12.11.06
Posted in competitive, Social cognitive, social interaction, metacognition, Achievement, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Tutoring, Information Processing at 11:45 am by youngsah
O’Donnel, A., Reeve, J.M. Smith, J. (2006) Chapter 12: Learning from Peers. Educational Psychology: Reflection for Action, Wiley. p. 388-425.
Generally a good overview of peer learning including cooperative learning and peer tutoring. It gives an overview of several perspectives and brings in specific theorists and their ideas while talking about the application of their ideas to classroom practice. I didn’t realize how much I needed an overview to consolidate my thinking until I read this chapter. It bridged application and theory very well for me and helped me compare and contrast different perspectives more effectively. Also, it got me thinking a bit about special education and ESL students in cooperative learning which I haven’t really looked at all that much.
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10.30.06
Posted in Achievement, Meta-Analysis, Tutoring, Cooperative Learning, Annotated References - RDP readings at 11:18 am by youngsah
Rohrbeck, C.A., Ginsburg-Block, M.D., Fantuzzo, J.W., and Miller, T.R. (2003). Peer-assisted learning interventions with elementary school students: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), p. 250-257.
This study is a meta-meta-analysis that looks at the effectiveness of peer assisted learning (PAL) methods in elementary schools. The authors state that it’s important to look at PAL in this age range because this is when children are forming their ideas about school and assimilating into the school culture. They then go on to criticize the PAL literature. They point out that many pieces are atheortical, that old meta-analyses are not as good as newer ones, and that there is often little ecological validity. Articles were found using searches on PsycINFO and ERIC. Results were then categorized and analyzed. The authors addressed publication bias by calculating the number of studies with no effect to negate the effects that the authors were finding, the results were nearly 200. Their results both summarized the literature and discussed it’s results. Most studies did not report the age, gender, or ethnicity of the subjects. Math, science, and social studies were the most popular content areas (this study only looked at PAL used to teach academic subjects). Generally PAL had an effect on student achievement outcomes. It was more effective for younger students, students in urban areas, and low income families.
Interesting overview of the literature. I don’t think I’ve read a meta-analysis that talks about other meta-analyses before. Though this study does analyze non-meta studies, it does discuss them a lot. It discusses the method and limitations of meta-analyses. This is certainly a study full of citations and data analysis. I’m somewhat impressed by the size of the data. I found their end caps of theory (they only mentioned it at the beginning and the end without going into any depth) a little sparse and not as useful or intriguing as they could have been.
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10.09.06
Posted in Team-Assisted Individualization, Collaborative Learning, Achievement, Student Centered Learning, motivation, Cognitive, Cooperative Learning, Tutoring, Annotated References - RDP readings at 2:05 pm by youngsah
Slavin, R.E. (1996). Research for the future: Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what we need to know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 43-69.
A general overview of what this author thinks needs to be addressed in further studies in Cooperative learning. The author talks about the problem of different researchers agreeing that cooperative learning can improve learning but differing on how they explain these effects. The author also covers 4 theoretical perspectives (Motivational, Cognitive, Cognitive Elaboration, and developmental) and talks about their implications for further research. A couple minor perspectives are also discussed including Social cohesion (in motivational). The author talks about how tasks based on different perspectives are often hard to compare because they often use different methodologies (pairs, groups of 4, different kinds of tasks, etc.). The paper also covers the topics of individual and group accountability, and group goals.
Ha, ha, page 50 of this paper (and reiterated on page 58), “One of the most effective means of elaboration is explaining the material to someone else.” Then the author goes on to cite several studies. On the other hand, this paper does mention that advocates for gifted students sometimes make the complaint that cooperative learning is not as beneficial to them as it is to other students. More research needed. Other than the general good overview of the field, this article is for me hopeful because it shows that there are still a lot of problems and angles left to cooperative learning.
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09.25.06
Posted in Tutoring, Cooperative Learning, independent readings, Annotated References - RDP readings at 1:11 pm by youngsah
Merrett, F. and Mottram, S. (1997) Do boys or girls make better reading tutors? An empirical study to examine children’s effectiveness as tutors using the pause, prompt and praise procedures. Educational Psychology 17(4):419-433.
This study looked at peer tutoring using the “pause, prompt, and praise” procedures. This is presented as an alternative to putting poorer readers in a separate class or giving them separate instruction from the teacher. Reading level was measured before and after tutoring to determine if tutoring had any effect. There were 24 tutor-tutee pairings. The sex of the tutor and the sex of the tutee were also examined to determine if one sex was a more effective tutor, better tutee, or whether there was some kind of interaction between tutor and tutee sex. Previous studies suggested that same sex tutoring would be most effective because members of the same sex are more likely to open up to one another. All tutees except 2 improved reading skills over the course of the study but those that studied with a tutor that was of their preferred sex (students were asked whom them preferred to learn from) improved more than those that didn’t have a tutor of their preferred sex. There was no significant effect of same-sex or different-sex tutoring nor was either sex a better tutor or tutee.
A couple factors collided to create my interest in this article. First, I was a tutor in high school and college (though mostly math and science) and the hardest thing was to find the best way to help a student. Reading was something that I was never particularly good at tutoring possibly because I didn’t really understand where my students were coming from. Also, recent popular news articles have been talking about the small budget allotments for special education and this is an approach that might help that situation. Studies have shown (though I don’t remember which ones) that sometimes peers are better at teaching some things because they remember how they learned it whereas an expert just knows the information and doesn’t have as good a handle on what might be problematic for a new learner and why.
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