Productive helping in cooperative groups

THE PAST 20 YEARS HAVE SEEN a tremendous increase in the use of peer-directed small group work to give students an opportunity to learn from each other. Students can learn from each other in many ways: by giving and receiving help, by recognizing and resolving contradictions between their own and other students' perspectives, and by internalizing problem-solving processes and strategies that emerge during group work (Bearison, Magzamen, & Filardo, 1986; Brown & Palincsar, 1989; Webb & Palincsar, 1996). This article focuses on the mechanism of helping behavior, specifically, the exchange of explanations about the content being learned. We describe several conditions that must be satisfied for help given to be effective. We also discuss the responsibilities of the help-seeker, the help-giver, and the teacher to make helping productive for learning.

Our examples are drawn from a study of a semester-long program of peer learning in middle-school mathematics classrooms (Mastergeorge, Webb, Roc, & Baure, 2000; Webb & Farivar, 1999). The cooperative learning program was conducted in six 7th-grade classes for three 4-week phases spread out over the course of the semester, with each phase corresponding to a curriculum unit (decimals, fractions, percents). Prior to each phase, classes participated in activities designed to help students work effectively in small groups. Although students were given instruction and practice in developing communication and helping skills, their group work was fairly unstructured. At the beginning of each class period, the teacher introduced the whole class to the day's material and solved a few example problems with the class. The teacher then assigned problems for students to solve in small, heterogeneous groups. Students were reminded to work together and help each other, to make sure they agreed on their answers, and to consult each other before asking the teacher for help. Groups were audio-taped as they worked and were tested individually on the material several weeks later.

Conditions for Effective Helping

When and how exchanging help promotes learning is not fully understood. From a theoretical perspective, both the help-giver and the help-receiver stand to benefit from elaborated help (e.g., step-by-step descriptions of how to solve problems), which encourages explainers to clarify and reorganize the material in their own minds to make it understandable to others (Bargh & Schul, 1980) and, in the process, helps them develop new perspectives and recognize and fill in gaps in their understanding. Receiving explanations can help receivers fill in gaps in their understanding, correct misconceptions, and strengthen connections between new information and previous learning (Mayer, 1984; Wittrock, 1990). Peers may be more effective explainers than adults because peers share a similar language, and they can translate difficult vocabulary into language that fellow students can understand (Noddings, 1985). Giving and receiving non-elaborated help (e.g., only the final answer), on the other hand, is expected to have fewer benefits, because it may not involve cognitive restructuring or clarifying on the part of the help-giver, and likely will not enable help-receivers to correct their misconceptions or lack of understanding.

While previous research has found that giving explanations is usually positively related to achievement, the empirical results on the relationship between receiving explanations and learning are inconsistent and weak (Webb & Palincsar, 1996). Receiving a response that has no elaboration is usually negatively related to achievement, yet receiving elaborated explanations does not often benefit the receiver (Webb, 1989).

The missing link may be that additional conditions must be satisfied for help received to be effective. First, explanations themselves must satisfy four conditions. They must be (a) relevant to the target student's need for help, (b) timely, (c) correct, and (d) sufficiently elaborated to enable the target student to correct his or her misconception or lack of understanding (detailed explanations, not just the answer). In our study, the help that students gave each other varied a great deal, ranging from detailed explanations with the numbers verbally labeled to no detail at all. Figure 1 illustrates a continuum of detail with examples from one of the topics discussed in groups. Students were asked to solve problems such as, "Find the cost of a 30-minute telephone call to prefix 771 where the first minute costs $0.22 and each additional minute costs $0.13." The level of help received was significantly related to learning outcomes: Among students who demonstrated misconceptions during group work, the more frequently students received help at the highest levels (verbally labeled explanation or numerical rules), the more likely they were to solve problems correctly on the posttest.

Three other conditions for learning concern how the student receiving an explanation responds after receiving help: (a) the target student must understand the explanation, (b) the target student must have an opportunity to use the explanation to solve the problem or carry out the task for him- or herself, and (c) the target student must use the opportunity for practice by attempting to apply the explanation received to the problem at hand. In our study, students varied greatly in how actively they responded to the help they received. Figure 2 shows a continuum of responses to help received, ranging from explaining or reworking the problem to giving no response. Students' level of responsiveness to help they received was significantly related to their learning outcomes. Among students who demonstrated difficulty initially, those who showed one or more instances of reworking or explaining how to solve the problem after they received help were much more likely to solve this type of problem correctly on the posttest than were students who never responded at the highest levels.