The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1990. Cooperative learning in classrooms: processes and outcomes

This article focuses on the description and analysis of our research on cooperative grouping over the last 8 years. This research effort has moved through three interconnected phases--from description of classroom practice, to experimentation, to implementation. Descriptions of typical classroom practice have established the paucity of cooperation. Groups tend to be no more than collections of children sitting together but engaged on individual work. In such groups the level of cooperation, frequency of explanations and knowledge exchange is low. Thus, in order to gain an understanding of the nature and process of cooperation in groups on normal curriculum tasks required the setting up of within-classroom experiments. These revealed, among others, that group composition is important to learning outcomes, and that pupil involvement substantially improves in cooperative group endeavours. Missing, however, were data on the successful implementation of cooperative groups. Yet successful implementation has great contemporary relevance because of the demand for assessed skills in collaboration in the national curriculum. Our current work therefore addresses the impact of changing grouping practices on group processes, classroom management, the teacher's role and children's learning. Preliminary findings from this study are presented together with a wider analysis of the state of the research field and possible ways forward.