Category: Focus on How We Teach (Fall 2004)

In the early 1970s in the United States and Israel there emerged a new wave of classroom teaching methods. They were based on the use of small groups of students as the social and organizational unit within the regular classroom for the purpose of teaching and learning. The basic notion directing these efforts was that students in a class can be divided into small groups, usually numbering 3, 4 or 5 members, where they can exchange ideas, help each other study academic material, and cooperate in various ways. Classes can encompass any number of such small groups, often 6 or more.

In 1979, a conference was convened in Israel attended by educators, authors and researchers concerned with the development and study of these small-group methods of teaching and learning. At that conference, the participants decided to employ the general title of “Cooperative Learning” for all of the relevant teaching methods that had evolved up to that date. The name reflected the fundamental and most obvious difference that distinguished small group instruction from the form of teaching that entails a lecture followed by questions-and-answers, the “method” that prevails in the majority of classrooms and schools throughout the world - frequently called “frontal teaching.” Since their inception, Cooperative Learning methods have been the subject of many empirical studies to measure their impact on students and teachers in a range of age groups and academic topics. All in all, the results of these numerous studies have been very positive and encouraging, depending, of course, upon the level at which they were implemented by teachers. Results of these studies have been reviewed several times, and that task will not be repeated here (Johnson and Johnson, 1990; Sharan, 1980, 1990; Slavin, 1980, 1983, 1995).

Cooperative Learning methods can be employed with distinct benefits in all areas of Jewish education. There is no specific subject area to which Cooperative Learning methods cannot be applied. While one should not make facile analogies between Cooperative Learning and the “hevruta” approach practiced in yeshivot for many centuries, there are some similarities between the two that indicate that Jewish education has traditionally recognized and employed group study for fostering meaningful learning. These features - cooperation and communication among students in a systematic and sustained manner as an essential element of classroom instruction - are absent from the prevailing frontal method.

In the following portion of this article, short descriptions of four different Cooperative Learning methods are presented, namely: STAD by Robert Slavin, JIGSAW by Elliot Aronson, LEARNING TOGETHER by David and Roger Johnson and The GROUP INVESTIGATION method, formulated and studied by Shlomo Sharan and Yael Sharan. Readers cannot expect to actually practice these methods by following the descriptions offered here. The original publications cited here must be consulted to obtain sufficient details about how the methods are to be implemented, what are their goals, what kinds of subject-matter are appropriate for use with the different methods, and so forth. Obviously, instructional methods are not pre-packaged technologies that need only to be affixed to an electrical outlet so they can be applied to students in a mechanical fashion. These four methods incorporate the fundamental features of cooperative learning, but do not exhaust the existing repertoire of cooperative approaches to classroom instruction (Sharan, 1999).

STAD: Student Teams and Achievement Divisions

The primary theoretical notion underlying the design of the procedures of STAD is the importance of student motivation to succeed. In order to maximize student motivation, the STAD method emphasizes team rewards, individual accountability, and adequate, equal opportunity for success (Slavin, 1994; 1999). The latter can be achieved by virtue of a unique grading system whereby each student receives recognition for his/her current achievement by comparing it to their previous level of performance, rather than by comparison with the achievement of other students.

Students then contribute their score to the overall score of their group, thereby giving them recognition for their contribution, offering the opportunity to be a contributor to the group regardless of their academic standing in the class as a whole, and yet, simultaneously retaining a requisite degree of individual accountability. This confluence of factors constitutes the motivating force of the STAD method, according to its author’s conception, and the theoretical basis of this approach to cooperative learning.

STAD is implemented in five stages:

1. Direct Instruction
Academic material is presented by the teacher in a typical fashion, most often the lecture-question-and-answer format. Teachers must define the unit of study very clearly because pupils understand that they will be tested on that unit. Their test scores will be contributed by them to the collective score of the group to which they belong.

2. Teams
Upon completion of the teacher-taught portion of the lesson, small groups or teams of students are set up composed of four students per team. The groups are designed to be heterogeneous with four students representing each of the three levels of achievement in the class (low, medium, high) as well as the different ethnic groups that may be found in the particular class. Group members are instructed to assist each other to understand and review the material presented earlier by the teacher, and to make sure that everyone in the group reaches complete mastery of the study unit. Groups proceed with their work with the aid of worksheets distributed by the teacher that focus attention on specific questions. These are formulated with the goal of helping students master the material.

3. Quizzes
Pupils are given a quiz to be answered individually after their group has completed its work.

4. Individual Progress Score
When students are asked to work toward a goal they are relatively confident in achieving, they will be motivated to invest the effort to do so. Moreover, to achieve the current performance goal, students must work a little harder than they did in the past. If the student is to contribute to the group score, improvement must be made over that student’s previous score. A student’s “base score” is the average score obtained prior to this test on similar quizzes. Students can then earn points for their teams that derive from the extent to which their current score exceeds their base score.

5. Team Recognition
If students’ average scores are above a certain criterion score, they can be awarded certificates or rewards such as bonus points to be added to their grade for the semester. Teachers should emphasize the importance of contributing to the total group score. Those students who meet high standards of performance, relative to their earlier achievement, can receive recognition in a variety of forms, such as special mention in class newsletters, having their names or work displayed on bulletin boards, special privileges, small prizes, and so forth.

In sum, STAD utilizes a traditional frontal approach to instruction, but combines many factors in the review and evaluation processes that potentially contribute to student motivation to learn, including both individual and group-centered factors.

Jigsaw

In contrast to STAD, the Jigsaw method suggests an innovative instructional approach that involves students actively in the initial stages of the learning process. Jigsaw was devised by Elliot Aronson and colleagues (Aronson et al, 1978) and is implemented in four steps:

1. The class is divided into small groups of 5 students per group, and each member is given a number from 1 to 5. These groups are called home groups. A study unit is divided into 5 parts and distributed, with an appropriate number, among the members of the group. All groups in the class study the same unit and all pupils in the class with the same number are responsible for the same portion of the study unit. Teachers should divide the unit in such a way that each of the five sections has its own integrity and can be understood on its own merits, even though it is related to the larger whole.

2. After group members have received their portion of the study unit, they leave their home groups and form expert groups, each group consisting of all of the students in the class with the same number. Expert groups provide members with the opportunity to clarify and master the portion of the unit for which they are all responsible through discussion and mutual assistance. These groups may be asked by the teacher to engage in selected team-building exercises to improve interpersonal communication in the group.

3. When the expert groups are satisfied that all of their members have mastered the study unit, they return to the home-group formation where each group member must instruct the others in that portion of the unit that they mastered in the expert group. This process of mutual instruction continues until each student has presented and explained their portion of the larger task.

4. The class is tested on its mastery of the entire study task. The test is answered individually.

The original Jigsaw method has been revised several times by various authors, as described by Slavin (1986). The “theoretical” concepts on which Jigsaw is based assert as follows: The Jigsaw method is designed to foster mastery of academic material, as is the STAD method, and to support student learning through mutual assistance by members of small groups within the classroom. It affords each and every student the opportunity to fill an important role in the group because group members are dependent upon each other to complete the task. The structure of the method potentially reduces individual competition to a minimum through “task specialization” that gives exclusive access to a given portion of the material to each group member. That structure grants students an equal status in the conduct of the group’s work (Aronson et al, 1978; Clarke, 1999; Slavin, 1986).

Learning Together

The Learning Together method also fosters interdependence among students, but focuses more specifically on a group product and the group process. Learning Together, which was proposed by David and Roger Johnson (1987; Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1986), can be conceived as consisting of several components rather than of stages or steps. According to this method, small groups of students are to be provided with a single task that may appear on a work sheet, and all members of the group must participate in completing the task. A group is asked to produce a single product. Each student in a given group studies all of the material associated with the group’s task. Moreover, each student must agree with the formulation of the group’s product, and each group receives one grade or reward for its product.

Learning Together should display the following five components:

1. Positive Interdependence: Students perceive that they are linked together in such a way that each one's success is dependent upon the success of his/her groupmates and vice-versa. Group members exchange resources (first and foremost their own knowledge and understanding), support one another, and establish a collective group goal. Other mechanisms can also be employed to foster positive interdependence, such as group rewards, division of labor (each one gets a separate portion of the learning task, as in Jigsaw), role assignments (such as chairperson, secretary, resource person, summarizer), and so forth.

2. Face-to-face interaction to promote each one’s success: Students help each other, express encouragement, support others' efforts to learn, explain problems, discuss the material with each other, and point out the relationship between ideas learned earlier and those being studied now. Face-to-face interaction requires limited group size, such as two, three or four members per group.

