1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Two Reviews of Recent Research on Cooperative Learning
By George M. Jacobs

Rekrut, M.D. (1997). Collaborative research.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 41(1), 26-34.

This article reviews six studies of collaborative student research - apparently all among upper secondary school students in the U.S. Based on observation and anecdotal comments, Rekrut reports that all the studies found benefits for the use of collaboration in student research. From these studies and her own experience, the author, the chair of the English department at a U.S. high school, formulates some guidelines for collaborative student research. These guidelines include:

1. Motivating topics often involving student input in topic selection, e.g., investigating a local issue such as the environment.

2. Bringing the research findings out to others, not just to the teacher, e.g., producing a video or photo exhibit to be shared with the community.

3. Time spent focussing on the collaborative research process, e.g., each student keeping a daily log that is used to write an individual paper on what was learned about the research topic, as well as the content.

4. Instruction in research skills, e.g., working on summarizing and information searching.

5. Connecting of students' research to overall class content, e.g., researching the design of a new Jurassic Park while studying chaos theory and ethical issues in science and technology.

Liang, X., Mohan, B.A., & Early, M. (1998). Issues of cooperative learning in ESL classes: A review. TESL Canada, 15(2), 13-23.

The authors begin by noting that compared to the large quantity of research on CL done in education generally, relatively little has been done in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), of which ESL (English as a Second Language) forms a part. SLA researchers often feel that their field has its own particularities given: (1) the innate language acquisition mechanisms with which humans are endowed, and (2) the historical fact that at universities, SLA has often been more closely linked to Linguistics Departments - indeed degrees are only conferred in

Applied Linguistics, not in Education - than with the School of Education. These factors make researchers in SLA skeptical about the applicability of the overall positive findings of research on CL in other areas of education.

However, this skepticism seems unwarranted, as the authors report that their review of relevant studies of CL suggests that CL is "potentially beneficial" for ESL classrooms. Among the potential benefits they discuss are:

1. Greater opportunities to receive language input. Comprehensible language input (via listening and reading) is seen as necessary for innate language acquisition mechanisms to function.