The effects of teacher discourse on students’ discourse, problem-solving and reasoning during cooperative learning

The study sought to determine if teachers who are taught specific communication skills designed to challenge students’ cognitive and metacognitive thinking during cooperative learning use more challenging and scaffolding behaviours to mediate students’ learning than teachers who implement cooperative learning or small-group work who have not been taught these skills. The study involved 51 teachers in three conditions (cooperative + communication conditions; cooperative condition, group-work condition) and two groups of students from each of the above teachers’ classes. The results show that the teachers in the cooperative + communication condition used significantly more challenging and scaffolding behaviours than teachers in the group-work condition but not more than the teachers in the cooperative condition. The study also showed that the children in the cooperative + communication condition provided significantly more elaborative and help-giving behaviours to group members than peers in the other two conditions and they obtained higher scores on the follow-up reasoning and problem-solving activities than their peers in the group-work condition.