3. Individual accountability: Each student is evaluated as an individual and the results are returned to the individual as well as to the group. Individuals learn that they will not succeed by relying on the work of other group members. In the Jigsaw framework, each individual is called upon to explain or present what he/she learned. That approach is applicable to many kinds of group settings.

4. Social skills: Productive interaction with other group members entails the use of a range of communication and interpersonal skills. Teachers are advised to cultivate students’ social skills and thereby to advance groups’ effectiveness. No one wants to belong to a group that does not accomplish its goals because its members cannot communicate properly with one another. Strategies for cultivating students’ social skills are available in many publications (Johnson, D. and Johnson, F., 1991).

5. Group Processing: How has the group performed? What problems are we experiencing when we work together? What are we doing that helps or hinders our work? These are the questions that a group must answer when it examines itself and its own behavior so members can become aware of how to best contribute to their work as a group. Such awareness constitutes what is referred to as “group maintenance”. Teachers are asked to make time available to groups to perform this function, instead of merely urging groups to “work better.” That requires teachers to understand how groups operate as distinct from the behavior of individuals unrelated to others, typical of most classrooms.

Group Investigation

The three methods described thus far emphasize the traditional feature of school learning as the provision of information by teachers and its mastery by students. Group Investigation calls for the pursuit of knowledge by the students through research into a defined topic, often to solve a problem, rather than the mastery of material as an educational goal unto itself. Group Investigation is described by Shlomo Sharan and Yael Sharan in English (1976, 1992, 1999) and in Hebrew (1975; see also Sharan and Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1978, 1981).

The theoretical background of Group Investigation stems from John Dewey’s “project method” formulated in 1918 by Dewey’s colleague William Kilpatrick. As in the project method, Group Investigation involves students in the selection of a problem for investigation, planning how to carry out their investigation, implementing their plan and evaluating the results of their work. Group Investigation is also indebted to the work of Alice Miel (1952) and Herbert Thelen (1981) who advanced the concept of the classroom as a community of cooperative inquiry.

The orientation toward learning in school as a process of investigation rather than of the absorption of material presented by teachers distinguishes Group Investigation not only from frontal teaching, but from the other cooperative learning methods, as well. In addition, the other cooperative learning methods stress the importance of group and/or individual rewards for achievement, called extrinsic motivation, whereas Group Investigation fosters intrinsic motivation, seeking to engage students in the process of learning so that they are genuinely interested in what they are doing.

Group Investigation proceeds through a series of six steps or stages:

1. Choosing the Topic and Forming Research Groups
Teachers present the class with a broad, multi-faceted topic that does not have a single correct answer but invites different points of view. The problem should also be perceived as possessing some relevance to the students’ lives in or out of school, including world events that can be related to the students. Led by the teacher, students generate questions about the topic that deserve to be studied, i.e. investigated. These questions are then categorized and groups are formed that are interested in studying particular sets of questions.

2. Groups Plan their Investigation
Groups discuss the questions on which they will focus, and choose various methods they will employ to pursue their investigation of those questions, including the sources they must consult and resources they will need to proceed.

3. Groups Carry out Their Investigation
Students are encouraged to locate the information they seek from a variety of sources, including books, articles, experiments, magazines, films/videotapes, museums, locations, people who may have knowledge of the topic or experience with it, and so forth. Group members meet to discuss their progress and assist each other, as well as to coordinate their work so they do not simply duplicate each other’s efforts. Investigations vary in terms of the length of time required to carry them out, from several class sessions to weeks, months or an entire academic year.

4. Groups Plan and Prepare their Presentations
Groups meet to plan how they will synthesize and present the results of their work. The presentation, both as a report to the entire class and as a report to the teacher, is planned so that everyone in the group participates and contributes to its production and so that it conveys the meaning and conclusions derived from what the group learned. Presentations can assume a variety of forms, including written reports, dramatizations, videos, murals, models, experiments, or a learning station – to name a few. Groups should be discouraged from preparing long lectures to be delivered to their classmates.

5. Groups Make their Presentations
A schedule is prepared so all groups in a class have an opportunity to make their presentations. These should assume different forms and should concentrate on clarifying one or two main ideas for their classmates based on each group’s efforts.

