Cooperative Learning

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between students' verbal abilities and the memorial benefits of assuming either a teacher or a learner role during a cooperative learning interaction. College students studied a text on human biology and were then randomly assigned to either a teacher or a learner role. Next, par ticipants were paired with a same-sex peer who was assigned the opposite role; the pair then cooperatively studied the information. One day later, students completed a series of tests to assess their memories of the material. Results suggest that high ver bal ability participants benefited more by assuming the learner's role, whereas low verbal ability participants tended to benefit more from assuming the role of a teacher. DURING COOPERATIVE LEARNING INTERACTIONS, students share ideas and resources in order to maximize their understanding of new information (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). When these interactions are un scripted, high ability students tend to assume a teacher's role (i.e., they summarize and explain the material to peers and answer peers' questions about the information; Slavin & Karweit, 1984). Low ability students, on the other hand, tend to assume the role of a learner (i.e., they listen to peers' summaries of the information, compare what they know with the informa tion being presented by peers, and ask questions about parts of the material that are initially unclear; Webb, 1982). A review of the cooperative learning literature (see Johnson & Johnson, 1989), however, indicates that research has yet to examine whether assuming these roles optimally benefits students in terms of their academic performance. The results of related research on peer tutoring are mixed and suggest that under certain conditions both high and low ability students can benefit from serving as either tutors or tutees. There is a great deal of evidence that both high and low ability students benefit from peer-tutoring episodes when high