In her article “Gifted Students Talk About Cooperative Learning” (October 1992), Marian Matthews communicates several misunderstandings about cooperative learning that should be clarified. But before we discuss the specific statements of students in her analysis, we believe a comment or two about the impressionistic nature of Matthews' data is needed.
Rules of Evidence
The rules of scientific evidence were created in part to move the search for truth beyond personal opinion, and arguing from insufficient data from an unrepresentative sample does education a disservice. Matthews believes she can generalize to all cooperative learning and to all gifted students throughout the country from interviewing fifteen 6th and 8th graders in a wealthy suburban school district. Any investigator can find 15 students to give personal testimony to support any proposition. One could, no doubt, find 15 high-IQ students who believe that gifted programs are a waste of time or even detrimental to future job success.
Matthews also argues that the students' teachers were appropriately implementing cooperative learning in a competent way because some training had been presented nine years before the interviews took place. No evidence is presented for who participated in that training, the degree of implementation of cooperative learning, or the teachers' competence level.
Finally, Matthews does not define what she means by “gifted.” Since giftedness is not a unitary trait, the nature of her sample is unclear. At times she seems to confuse cooperative learning with heterogeneous classrooms. Cooperative learning is an instructional procedure separate from the makeup of the classroom.
Student Comments
What Matthews' respondents said, however, is interesting because it illustrates what is not cooperative learning.
One of the first students expressed resentment over having to explain academic material to disinterested groupmates: “What's the point in me explaining it. . .and you know he's not even listening to you” (p. 48). It seems group members lack any sense of positive interdependence. To increase students' perceptions that “united we stand, divided we fall,” the teacher should clarify joint learning goals, divide resources among group members, assign each member a role to fulfill, provide tasks that promote team identity, and award bonus points when all group members achieve preset criteria.
A second student expresses paternalism toward other group members who need help but have nothing to offer: “You feel frustrated because they can't get it as easy as you, even though they're trying as hard as they can” (p. 48). This gifted student sees himself and his groupmates in simplistic and unidimensional ways: He is smart, they are dumb. To solve this problem the teacher could assign complex assignments requiring multiple talents and abilities. The teacher could also guide the division of labor among group members so they gain multidimensional views of one another.
A third student states, “When you explain it, you want to do it real fast because you're bored” (p. 48). Teachers need to intervene in situations like this. Students should be taught a variety of procedures for giving good explanations and checking the other person's understanding. The teacher should observe each group to ensure the procedures are taking place and should give bonus points to students who skillfully use the procedure.
Two other gifted students complained that when groupmates did their share poorly, they ended up doing all the work to avoid a poor grade. This perception reflects an absence of individual accountability, positive interdependence, group processing, and social skills. To make the group more cooperative, the teacher could assess each group member's contribution at frequent checkpoints and ensure that students regularly process how well they are working and coordinating their efforts. Students should also learn conflict resolution skills so they can confront others about their lack of effort.
Not a Seating Arrangement
Overall, what may be reflected in the statements Matthews reports is that not all students like working with classmates, not all students want to be part of a learning community, and not everything that is called cooperative learning is in fact cooperative learning.
A cooperative learning group is not a seating arrangement. It is not individualistic learning with talking. It is not competition at close quarters. It is not traditional classroom grouping. To be cooperative, learning groups must be carefully structured to include a high level of positive interdependence with members interacting face-to-face to promote each other's success. Group members should be held individually accountable for their share of the work. They should be directly taught the interpersonal and small-group skills they need to coordinate their efforts, and they should process how well they work together and what they do to improve the quality of the group's work.
These essential elements do not magically appear when students are told to work together. They must be carefully structured by the teacher and consistently monitored to ensure their continued presence. When teachers do so, positive outcomes can result. What Matthews' 15 students said is a good reminder for teachers of the importance of carefully structuring each cooperative lesson.
To her credit, Matthews notes that students interviewed in other studies testify that cooperative groups are productive and positive places to learn. We have our own sample of gifted students. We have taught in and consulted with gifted programs since the early 1960s. Until recently we co-taught a special freshman seminar on how to work as part of a team for honors students in the Institute of Technology at the University of Minnesota. Currently, we are working with a number of programs using cooperative study groups with the best and the brightest students at our university, including a study group program for athletically gifted students. What we have learned, written about, and done research on, is that cooperative learning is a powerful tool in motivating gifted students to commit the effort to achieve up to their potential and to create the cognitive and social conditions under which they can do so.
