ABSTRACT
Enthusiasm for group learning is so widespread that one takes the risk of seeming retrogressive by even raising the possibility that it may not be the best mode of learning for all educational aims, for all subject areas, or for all students. Yet historical experience, if nothing else, should make us cautious about regarding educational ideas like group learning as panaceas. Certain ideas have a cyclic nature and return again and again in slightly different guises, despite mixed or even nonexistent evidence of success. Such proposals are often couched in language that is broad and ambiguous, taking on as many different meanings as there are advocates for them. Rhetoric praising such approaches often replaces serious attention to more endemic problems of education. For this reason, we approach the idea of group learning with some skepticism.
