ABSTRACT

For reasons that are not entirely clear, we know—from several independent lines of research—that when pupils work cooperatively with their peers on an academic task, there is invariably greater academic growth than there would have been had the pupils worked alone on the same task (e.g. Johnson, Muruyama, Johnson, Nelson, & Skon, 1981; Slavin, 1983; and Webb, 1985). Achievement is greatest, in fact, when the only way the individual pupils can meet their own instructional goals is if the members of the group help each other and are thereby successful as a group (Deutsch, 1959; Johnson & Johnson, 1974; Slavin, 1983). When the academic task is a developmental task as well as an academic task, that is, when the task has a strong relationship with age, particularly mental age, we know that the sufficient condition for the young pupil’s success may be little more than the opportunity for the child to interact with another child who has an opposing and maturer point of view about the way to solve the task (F. Murray, 1982, 1983).