Teaching and Learning Research Programme
Annual Conference Papers
5th Annual Conference, 22-24 November 2004
Cardiff Marriott Hotel
The impact of collaborative group work in primary classrooms and the effects of class composition in urban and rural schools
Donald Christie*, Andrew Tolmie*, Christine Howe*, Keith Topping**, Allen Thurston**, Emma Jessiman*, Kay Livingston* and Caroline Donaldson***.
*University of Strathclyde
**University of Dundee
***Formerly at Dundee, now at Queen Margaret University College
NB: This paper was presented at an internal TLRP conference; if you wish to quote from it please contact the authors directly for permission. Contact details for each project and thematic initiative can be found on our website (www.tlrp.org).
The impact of collaborative group work in primary classrooms and the effects of class composition in urban and rural schools
Donald Christie*, Andrew Tolmie*, Christine Howe*, Keith Topping**, Allen Thurston**, Emma Jessiman*, Kay Livingston* and Caroline Donaldson***.
*University of Strathclyde
**University of Dundee
***Formerly at Dundee, now at Queen Margaret University College
ABSTRACT
The paper outlines key findings from the ScotSPRinG project conducted by a team from the Universities of Strathclyde and Dundee funded as a TLRP Scottish Extension project linked to the Phase II Project: “Improving the effectiveness of pupil groups in classrooms” led by Professors Blatchford, Galton and Kutnick. The project involved the participation of pupils and teachers in 24 primary schools in eight local authorities across Scotland.
Aim The aim of this intervention study was to evaluate the impact of collaborative group work in selected Scottish Primary classrooms and explore the effects of class composition in urban and rural schools.
Method Approximately 600 upper primary stage pupils were involved in the study. A two-phase intervention designed to foster collaborative group work, using similar approaches to those devised by the TLRP Phase II SPRinG Project team, was carried out in four different categories of schools derived from the combination of two factors: urban/rural school; single age/mixed age classes. The first phase of the intervention involved social and communication skills training activities. The second phase focused on collaborative group work in two primary science topic areas: evaporation and forces. A battery of pre- and post-intervention assessments was implemented using a range of cognitive, affective and social measures, including a newly devised sociometric instrument designed to tap into the different patterns of social relationships characterising the four different categories of schools. In addition, systematic classroom observations were conducted during the different phases of the study and detailed evaluation feedback was gathered from participating teachers.
Results A number of interesting initial findings have emerged showing significant gains across a number of measures, which were attributable to the group work intervention. In particular there were significant gains in micro measures of attainment in the two specific science topics. Regression analysis showed the cognitive gains to be related to indices of the quality of collaborative dialogue during group work. While there were no consistent overall differences between composite and single age classes nor between urban and rural schools, group work yielded significant gains in social relations in the intervention classes and again collaborative engagement within tasks was found to be associated with the social benefits. The evidence suggests that the socio-emotional gains are independent of the cognitive gains.
Evaluative feedback obtained from teachers was generally very positive in terms of the quality of the training and support package and in terms of the impact of the intervention on both pupil learning and their own professional practice .
INTRODUCTION
Research over the past 20 years has established beyond dispute that interaction between learners is a powerful and natural mechanism for promoting enhanced clarity of conception and articulation, but group work within schools has typically failed to make best use of the potential of interactive learning. The present study (ScotSPRinG) was designed as a Scottish Extension project linked to the TLRP Phase II Project, “Improving the Effectiveness of Pupil Groups in Classrooms,”also described as Social Pedagogic Research into Grouping (SPRinG) based in the South-East of England at the Universities of London (Institute of Education), Brighton and Cambridge. The principal aim of both projects is to enhance the learning potential of pupils working in classroom groups by actively involving teachers in programmes designed to raise the incidence and quality of group work during typical activities.