6. Evaluate the Project’s Process and Products
Evaluation focuses not only on the groups’ final product, but also on the knowledge students acquired during the course of their investigation, as well as on their experience of investigation: What can students tell about what they did, what was interesting about their work, how did they find the resources and information they needed? End-product evaluation alone, often nothing more than a summary of information, leaves out the entire study of students’ learning which often is far more important than the final product itself. The process of “mastery” learning is often terribly boring and entails repetition and rehearsal. The process of “investigation” can be motivating and can arouse enormous curiosity. “Learning how to learn” is a highly valued experience in Jewish tradition, but its value has been lost due to the spread of the testing movement in education. Groups may wish to prepare a newsletter that tells about how they proceeded to find the information they sought, how they went about it, and what they experienced along the way. The preparation of such a newsletter is, itself, an important educational experience, far more instructive for the students than a test given to assess final answers to teachers’ questions. Students might be asked to write a paragraph or two on their thoughts about the meaning of what they learned for themselves, for others, or for Jewish life.

Conclusion

Readers of the four cooperative learning methods can conclude that the acquisition of knowledge by students is powerfully influenced not only by the subject matter they are asked to study, but by the way in which they are asked to proceed with the process of learning. Too many teachers are totally absorbed in the process of teaching, by which is meant the “delivery of information,” and are barely concerned with the process of learning. Teaching is NOT the goal of education, learning is! Jewish education is no exception. It cannot circumvent the psychology of the human beings who it wishes to engage in learning. Our major concern must shift from teaching to learning to achieve our goals, and Cooperative Learning methods offer several avenues to schools and teachers to accomplish this purpose. When students must sit and listen to teachers for long stretches of time, or fill out work sheets, their interest and active participation are not aroused. Decades of experience support the fact that frontal teaching does not accomplish the goals of school learning for a large percentage of students.

Nothing said here is intended to imply that teaching is superfluous, or that school instruction and learning can take place without teaching. Our purpose here is to direct the readers’ attention to methods that concentrate on the creation of the social and organizational conditions that arouse and sustain student learning. These methods do not sacrifice the substance of the knowledge that we, as teachers, have decided that our students should acquire.

References

Aronson, E., Stephan, S., Sikes, J., Blaney, N. and Snapp, M. (1978) The Jigsaw Classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Clarke, Judy (1999) Pieces of the puzzle: The Jigsaw method. In S. Sharan (Ed.). Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods. Westport, CT: Praeger (Greenwood Publishing Group),34-50.

Johnson, D. and Johnson, R. (1987) Learning Together and Alone. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall (2nd edition).

Johnson, D. and Johnson, R. (1990) Cooperative learning and achievement. In S. Sharan (Ed.), Cooperative Learning: Theory and Research. New York: Praeger Publishing Co., 23-37.

Johnson, D., Johnson, R. and Holubec, E. (1986) Circles of Learning : Cooperation in the Classroom. Edina, Minnesota: Interaction Book Company.

Kilpatrick, W. (1918) The Project Method. Teachers College Record, 19, 320-335.

Miel, Alice (1952) Cooperative Procedures in Learning. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

Sharan, S. (1980) Cooperative learning in small groups: Recent methods and effects on achievement, attitudes and ethnic relations. Review of Educational Research, 50, 241-271.

Sharan, S. (Ed.) (1990) Cooperative Learning: Theory and Research. New York: Praeger.

Sharan, S. (1995) Teaching in small groups. Anderson, L. (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Teaching and Teacher Education. Oxford: Elsevier, 2nd edition, 255-259.

Sharan, S. (Ed.) (1999) Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods. Westport, CT: Praeger (Greenwood Publishing Group).

Sharan, S. and Sharan, Y. (1976) Small Group Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Educational Technology Publications.

Sharan, Yael and Sharan, S. (1992) Expanding Cooperative Learning through Group Investigation. New York: Teachers College Press.

Sharan, Yael and Sharan, S. (1999) Group investigation in the cooperative classroom. In S. Sharan (Ed.), Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods. Westport, CT: Praeger (Greenwood Publishing Co.), 97-114.

Slavin, R. (1980) Cooperative learning. Review of Educational Research, 50, 315-342.

Slavin, R. (1983) Cooperative Learning. New York: Longman.

Slavin, R. (1986) Using Student Team Learning. Baltimore, MD: Center for Research on Elementary and Middle Schools. The Johns Hopkins University.

Slavin, R. (1995) Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall (2nd edition).

Slavin, R. (1999) Student teams and achievement divisions. In S. Sharan (Ed.), Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods. Westport, CT: Praeger (Greenwood Publishing Group), 3-19.

Thelen, H. (1981) The Classroom Society. London: Croom-Helm.