Cooperative Learning Strategies in Processing Descriptive Text: Effects of Role Activity Level of the Learner

Abstract

The dyadic cooperative learning situation was examined by analyzing the impact of specific roles and activities on each member of the dyad. In learning scientific text passages, one member of the cooperating pair served as a recaller/ oral summarizer and the other pair member served as either an active or passive listener/facilitator. Members of some treatment conditions alternated recaller and listener roles, while those in other conditions had fixed roles. Serving as a no-treatment control, students in one group used their own study techniques. The results indicated that both roles (fixed vs. alternating) and listener activities (active vs. passive) are important variables in cooperative learning. On free recall of text main ideas, fixed recallers outperformed fixed listeners, and pairs incorporating an active listener outperformed those that did not. Certain combinations of role and listener activity resulted in better performance than that achieved by individuals using their own study methods. Additionally, persons who alternated recaller/listener roles subjectively evaluated the cooperative learning experience more positively than the cooperative groups.There has been a growing interest i n the potential of students interacting with one another t o improve their acquisition of academic knowledge a n d skills.Requests for reprints should be sent to Joni E. Spurlin, Academic Support Services, Room 156, Gail Borden Building, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77550. Downloaded by [University of Glasgow] at 04:37 22 December 2014 452 SPURLIN, DANSEREAU, LARSON, BROOKSThe interaction among students based on equal partnership in the learning experience, as opposed to fixed teacher/learner or tutor/tutee roles, has been termed cooperative learning. Students cooperatively studying textbook material in dyads (pairs) have been shown to perform better on delayed recall and recognition measures than students studying individually McDonald, Larson, Dansereau, & Spurlin, 1983). Although often indicating positive results (McDonald et al., 1983;Sharan, 1980;Slavin, 1980), the prior studies on cooperative learning have not attempted to examine critical dimensions of the experience systematically, for example, interaction and processing strategies, and individual differences. The present study was designed to be a first step in remedying some of the drawbacks of prior cooperative learning studies by systematically analyzing the effects of learning (interaction) strategies on the acquisition of scientific knowledge in the context of a dyadic learning situation.A study by McDonald et al. (1983) provides the basis for the present research. In the McDonald et al. study, an individual text learning strategy developed by was modified for use in dyadic learning. This strategy required the student pairs to read approximately 500 words of a 2,500-word passage. One student then served as recaller and attempted to orally summarize from memory what had been learned. The other member of the pair served as ...

Promoting Functional Literacy through Cooperative Learning

“…Furthermore, the activities likely to promote general literacy have been studied extensively. Activities such as oral summarization (Ross & DiVesta, 1976;Spurlin, Dansereau, Larson, & Brooks, 1984;Yager, Johnson, & Johnson, 1985), elaboration (Reder, 1980), metacognition (Pressley, Levin, & Ghatala, 1984), and cooperative learning (Dansereau, 1985), have been shown to facilitate the acquisition of declarative knowledge and promote the development of general literacy. General literacy is typically assessed through the use of intraverbal measures (e.g., recall, cloze procedure, and multiple choice).…”

“…Dyads in this group were expected to emphasize the text processing component of the transition from instructional text to actual enactment because they were required to rely on memory as a result of being required to both plan and perform from memory. Verbalization in the form of oral summaries has been shown to facilitate text processing (Spurlin et al, 1984;Yager et al, 1985), and Anderson (1983) has alluded to the potential of verbal mediation to keep declarative knowledge of a procedure in working memory.…”

Conflits et apprentissage. Régulation des conflits sociocognitifs et apprentissage

“…Ainsi, lorsque le partenaire plus avancé s'adresse à son partenaire dans une forme de reconnaissance mutuelle (par exemple en lui posant des questions sur sa compréhension), la probabilité de progrès du partenaire moins avancé est renforcée (Psaltis & Duveen, 2007). L'écoute active (King, 1999 ;Spurlin et al, 1984) est un exemple de comportement souhaitable dans une telle situation. ont comparé des procédures de conflit dans un cadre coopératif (controverse) ou compétitif (débat).…”

Strategy-Based Technical Instruction: Development and Evaluation

“…An example of such a learning activity is summarization which, although effective with academic text (Spurlin, Dansereau, Larson, & Brooks, 1984;Yager, Johnson, & Johnson, 1985), may be relatively ineffective in learning from technical text because -f the inherent lack of redundancy in such text.…”