Abstract
A partner’s competence should logically favor cooperative learning. However, research in cooperative learning has shown that a partner’s competence may or may not activate a threatening social comparison and yields dual effects: It is beneficial when students work on complementary information while it is detrimental when students work on identical information. Two studies conducted at elementary school (study 1 with 24 fourth graders working on encyclopedic texts, and study 2 with 28 fifth graders working on argumentative texts) replicated that interaction: Information distribution (complementary vs. identical information) moderated the relationship between partner’s competence and pupils’ learning outcomes. The relation between partner’s competence and students’ performances was positive when working on complementary information, but negative when working on identical information. A third study confirmed that working on identical information led to a competitive social comparison whereas complementary information reinforced the pupils’ cooperation perception. Contributions to cooperative learning research are discussed in terms of the competitive comparisons that may arise during cooperative learning at elementary school.
Highlights
Accepted: 23 April 2021Peer learning is encouraged by many instructional models in a variety of educational settings [1] from elementary school [2,3,4,5,6], through to secondary school [7,8,9], post-secondary school, and university [10,11,12,13]
As noted above, results indicate a dual effect of partner’s competence: for students working on complementary information, the higher their partner’s competence, the better they perform, when they work on identical information this relation is negative [29,30]
Buchs and Butera [30] with university students: It indicated a positive link between the summarizer’s competence and listener’s learning when working on complementary information and a negative link when working on identical information
Summary
Accepted: 23 April 2021Peer learning is encouraged by many instructional models in a variety of educational settings [1] from elementary school [2,3,4,5,6], through to secondary school [7,8,9], post-secondary school, and university [10,11,12,13]. Research that has compared cooperative learning with individual or competitive learning has consistently shown positive effects for a wide range of outcomes including learning (see [22] for a review of meta analyses). A line of research carried out with university students has shown that focus on social comparison with a partner during cooperative learning may lead to a dual effect of partner’s competence [29]. In this context, partner’s competence can reduce as well as increase learning outcomes [30]. As competitive goals permeate the whole educational system, the aim of Published: 29 April 2021
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