The rationale for the extension of the Phase II project to the Scottish context was based partly upon demographic differences and partly upon the distinct forms of educational provision in Scotland which provided an opportunity to assess the generalisability of the SPRinG project’s resources, and to extend the social pedagogy being developed through the research. The use of group work in schools has much the same tradition in Scotland as in England i.e. an increased incidence during the 1960s, reflecting policy shifts towards child-centred teaching and the view that group work allowed appropriate differentiation of ability levels in classroom activities; followed by its espousal as essentially an organisational device rather than as a teaching strategy. Thus in Scotland, too, the principal issue motivating the SPRinG research holds true: group work exists, but it is frequently not effectively planned (Darling, 1999).
Where Scotland does differ markedly from England (particularly the South-East) is in its inherently greater variation in primary school size, with all that follows from this in terms of class and group characteristics. This variation reflects the much wider range of urban and rural communities to be found in Scotland, with small village primary schools still being commonplace in many areas. One consequence of the retention of schools linked to small communities is that pupils typically possess much greater familiarity both with each other and with each other’s families.
Initial evidence from the SPRinG Project (Kutnick, personal communication, 2003) pointed to the importance of a relational basis (e.g. via trust and social communication exercises) for competence in group work to operate outside of friendship pairings. The evidence also tended to confirm that it is possible to foster through dyadic and other group activities productive forms of communication, such as the exploratory talk identified by Mercer (1995), or the disagreement-explication cycle defined by Howe & Tolmie (1998). Thus in terms of the framework of influences on effective group work identified by the SPRinG project, children in schools linked to small communities might be expected to have stronger pre-existing relational bases for joint activity, and to fall more naturally and competently into group work as a result (cf. early research by Shapira & Madsen, 1969, on the greater cooperative tendencies within school of children from more collective communities). At the same time, though, community schools of this kind by necessity also make considerable use of composite classes because small school numbers make age banding unfeasible, and they have more individualised learning programmes to redress the resulting within-class diversity. Joint activity in such classes may therefore be less common. Where it does occur, it will often mean interaction between children of different ages and differing levels of expertise, altering the dynamic from one of collaboration between peers to one of tutoring of the junior partner by the senior (cf. Piaget, 1932; Rogoff, 1990; Howe, Tolmie, Duchak-Tanner & Rattray, 2000).
Given the positive outcomes reported in the literature on peer tutoring (Topping & Ehly, 1998), this does not entail that group work is necessarily less effective under these conditions. However, it may well alter the operation of factors such as relational ease. For instance, while better understanding on the part of the tutor of the knowledge held by the tutee contributes to effective tutoring (Foot, Shute, Morgan & Barron, 1990), greater relational distance might plausibly be needed for the tutee to be prepared to be guided by the tutor. Moreover, a substantial literature attests to the fact that peer collaboration and peer tutoring have different natural ambits of applicability, with the former lending itself more to conceptual explication, and the latter to procedural understanding (see Howe et al., 2000). The implication is, then, that the ways in which teachers make use of group work might need to be different in small school settings, undermining the generalisability of the SPRinG resources, and indicating the need for more differentiated, context-specific models of effectiveness.
Investigation of this issue simply via a comparison between small rural schools and larger urban ones is problematic, however, because of the confound between cross-age group work and greater personal familiarity. If results suggested there were problems in extending the SPRinG resources to rural schools, it would be unclear whether this was attributable to the lack of relational distance, or to a mismatch between the resources and the use of cross-age combinations per se. The distinction is an important one, since the former would imply that the situation might be rectified to some extent simply by choosing pupil groups more carefully, whereas the latter would indicate the need to develop separate support regimes for teachers working in these contexts. Fortunately, however, the Scottish primary system provides a means of disentangling the possible influences, since compositing is not restricted to rural schools, but is also present to some degree in many urban primary schools, where it is used to cope with variation in the size of intake. Thus some cross-age group work occurs in contexts where out of school familiarity is lower.
Application of the SPRinG resources to selected types of school in Scotland, therefore, allows a form of natural experiment to be conducted, comparing the effects of supporting group work in this way under four conditions: 1) classes in rural schools, where group work is typically cross-age; 2) classes in larger rural schools where compositing is not used and hence group work is between same-age children; 3) classes in urban schools with compositing, where at least some group work is cross-age and 4) classes in larger urban schools where compositing is not used, and group work is between same-age children. Comparison of the these conditions in terms of the relative effectiveness of the existing support programmes would make it possible to pinpoint exactly how far it is necessary to devise different support systems and different pedagogical frameworks for promoting productive group work in rural schools, and also in other contexts where composite classes exist.
Previous research has emphasised the value of peer activity in promoting social competence (Warden & Christie, 1997). By adopting a fine-grained approach to promoting effective group work at primary school level, especially in the later years, the present study was designed to provide evidence across a range of typically Scottish contexts on the direct effects of group work on educational attainment, on pupils’ social relationships and willingness to work independently of teachers and on how these effects interact with social circumstance. The study was also designed to foster a network of interested and experienced teachers and a set of resources adapted as necessary to suit the Scottish context, which could be used by schools as part of the self-evaluation of their provision.
At a more theoretical level, the present study was aimed at providing systematic insight into the influence of an important set of contextual factors on productive group work, a previously under-researched area, both in Scotland and more generally. This has a direct bearing on the wider SPRinG objective of developing a social pedagogy for group work, since the role of contextual variation (cf. Brofenbrenner, 1979; Pellegrini & Blatchford, 2000) has already been identified as a central concern within such a model. A number of theoretical perspectives cast light on the functioning of pupil groups in classrooms. Piagetian and neo-Piagetian theories address the effects on collaborative group work of differences in perceived status, relative facility with the subject matter and the cognitive consequences of friendship (Piaget, 1932; Doise & Mugny, 1984; Howe & Tolmie, 1998; Williams & Tolmie, 2000; Azmitia & Montgomery, 1993). Vygotskian and neo-Vygotskian theories articulate the role of relative differences in procedural expertise, and the tactical use of such differences by the more expert to scaffold the activity of the less expert until they achieve autonomy (Vygotsky, 1978, Wood, 1986; Rogoff, 1990). Activity theory focuses on activities as consensual practices or ways of achieving particular objectives which are shared between members of a community, and which, therefore, depend on various forms of mutual knowledge and conjoint past experience (Leontiev, 1981; Engeström, 1987; Cole & Engeström, 1993). Taken together, these different theories provide a framework for interpreting the observed impacts of urban vs rural context and same vs cross-age grouping on methods of supporting the implementation of effective group work in different types of school; and for generating a unified social pedagogy which explicitly takes into account the processes underlying these influences, and ways in which these might be managed or capitalised upon.
Key differences between the SPRinG and ScotSPRinG projects are that while SPRinG was designed to investigate work in pupil groups across the curriculum and across Key Stages 1,2 and 3, ScotSPRinG focused mainly on the curriculum area of Primary Science and confined its investigation to classes of pupils aged 10-12 at the Primary 6 and Primary 7 stage in Scottish primary schools, a stage equivalent to the boundary of KS2 and KS3. The choice of science as the main curricular focus had a number of advantages. Firstly, it was the focus of the Key Stage 2 and 3 interventions in the SPRinG work, so it provided a crucial linkage between the projects. Secondly, it is an area in which the use of group work is more prevalent (34% of activity, as against 16% for language and literacy, and only 6% for mathematics; see Blatchford, Kutnick & Baines, 1999), so that there is likely to be a track record to assist school selection and provide a point of departure. Thirdly, despite the greater prevalence of group work in science, this has commonly been dictated by the limited availability of equipment rather than any pedagogic strategy. Thus there is considerable scope for improvement via the planning of effective activities, rendering outcomes potentially more detectable and more discriminable from each other. Fourthly, science work is not typically associated with ability setting, thus avoiding potential confounds between the variables under investigation and constraints on relative levels of expertise.