ABSTRACT
It is hard to exaggerate the interest in group learning in today's schools. There are signs everywhere, from state mandates that children participate in cooperative learning experiences, to the commercially available guides designed to assist teachers to plan, implement, and manage cooperative learning, to the representation of group learning in virtually every contemporary educational psychology textbook, to the consistency with which increased use of small-group instruction is included in recommendations for curriculum and instructional reform (e.g., Everybody Counts, National Research Council, 1989). At the same time, because of the number and nature of ,questions about the process of coconstructing knowledge, it is hard to imagine an area richer with research possibilities. In fact, much remains to be learned about how social interaction facilitates cognitive development.
