Cooperative learning in middle and secondary schools



Cooperative learning in middle and secondary schools

Slavin, Robert E.

The Clearing House Washington

Mar/Apr 1996 Vol. 69, Iss. 4, p.200

|Abstract (Document Summary) |

|Adolescence is a time when teenagers are particularly susceptible to peer norms, norms that favor sports and social success over |

|academic achievement. Cooperative learning and the research supporting its positive effects on academic achievement and intergroup|

|relationships are discussed. |

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|Full Text (3448   words) |

|Copyright Heldref Publications Mar/Apr 1996 |

|Adolescence is a time of great potential and great danger in human development. Characteristics of this developmental period have |

|enormous importance for the design of instructional environments, especially those for at-risk learners. For example, adolescents |

|are highly susceptible to peer norms. If those norms favor academic excellence, students will be motivated to achieve. However, it|

|is far more common that adolescents' peer norms denigrate academic excellence and favor sports and social success. More ominously,|

|adolescents' peer norms usually value independence from adult authority, which can lead adolescents into oppositional |

|behavior-from skipping school to defying teachers to drug use or vandalism. The structure of the traditional classroom is highly |

|inconsistent with adolescent development and peer norms. Traditional classrooms expect students to work independently and to |

|compete for good grades, teachers' approval, and recognition. Research has long shown that when socially interacting peers are |

|placed in individual competition with each other, they discourage each other from working hard. In adult occupational settings, |

|this is called a "work restriction norm" (Vroom 1964). In schools, students try to reduce each other's academic efforts (to make |

|success easier for themselves) by calling hard workers "nerds," "geeks," or "teacher's pets." This is much in contrast to the |

|situation in sports, where excellence is strongly valued by peer norms (Coleman 1961). The difference between sports and academics|

|is primarily in the interpersonal consequences of success. In sports, one person's success helps the entire team to succeed. In |

|academics, one person's success makes success for others more difficult. |

|Further, traditional schools treat adolescents as children, rarely giving them authority, responsibility, or even opportunities |

|for active participation. In fact, adolescents crave responsibility and abhor playing a passive role. Little wonder, then, that so|

|many of them seek responsibility, authority, active peer-oriented participation, and adult-like roles in antisocial arenas: |

|delinquency (which among adolescents almost always involves groups or gangs), drug abuse, early sexual experimentation, early |

|parenthood, and so on. |

|Cooperative learning-instructional programs in which students work in small groups to help one another master academic content-can|

|be an ideal means of capitalizing on the developmental characteristics of adolescents in order to harness their peer orientation, |

|enthusiasm, activity, and craving for independence within a safe structure. There are many forms of cooperative learning that are |

|widely used at all levels of education. The particular forms developed and researched at Johns Hopkins University, called Student |

|Team Learning (Slavin 1994), were strongly influenced by James Coleman's (1961) Adolescent Society, which contrasted adolescents' |

|peer support for sports and social activities to their lack of support for academics and proposed that the cooperative dynamics of|

|these peer-supported activities be embedded in daily classroom organization. The purpose of this article is to describe the |

|cooperative learning programs that have been most extensively studied in grades 6-12 in middle, junior, and senior high schools |

|and to summarize the outcomes of studies at this level. Student Team Learning Student Team Learning methods are cooperative |

|learning techniques developed and researched at Johns Hopkins University. More than half of all experimental studies of practical |

|cooperative learning methods involve Student Team Learning methods. |

|All cooperative learning methods share the idea that students work together to learn and are responsible for one another's |

|learning as well as their own. In addition to the idea of cooperative work, Student Team Learning methods emphasize the use of |

|team goals and team success that can only be achieved if all members of the team learn the objectives being taught. That is, in |

|Student Team Learning the students' tasks are not to do something as a team but to learn something as a team. |

|Three concepts are central to all Student Team Learning methods: 1. Team rewards. Teams earn certificates or other awards if they |

|achieve above a designated criterion. Grades are not given based on team performance, but in senior high schools students may |

|sometimes qualify for as many as five bonus points (on a one-hundred-point scale) if their teams meet a high criterion of |

