ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, word of multiple research-based cooperative learning (CL) methods and models spurred a few courageous school supervisors in Israel to introduce CL in their districts. At the time, teacher education for CL required drastic changes in teachers’ instructional behavior, attitudes, and perceptions of teaching. In 1975 Shlomo Sharan led a team of researchers and educators in a professional development project to train teachers in cooperative learning methods, including group investigation (GI). The duration of the teacher education project was a marked innovation: for 18 months the team planned and conducted 40 hours of experiential workshops with 50 elementary school teachers from three schools.
This chapter, which has not previously been published in English, describes the essential features of the design and implementation of the experiential workshops, as well as the main findings of the accompanying research studies. The chapter contains a detailed description of the group investigation approach, together with its theoretical foundation and summaries of major research on GI. The relationship between cooperative learning and group investigation is clarified in the text.
The authors are indebted to Aviva Davidson, who gave of her time and sharp eyes to improve the text, and to Lynda Baloche, Nomi Sharan Gazit, and Dan Zetland for their helpful comments.
