Cooperative Learning, Group-to-Individual Transfer, Process Gain, and the Acquisition of Cognitive Reasoning Strategies

ABSTRACT

The effects of cooperative and individualistic learning situations were compared on achievement on a number of tasks representing different levels on Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of cognitive instructional objectives. In the cooperative condition, American students worked in small groups to produce a group product and later completed similar tasks as individuals. In the individualistic condition, they worked by themselves to produce individual products and later completed similar tasks as individuals. First-grade students (N = 52) were randomly assigned to conditions stratifying for ability level and sex. The results indicated that on ail tasks, groups achieved more than did individuals, that the higher achievement of students in the cooperative condition transferred to individual testing situations for three higher level reasoning tasks (there were no differences between conditions on two lower level reasoning tasks), and that students in the cooperative condition used higher level reasoning strategies in completing the tasks than did the students in the individualistic condition. These results indicated that group-to-individual transfer did take place within cooperative learning groups and that process gain (but not process loss) tended to occur.