In secondary-school research, cooperative learning beat frontal teaching in 68% of comparisons, with STAD most and Jigsaw least successful¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 1993 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 6 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Newmann and Thompson's review of 27 high-quality secondary studies yielded 37 comparisons; cooperative learning was favored at the .05 level for 25 comparisons (68%), with effect sizes from .87 to 5.15. → Blosser 1993 q3 i? Success varied by method and context: STAD was the most consistently successful method and Jigsaw the least; greatest success was in grades 8 and 9, and only 33% of grade 10-12 studies were successful. → Blosser 1993 (2)

Evidence¶

Blosser 1993¶

Blosser, P. E. (1993). Using Cooperative Learning in Science Education. ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED351207

q3 · i? · review · r3

Newmann and Thompson reviewed 27 reports of high-quality secondary research involving STAD, TGT, Jigsaw, Learning Together, and Group Investigation against conventional frontal-teaching groups. The quoted sentence carries the significance count and the printed effect-size range. The range spans 28 comparisons across several methods and is reported second-hand from Newmann and Thompson, so no single effect size is coded here (i?).

"Cooperative learning was favored at the .05 level of significance for 25 comparisons (68%). Twenty-eight comparisons were used to compute effect sizes that ranged from .87 to 5.15."

Blosser 1993 (2)¶

Blosser, P. E. (1993). Using Cooperative Learning in Science Education. ERIC Clearinghouse for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED351207

q3 · i? · review · r3

Method comparison within the same secondary review. The authors speculated that Jigsaw's weaker showing may reflect lack of group reward and individual accountability; most studies involved grade 7, and science was the most-studied subject though mathematics and language arts had the highest success rates.

"The most consistently successful method was STAD, and the least successful, Jigsaw."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Cooperative Learning Improves Achievement — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• In school studies, cooperative and peer-learning methods that reward groups on every member's individual learning raised achievement more than methods without such rewards — related
• Cooperative biology instruction raised achievement and improved perceived classroom atmosphere in Israeli junior high studies — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Cooperative learning produces significantly greater achievement than traditional instruction in most long-duration controlled comparisons — a broader claim this one bears on
• Classroom research primarily supports the motivational perspective on cooperative learning effects — related
• Science-classroom studies of cooperative learning show mixed results, with several null or negative comparisons — related
• The jigsaw classroom overall leads to positive effects, but findings vary depending on the academic subjects and psychosocial variables measured — related
• Structured and ill-structured mCSCL teaching methods show similar effects; competitive methods (TGT, STAD) were not significant — related