This paper integrates and applies established findings from previous research into peer collaboration to a realistic classroom situation in Swedish upper elementary school. The aim is to survey the research literature and to replicate some of the potentially beneficial effects of peer collaboration in an ‘ecologically valid’ setting, thus providing teachers with justifiable and readily adoptable techniques. The study investigated the effect of collaborative problem solving on students’ learning, where the conditions for collaboration were ‘optimised’ according to previous findings with regard to ability, gender, task characteristics, and collaboration strategy. Participants were 80 year 9 students (aged 15 years), who individually completed a pre- and post-test comprising moderately complex diagram interpretation tasks. During the experimental phase, students completed a similar task, either individually or collaboratively. Students who collaborated were assigned to mixed-gender pairs using a ‘weak-strong’ heuristic, based on pre-test results. Results indicated that lower-ability students collaborating with higher-ability peers improved from pre-test to post-test, while higher-ability students regressed significantly. Students working collaboratively did not perform significantly better than did students working alone. Discussion extends beyond these findings to implications of research on peer collaboration for teachers and students’ learning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hh-673 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Björn, Bengtsson |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för lärarutbildning (LUT), Högskolan i Halmstad/Sektionen för lärarutbildning (LUT) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds