10.30.06
Posted in Achievement, cooperative context, Collaborative Learning, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 1:54 pm by youngsah
Gillies, R.M. (2003). The behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students during small-group learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), p. 137-147.
This study examined over one hundred 8th grade students from multiple schools while participating in structured or unstructured group work in heterogeneous achievement groups over three semesters. Gillies focused on helping (both helping behavior and receiving help), task structure, and student perception. Students were less cooperative in unstructured groups than structured ones, but students showed similar learning outcomes. Students in structured group work also thought that group work was more fun and produced better quality work.
It would have been more interesting to have the structured and unstructured groups compared with competitive or control groups on these measures. But that wasn’t the author’s intent or line of inquiry. She wanted to look at whether there was a difference (looking at lots of measures) between structured and unstructured group learning experiences. She found a couple. Interestingly enough, although the interactions might be different the academic benefit was similar or the same. Students may feel differently about their group experiences but they were still educational experiences either way.
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10.22.06
Posted in cooperative context, cooperative orientation, competitive, Annotated References - RDP readings at 6:01 pm by youngsah
Stapel, D.A. and Koomen, W. (2005) Competition, cooperation, and the effects of others on me. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 88(6), p. 1029-38.
This study talks about several studies comparing competitive and cooperative strategies. The authors focused on social comparison effects hypothesizing that cooperation would make people compare themselves more with peers and their self-view while competition would lead them to compare themselves less using their self-view to others. The authors also hypothesized that this effect may occur outside of actual competition when merely the concept of competition is activated. In study 1 they treated cooperation/competition as an individual difference variable. They measured the cooperation or competition orientation of the subjects. In study 2 they measured the cooperativeness or competitiveness of the context. Study 3, looked at whether the competitive frame of mind could be primed from words when a person the subject was competing with wasn’t present. Study 4 compared competitive v. cooperative contexts with competitive v. cooperative people. In general, they found that people did more differential thinking when either primed with a competitive context or when they had a competitive mindset. People did more integrative thinking and assimilation when they were exposed to cooperative contexts or when they had a cooperative mindset.
In general interesting. Not specifically cooperative learning but a bit outside the field. So even thinking in a competitive way or being in a competitive context (like many schools) can lead to people distancing themselves from others in their thinking processes. This certainly wouldn’t be the way to create a community of learners. It’s interesting that the subject can show this effect if he or she is merely primed for this context and that they can have a general mindset of cooperation and competition. Different methods certainly work for different people. I liked that the researchers explored these problems separately then brought them together in later studies.
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Posted in cooperative context, Healthcare, Collaborative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 6:00 pm by youngsah
Panik, A., Bokovoy, J., Karoly, E., Et. Al. (2006). Research on the frontlines of healthcare: A cooperative learning approach. Nursing Research, 55(2S), pp. S3-S9.
The Panik article tried to help emergency department staff conduct research on the department by using cooperative learning. The group of investigators consisted of both researchers/scientist and clinical staff. The advantage to this was that the researcher knew how to do research and the clinical staff knew the department so together they knew what questions to ask and how to get the answers to those questions in the most scientifically valid manner possible. They surveyed patients (or people with patients) in the Emergency Department waiting room. The questionnaire was collaboratively created by researchers and staff.
This article was more about cooperative functioning than cooperative learning per se. But sometimes groups are groups. So why did they use this perspective here? The answer reminds me of an article I read way back in the day (possibly high school or early undergrad) that talked about optimum group composition, brainstorming, and creativity. That article talked about how the world has increasingly specialized knowledge and in order for new ideas and creativity to thrive in a group process you have to have people with different kinds of “bits” of information. It’s good to have them from different fields but they still need to be able to communicate with each other in some fashion but the diversity leads to new combinations of “bits” and therefore the possibility for new and better ideas than would come of any of the separate collections of “bits” of the participants. So that’s what they had happening here. They had the scientists with their research “bits” and the staff with their pragmatic context/medical “bits”. Together they designed a study and a questionnaire that could be used in a working emergency department. This is something that either group probably could have done on their own but it would likely have been more difficult.
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