·       Summer Schedule For Training Sessions

·       Cooperative Learning And Conflict Resolution SIGs

·       Web Site: www.co-operation.org

1       Do Peer Relationships Affect Achievement?

2       Bullying Vs. Prosocial Behavior

3       New Books

Editors: David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, Edythe Holubec

Greetings! We are just back from nine days in Ireland where we met with teachers and administrators for a series of one-day awareness sessions. The Irish educators were fantastic. We are expecting big things from the Second Level Support Group that sponsored the trainings. David was attacked by Leprechauns one evening, or it may have been participants who had to listen to his jokes. We were also in Barcelona in January and have heard many good things about other countries. Cooperative Learning is growing in countries outside the United States.

 

We would like to think that there is a resurgence of cooperative learning in the United States. Several places where we have worked several years ago and now have noticed that they have lots of new teachers who need training and some veterans who need the next step to Advanced or Conflict Resolution. It is maybe a case of “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again”.

 

This summer we are again expecting people for the Minneapolis Institute from several different countries and throughout the United States. It will be from July 31 to noon on Aug 4 at the Radissson Hotel on campus. Come and join us! Details can be found on the web site, www.co-operation.org. Keep in mind that one of our homework assignments is to “FROLIC” and get to know the Mall of America, Twins Stadium, or all five of the Irish Pubs.

 

One of the topics that has been part of our sessions for some time is “How do you tell the difference between just putting students into groups, and structuring students to work together cooperatively?”. The basic elements of positive interdependence, individual accountability, cooperative skills, processing in the group, and face to face promotive interaction are a measuring stick to determine the difference. It is always a good sign if the groups are small, usually heterogeneous, given a group goal, asked to share the material individually at some point in the lesson, the groups are monitored with purpose, and given time to process how well they functioned. All of us who have been carefully trained know this but need to remind ourselves once in awhile to make sure all the pieces of the basic elements are present.

 

Let us know about your successes. We need to have some success stories to share. Keep your failures to yourself (just joking).

 

Roger and David

 

David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, and Cary Roseth

 

There was a time when teachers discouraged the formation of friendships among students in their classes because they were worried that it would result in students being distracted from the academic tasks and engaging in socializing and off-task behavior. At the very least, friends were separated so that they did not sit near each other. Friends were seen as “attentional temptations,” competing for students’ attention with the teacher and the learning assignments. Sitting by their friends placed students in a conflict between attending to their friends or attending to the teacher. This was especially true when teachers lectured and assigned individual seatwork.

 

Teachers who use cooperative learning have a different point of view. They know that the experience of working together to achieve a mutual goal results in more positive relationships among students, even diverse students from different cultures, ethnic groups, social classes, and handicapping conditions. Once these positive relationships are developed, and group members care about and are personally committed to each other, then the positive relationships would increase achievement. Morton Deutsch (the originator of the theory of cooperation and competition) suggests that just as success in cooperative efforts (i.e., achieving) builds positive relationships among group members, those positive relationships will in turn result in increased efforts to achieve. The causation goes both ways. This would be true in cooperative, not in competitive or individualistic situations.

 

There is a third position. There are scientists who believe that students will seek positive relationships regardless of what situation they are in (academic or social) or whether it is structured cooperatively, competitively, or individualistically. They believe that there is a “belongingness motive” aimed at building caring and committed relationships. Students will tend to seek high quality relationships regardless of what situation they are in or how it is structured. Thus, the quality of relationship would have the same impact on achievement in all situations.

 

To determine which of these three views is correct, a recent meta-analysis was conducted focusing on the relationship between achievement and positive relationships among early adolescents (grades 6 to 9) (Cary Roseth, David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, and Fang Fang, [2006]. Goal structures, academic achievement, and early adolescents’ interpersonal needs: A meta-analysis). Cary Roseth and a number of other graduate students, and David and Roger Johnson examined over 4,000 articles on cooperative learning involving middle school students; 120 of them had enough data to compute effect sizes. The meta-analysis focused on three issues: the impact of cooperative learning on achievement, the impact of cooperative learning on interpersonal attraction, and the impact of interpersonal relationships on achievement.

 

Importance For Middle School Students

In our meta-analysis we chose to focus on early adolescents (i.e., middle-school students). Relationships may be an especially important for early adolescents because they are faced with developmental crises and they are faced with the environmental challenges inherent in moving from elementary to middle school.

 

Approximately between the ages of 10 to 14, adolescents have to cope with biological, cognitive, and social-emotional changes which necessitate more mature relationships with peers and adults. While not all early adolescents have difficulty with these transitions in body, thought, emotion, and social relationships, for many these changes may create distress, anxiety and depression, alienation from peers and school, and engagement in antisocial and high risk behaviors.