|excellence. The teams are not in competition to earn scarce rewards; all (or none) of the teams may achieve the criterion in a |

|given week. |

|2. Individual accountability. The team's success depends on the individual learning of all team members. This focuses the activity|

|of the team members on tutoring one another and making sure that everyone on the team is ready for a quiz or other assessment that|

|students will take without teammate help. |

|3. Equal opportunities for success. Students contribute to their teams by improving over their own past performance. This ensures |

|that high, average, and low achievers are equally challenged to do their best, and the contributions of all team members will be |

|valued. Research on cooperative learning methods (summarized below) has indicated that team rewards and individual accountability |

|are essential elements for producing basic skills achievement (Slavin 1995a). It is not enough to simply tell students to work |

|together. They must have a reason to take one another's achievement seriously. Further, research indicates that if students are |

|rewarded for doing better than they have in the past, they will be more motivated to achieve than if they are rewarded based on |

|their performance in comparison to others, because rewards for improvement make success neither too difficult nor too easy for |

|students to achieve. |

|Three principal Student Team Learning methods have been extensively developed and researched in secondary schools (grades 6-12): |

|Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD), Teams-Games-Tournament (TGT), and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition |

|(CIRC), which is used in reading and writing instruction in grades 3-7. Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) |

|In STAD (Slavin 1994), the teacher assigns students to four-member learning teams that are mixed in performance level, sex, and |

|ethnicity. The teacher presents a lesson after which students work in their teams to make sure that all team members have mastered|

|the lesson. All students then take individual quizzes on the material; they may not help one another on the quizzes. Students' |

|quiz scores are compared with their own past averages, and points are awarded based on the degree to which students can meet or |

|exceed their own earlier performance. These points are then summed to form team scores, and teams that meet certain criteria may |

|earn certificates or other recognition. The whole cycle of activities-from teacher presentation to team practice to quiz -- |

|usually takes three to five class periods. |

|STAD has been used in a wide variety of subjects, including mathematics, language arts, and social studies, and has been used from|

|grade two through college. It is most appropriate for teaching well-defined objectives with single right answers, such as |

|mathematical computations and applications, language usage and mechanics, geography and map skills, and science facts and |

|concepts. Teams-Games-Tournament (TGT) |

|Teams-Games-Tournament (DeVries and Slavin 1978; Slavin 1994) was the first of the Johns Hopkins cooperative learning methods. It |

|uses the same teacher presentations and team work as in STAD, but it replaces the quizzes with weekly tournaments, in which |

|students compete with members of other teams to contribute points to their team scores. Students compete at three-person |

|"tournament tables" against others with similar past records in mathematics. A "bumping" procedure keeps the competition fair. The|

|winner at each tournament table brings the same number of points to his or her team, regardless of which table it is; this means |

|that low achievers (competing with other low achievers) and high achievers (competing with other high achievers) have equal |

|opportunities for success. As in STAD, high-performing teams earn certificates or other forms of team recognition. |

|Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) |

|CIRC is a comprehensive program for teaching reading and writing in the upper elementary and middle grades (Stevens, Madden, |

|Slavin, and Farnish 1987). In CIRC, students are assigned to teams composed of pairs of students from different reading groups. |

|While the teacher is working with one reading group, students in the other groups are working in their pairs on a series of |

|cognitively engaging activities, including reading to one another, making predictions about how narrative stories will come out, |

|summarizing stories to one another, writing responses to stories, and practicing spelling, decoding, and vocabulary. If the |

|reading class is not divided into homogeneous reading groups, all students in the teams work with one another. Students work as a |

|total team to master main idea and other comprehension skills. During language arts periods, students write drafts, revise and |

|edit one another's work, and prepare for "publication" of team books. In most CIRC activities, students follow a sequence of |

|teacher instruction, team practice, team pre-assessments, and quiz. That is, students do not take the quiz until their teammates |

|have determined that they are ready. Certificates are given to teams based on the average performance of all team members on all |

|reading and writing activities. |

|Mostly found in elementary schools, CIRC is also used in the early middle grades and has been studied at that level by Stevens and|

