allotted), while others merely want part of the individual grade based on things like group improvement or group project. Some even promote intergroup competition as a way to motivate students while giving them the benefits of a cooperative learning environment. Different balances might be good for different situations or classrooms. Sometimes in practice, though there is cooperative learning in the classroom, all grades and evaluations are individual which is not ideal. For some students this will decrease the amount of extrinsic motivation they have for working constructively in a group. Also, this type of disconnect between classroom activity and evaluation can negate some of the benefits of cooperative learning because it can lead to a competitive position even within the group. In addition, in some of these classrooms students might engage in negative interdependence (the opposite of positive interdependence a core of cooperative learning) where an individual success depends on others failing. This is certainly an issue in research and in practice that is still being worked out.
Recently there has been a lot of focus on cooperative learning using technology. A lot of previous research has focused on cooperative learning within the classroom in part because it’s harder to find and examine it “in the wild” without influencing what goes on to a great degree. Technology might be an answer to that problem or it may just be a new avenue to use formal practices of cooperative learning. To some degree public knowledge has it that technology is something that separates people by providing an intermediary or substitute for human interaction. The current research focuses on the use of computer as mediator/intermediary. Many university classes have discussion boards, online resources, chat rooms, or class email lists that are used to varying degrees by instructors. That coupled with the familiarity of the student population with technology, especially things like instant messaging software and discussion boards; make this type of interaction ideal an ideal alternative for cooperative learning outside the classroom. Online mentoring is available and there are several online tutoring sites of various sizes. Teachers have used different technologies to varying levels of success. Technology has been embraced in education to such a degree that it is interesting that there is not more research about connecting classroom and technology using cooperative learning.
Though the topics and foci may have changed, there has not been much change in the methods of the field. Experiments are popular. Usually a particular cooperative learning method is compared either to other cooperative learning methods or to traditional classroom practices. Students/subjects are often given surveys or tests afterward to determine which condition increased knowledge, skill, motivation, or any other number of qualities that the researcher might think that cooperative learning might have an influence on. Future studies, technologically based or not are likely to have the same methods as well. There probably should be more comparing and contrasting of different methods in the same contexts but that research will likely come with time.