 

At the same time these developmental crises are going on, early adolescents are faced with the environmental challenges presented by the transition from elementary to middle school. A much different school climate has to be faced. Some relationships end, others change, and many new relationships have to be established. Many middle schools include more whole-class instruction, increased ability grouping, and a greater emphasis on grades and competition. Thus, students may have less opportunity to make choices in the classroom, fewer opportunities for interaction and cooperation with peers, and less positive student-teacher relationships. What often results is less academic curiosity, less engagement in learning situations, lower academic and intrinsic motivation, less commitment to school, lower academic achievement, negative peer affiliations, and increased risk of conduct disorders.

 

To resolve the developmental crises constructively, and to successfully cope with the environmental challenges, early adolescents need positive relationships with their peers. Perhaps more than any other age, friends make a significant difference in the quality of early adolescents’ life and the success of their endeavors.

What is not known, however, is whether the relationships early adolescents establish promote or hinder achievement? The results of our meta-analysis may be summarized in three rules for successful teaching.

 

Impact of Cooperative Learning On Achievement

Rule One is that if you want to raise student achievement, increase your use of cooperative learning. The meta-analysis confirmed one of the most stable and powerful findings concerning cooperative learning, that it tends to raise the achievement of students from all achievement levels. Combined with the previous research, these findings are so strong that with any age student, in any subject area, with any curriculum, if teachers want to raise academic achievement they should increase their use of cooperative learning.

 

Previous reviews of literature indicate that cooperative learning (compared with competitive and individualistic learning) not only increases students’ academic achievement. It also tends to result in more students making more of an effort to learn more of the time. Consequently, students tend to increase their time-on-task, use of higher-level reasoning strategies, creative thinking, long-term retention, transfer of what they are learning to new and different situations, and motivation to continue learning about the subject after the class has ended and they have left school. Students working cooperatively tend to be more involved in activities and tasks, attach greater importance to success, and engage in more on-task behavior and less apathetic, off-task, disruptive behaviors. They also tend to have more positive attitudes toward the task and the learning experience.

 

Our new meta-analysis, focusing on middle school students (grades 6 to 9), confirmed that middle-school students working cooperatively significantly perform at a higher academic level than do students working competitively or individualistically. Thus, if a teacher wishes to raise students’ achievement, he or she should increase their use of cooperative learning.

 

Impact Of Cooperative Learning On Relationships

Rule Two is that if you want to increase the caring and support in relationships among students, increase your use of cooperative learning. The meta-analysis confirmed another stable and powerful finding on cooperative learning, that the more students work together in cooperative learning groups, the more they like each other. Working together to achieve mutual goals typically results in an emotional bonding that has profound effects on students’ development and well-being. Positive relationships among students and between students and faculty are important for many reasons. Many students come to school primarily to see their friends and to interact with their peers. Students tend to commit themselves to goals that their friends and peers value. Students typically are willing to listen to and be influenced by people they care about and who care about them. Students tend to commit themselves to their friends’ growth and success. The more students care about each other, the more responsibility they tend to feel to do their fair share of the group’s work. Students tend to take on difficult tasks to please their friends. Students motivation and persistence in working to accomplish difficult goals (even when they have to endure pain and frustration in doing so) is largely inspired by their friends and the people they care about. The more positive students’ relationships, the higher their self-esteem and the more frequent their prosocial behavior tend to be. In addition, cooperation (compared with competitive and individualistic efforts) creates more supportive relationships (with the teacher as well as with other students). Social support tends to promote physical and psychological health, successful coping with stress and adversity, and a wide variety of other positive outcomes.

 

It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of these research results. Friends are a developmental advantage. Lack of friends is a developmental disadvantage. There is considerable evidence that lack of high quality social relationships predicts a wide variety of problems and social rejection and social isolation are even more devastating. There is a close association between antisocial behavior and rejection by the normal peer group. Rejected children tend to be deficient in a number of social-cognitive skills, including perception of peer group norms and interpretation of prosocial interactions. Among children referred to child guidance clinics, 30 to 75 percent (depending on age) are reported by their parents to experience peer difficulties. Moreover, referred children have fewer friends and less contact with them than nonreferred children, their friendships are significantly less stable over time, and their understanding of the reciprocities and intimacies involved in friendships is less mature. The worse a student’s relationships with peers, the more likely the student is to engage in violence and drug abuse, feel depressed, and become pregnant.

 

Our recent middle-school meta-analysis confirmed that cooperative experiences promote more positive relationships among students than do competitive or individualistic experiences. There are few things more important in school more important than ensuring each student has friends and caring and supportive relationships with peers. It is hard to imagine how that may be accomplished without the use of cooperative learning. The more frequently teachers use cooperative learning, the more positive will be the relationships among students (and between the students and faculty).