|Durkin (1992). Other Cooperative Learning Methods Jigsaw |

|Jigsaw was originally designed by Elliot Aronson and his colleagues (Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, and Snapp 1978). In |

|Aronson's Jigsaw method, students are assigned to six-member teams to work on academic material that has been broken down into |

|sections. For example, a biography might be divided into early life, first accomplishments, major setbacks, later life, and impact|

|on history. Each team member reads his or her section. Next, members of different teams who have studied the same sections meet in|

|"expert groups" to discuss their sections. Then the students return to their teams and take turns teaching their teammates about |

|their sections. Because the only way students can learn sections other than their own is to listen carefully to their teammates, |

|they are motivated to support and show interest in one another's work. Slavin (1994) developed a modification of Jigsaw and |

|incorporated it in the Student Team Learning program. In this method, called Jigsaw II, students work in four- or five member |

|teams as in TGT and STAD. Instead of each student being assigned a unique section, all students read a common narrative, such as a|

|book chapter, a short story, or a biography. However, each student receives a topic on which to become an expert. Students with |

|the same topics meet in expert groups to discuss them, after which they return to their teams to teach what they have learned to |

|their teammates. Then students take individual quizzes, which result in team scores based on the improvement score system of STAD.|

|Teams that meet preset standards may earn certificates. Learning Together |

|David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota developed the Learning Together model of cooperative learning (Johnson and |

|Johnson 1994). The methods they have researched involve students working in four- or five member heterogeneous groups on |

|assignment sheets. The groups hand in a single sheet and receive praise and rewards based on the group product. The model |

|emphasizes the use of team-building activities before students begin working together and regular discussions within groups about |

|how well group members are working together. Group Investigation |

|Group Investigation, developed by Shlomo Sharan at the University of Tel Aviv (Sharan and Sharan 1992), is a general classroom |

|organization plan in which students work in small groups using cooperative inquiry, group discussion, and cooperative planning and|

|projects. In this method, students form their own two- to six-member groups. After choosing subtopics from a unit being studied by|

|the entire class, the groups further break their subtopics into individual tasks, and carry out the activities necessary to |

|prepare group reports. Each group then makes a presentation or display to communicate its findings to the entire class. Research |

|on Cooperative Learning A recent review of research on cooperative learning (Slavin 1995a) identified fifty-two studies conducted |

|over periods of at least four weeks in regular secondary schools (grades 6-12) that have measured effects on student achievement. |

|These studies all compared effects of cooperative learning with effects of traditionally taught control groups on measures of the |

|same objectives pursued in all classes. Teachers and classes were either randomly assigned to cooperative or control conditions, |

|or they were matched on pretest achievement level and other factors. Academic Achievement |

|Of these studies, thirty-three (63 percent) found significantly greater achievement in cooperative than in control classes. |

|Sixteen (31 percent) found no differences, and in only three studies did a control group significantly out-perform the |

|experimental group. |

|It should be noted, however, that the effects of cooperative learning vary considerably according to the particular methods used. |

|Two elements must be present if cooperative learning is to be effective: group goals and individual accountability (Slavin 1983a, |

|1983b, 1995a). That is, groups must be working to achieve some goal or earn rewards or recognition, and the success of the group |

|must depend on the individual learning of every group member. In studies of methods of this kind (e.g., STAD, TGT, CIRC), effects |

|on achievement have been consistently positive; twenty-three out of thirty such studies (77 percent) found significantly positive |

|achievement effects. In contrast, only ten of twenty-two secondary studies (45 percent) of cooperative methods lacking group goals|

|and individual accountability found positive effects on student achievement, and three found higher scores in control groups. |

|Cooperative learning methods generally work equally well for all types of students. Although occasional studies find particular |

|advantages for high or low achievers, boys or girls, and so on, the great majority find equal benefits for all types of students. |

|Sometimes a concern is expressed that cooperative learning will hold back high achievers. The research provides absolutely no |

|support for this claim; high achievers gain from cooperative learning (relative to high achievers in traditional classes) just as |

