ABSTRACT
The past 20 years have seen a tremendous increase in the use of peer-directed small-group work in schools. Some of the reasons for this upsurge are noted in the introduction to this book and also in Chapter 1 by De Lisi and Golbeck. For our purposes, a main reason for putting students into groups is to give students an opportunity to learn from each other. Students can learn from each other in many ways, for example, by giving and receiving help, by recognizing and resolving contradictions between their own and other students' perspectives, and by internalizing problem-solving processes and strategies that emerge during group work (Bearison, Magzamen, … Filardo, 1986; Brown … Palincsar, 1989; Webb … Palincsar, 1996). This chapter focuses on the mechanism of helping behavior, specifically the exchanging of explanations about the content being learned.