 

Impact Of Relationships To Achievement

Rule Three is that if you want to raise student achievement, increase the quality of their relationships with each other. There is little evidence concerning the impact of positive relationships among students on achievement. In our recent meta-analysis we computed the impact of relationships on achievement. We found that a one unit increase in interpersonal liking effect-size resulted in an average increase of 0.832 units of academic achievement effect size. Over 3/4’s of the variation in academic achievement was explained by the quality of interpersonal relationships. In other words, the better a student’s relationships with his classmates, the higher the student tended to achieve academically. There are two sides to interpersonal attraction and social support—receiving and giving. Both are important, and for some aspects of physical health, giving to others is more important than receiving. Students who are liked and have friends, and students who like others and are friends, tend to achieve higher than do disliked students and students who tend to dislike others. Although a third variable may be causing both interpersonal attraction and achievement, it seems likely that there is something in the act of being liked and supported, and liking and supporting others, that increases motivation to achieve. A teacher’s secret strategy for increasing student achievement may be building more positive relationships among students. Put very simply, if you want students to increase their academic achievement, give them friends.

 

Jiyoung Choi, David W. Johnson, & Roger Johnson

 

In many schools, there is concern about bullying and other forms of harm-intended aggression. Harm-intended aggression may be defined as aggressive behavior aimed at inflicting physical, relational, or verbal harm. The target of the aggression is the victim. The opposite of harm-intended aggression is prosocial behavior, which is an action that benefits other people by helping, supporting, encouraging their goal accomplishment or well being. If a student is engaging in prosocial behavior, obviously he or she cannot be engaging in harm-intended aggression at the same time. The question is, “Does cooperative learning have an impact on the occurrence of prosocial behavior and the absence of harm-intended aggression?”

 

In her Ph.D. dissertation, Jiyoung Choi addressed the relationships among cooperative learning experiences, predispositions for cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts, engaging in harm-intended aggression and prosocial action, and being a victim (see Choi, J., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. [2006], Relationship among Cooperative Learning Experiences, Social Interdependence, Children’s Aggression, Victimization, and Prosocial Behaviors).. The study included 217 elementary school children from the 3rd to 5th grades in a Midwestern, suburban elementary school.

 

The first finding was that the more teachers use cooperative learning, the more cooperative and the less individualistic their students become. This is important as cooperativeness is related to such positive outcomes as psychological health and self-esteem while a predisposition for individualistic efforts is related to psychological illness and other negative outcomes.

 

Cooperative learning experiences and cooperative predispositions tended to predict the frequency with which students engaged in prosocial behavior. Prosocial students tend to build positive relationships with peers and enjoy positive wellbeing. Competitive and individualistic predispositions were not significantly related to whether or not a person engages in prosocial behavior.

 

The greater students’ cooperativeness, the less likely they are to engage in harm-intended aggression. Thus, the more cooperative learning is used, and the more students develop a predisposition to cooperate, the less likely students are to bully schoolmates or to engage in other harm-intended aggression against each other. These results have important implications for schools interested in reducing bullying, violence, relationships aggression, and scapegoating.

 

Competitiveness, on the other hand, did predict the engagement in harm-intended aggression but did not predict either victimization or prosocial actions. Bullying, and other forms of harm-intended aggression, can significantly reduce the quality of life within a school and poison the learning climate. In addition, bullies tend to alienate their peers and experience diminished well-being and will tend to experience more loneliness, sadness, and anxiety than most students. Being individualistic was found to be unrelated to harm-intended aggression, victimization, or prosocial behavior.

 

Neither cooperative experiences, cooperative predispositions, competitive predispositions, or individualistic predispositions significantly predicted victimization.

 

If schools wish to decrease the frequency with which students engage in harm-intended aggression they should do the following. First, they will wish to increase the frequency with which students engage in prosocial actions, as when students are acting in prosocial ways, they cannot simultaneously be engaging in harm-intended aggression. The two sets of behaviors are incompatible. The frequency of prosocial behavior is primarily increased by increasing the cooperativeness of students, usually though the increased use of cooperative learning. Second, the frequency with which students engage in harm-intended aggression may be reduced by (a) increasing the frequency with which teachers use cooperative learning, (b) increasing students’ predisposition to cooperate, and (c) reducing students’ predisposition to compete.

 

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Smith, K. Active learning (3^rd Ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

 

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (2005). Teaching students to be peacemakers (4^th Ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

 

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, F. (2006). Joining together: Group theory and group skills (9^th Ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

 

Johnson, D. W. (2006). Reaching out: Interpersonal effectiveness and self-actualization (9^th Ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

 

The Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers Program is now listed as a model program by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. See their web site: www.samhsa.gov

 

Members of the American Educational Research Association should make sure they are members of the Cooperative Learning and the Conflict Resolution Special Interest Groups.

 

Minneapolis, Minnesota

July 31 to August 4

Foundations Of Cooperative Learning

Advanced Cooperative Learning

Creative Conflict (Teaching Students To Be Peacemakers, Constructive Controversy)

Leading Cooperative School

Foundations Leadership Training

 

Contact: Linda Johnson, Interaction Book Company

(952) 831-9500, (952) 831-7060

FAX: (952) 831-9332

Johns010@umn.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interaction Book Company

7208 Cornelia Drive

Edina, MN 55435

(952) 831-9500

FAX: (952) 831-9332