|much as do low and average achievers (Slavin 1991). Intergroup Relations |

|Social scientists have long advocated interethnic cooperation as a means of ensuring positive intergroup relations in desegregated|

|settings. Contact theory (Allport 1954), the dominant theory of intergroup relations for many years, predicted that positive |

|intergroup relations would rise from school desegregation if and only if students were involved in cooperative, equal-status |

|interaction sanctioned by the school. Research on cooperative learning methods has borne out the predictions of contact theory. |

|These techniques emphasize cooperative, equal-status interaction between students of different ethnic backgrounds sanctioned by |

|the school (Slavin 1995b). In most of the research on intergroup relations, students were asked to list their best friends at the |

|beginning of the study and again at the end. The number of friendship choices students made outside their own ethnic groups was |

|the measure of intergroup relations. Positive effects on intergroup relations in secondary schools have been found for STAD, TGT, |

|Jigsaw, Learning Together, and Group Investigation models (Slavin 1995a, 1995b). |

|Two of these studies, one on STAD (Slavin 1979) and one on Jigsaw II (Ziegler 1981), included follow-ups of intergroup friendships|

|several months after the end of the studies. Both found that students who had been in cooperative learning classes still named |

|significantly more friends outside their own ethnic groups than did students who had been in control classes. Two studies of Group|

|Investigation (Sharan, Kussell, Hertz-Lazarowitz, Bejarano, Raviv, and Sharan 1984; Sharan and Shachar 1988) found that the |

|improved attitudes and behaviors of students toward classmates of different ethnic backgrounds extended to classmates who had |

|never been in the same groups. Self-Esteem |

|Students in cooperative learning classes have been found to have more positive feelings about themselves than do students in |

|traditional classes. These improvements in selfesteem have been found for TGT and STAD (Slavin 1995a) and for Jigsaw (Blaney, |

|Stephan, Rosenfeld, Aronson, and Sikes 1977). Other Outcomes |

|In addition to positive effects on achievement, intergroup relations, acceptance of mainstreamed students, and selfesteem, |

|cooperative learning has been found to have positive effects on a variety of other important educational outcomes. These include |

|liking of school, development of peer norms in favor of doing well academically, feelings of individual control over the student's|

|own fate in school, and cooperativeness and altruism (see Slavin 1995a). TGT (DeVries and Slavin 1978) and STAD (Slavin 1995a; |

|Janke 1978) have been found to have positive effects on students' time on-task. A study in the Kansas City schools found that when|

|students who were at risk of becoming delinquent worked in cooperative groups in sixth grade they had better attendance, fewer |

|contacts with the police, and higher behavioral ratings by teachers in seventh through eleventh grades than did control students |

|(Hartley 1976). A yearlong study of TGT and STAD in middle schools by Hawkins, Doueck, and Lishner (1988) found that low achievers|

|who experienced cooperative learning had fewer suspensions and expulsions than did control students; they also gained more in |

|educational aspirations and positive attitudes toward school. Conclusion |

|Research on cooperative learning methods in secondary schools supports the usefulness of those methods for improving student |

|achievement at a variety of grade levels and in many subjects and for improving intergroup relations and the self-esteem of |

|students. Cooperative learning, especially when groups are rewarded based on the individual learning of all group members, is an |

|instructional approach that is congruent with the developmental needs of adolescents. It gives adolescents a degree of |

|independence and authority within their groups, and it creates a situation (as in sports) in which the progress of each group |

|member contributes to the success of his or her peers. This creates peer norms favoring academic excellence, a strong motivator |

|for adolescents. Cooperative learning is not a panacea for all of the problems of adolescence, but it can provide a means of |

|harnessing the peer-oriented energies of adolescents for pro-social rather than antisocial activities, and for this reason alone |

|it should be an important part of every middle and high school teacher's repertoire. |

|[Reference] |

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|[Author Affiliation] |

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|Robert E. Slavin is co-director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk, Johns Hopkins University, |

|Baltimore, Maryland. This article was written under funding from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, US. |

|Department of Education (No. OERI-R117-40005). However any opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily |

|represent OERI positions or policies. |

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