Cooperative Learning in Small Groups: Recent Methods and Effects on Achievement, Attitudes, and Ethnic Relations

TLDR

The five cooperative small‑group methods are divided into Peer‑Tutoring (Jigsaw, TGT, STAD) and Group‑Investigation (Johnson, Sharans) approaches. This study examines, evaluates, and compares these five methods, investigates the distinction between Peer‑Tutoring and Group‑Investigation, and proposes new research directions based on their cognitive and social‑affective impacts. The authors analyze the five methods—Aronson’s Jigsaw, DeVries’ TGT, Slavin’s STAD, Johnson’s cooperative learning, and Sharans’ Small‑group Teaching—by reviewing their experimental studies. Experimental results show that the methods differ in their effects on academic achievement, student attitudes, and ethnic relations in desegregated classrooms.

Abstract

Five recently published methods for conducting cooperative small-group learning in the classroom, and the experimental studies conducted by the authors of these methods are examined, evaluated, and compared in this study. The five methods are: Aronson’s Jigsaw classroom, DeVries’ Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT), Slavin’s Student Teams and Academic Divisions (STAD), the Johnsons’ cooperative learning approach, and the Sharans’ Small-group Teaching method. The former three methods are categorized as Peer-Tutoring methods, while the latter two are classified as examples of a Group-Investigation (G-I) approach. Findings are considered from experimental studies with these five methods, in terms of their differential effects on academic achievement, students’ attitudes, and on ethnic relations in desegregated classrooms. The implications of the distinction between Peer-Tutoring and G-I methods are explored. New directions for research are suggested with these cooperative small-group techniques which appear to exert noteworthy effects on a variety of cognitive and social-affective variables.