Classroom Competition and Cultural Diversity
American education has been in a state of crisis for almost as long as we can
remember. This has been particularly true during the past four decades, when
dramatic changes in our society as a whole have are reflected in our public
schools, turning them into veritable pressure cookers. Added demands are being
placed on teachers who struggle to open minds and guide the development of
skills in increasingly crowded and impoverished surroundings. Declining test
scores have had many explanations: Teachers view many children as
unprepared for learning when they first arrive at school. Parents point the finger
at the schools as incompetent to educate their children. Politicians put the blame
on "frills" and periodically demand that schools go back to basics. Everyone
blames society for lowered standards of behavior. But finger pointing and
blaming are not the best way to solve problems.
What is clear is that our society is moving toward increased diversity and
children come to the classroom with as almost as many different experiences and
expectations as there are children. They have different personalities, different
skills, different abilities, different cultural backgrounds, different levels of selfesteem
and different emotional needs. All of these must be accommodated--at
least to some extent--in order for a child to learn efficiently. Most teachers are
well aware that classroom learning is not an "either-or" thing: Rather, a child's
emotional well-being and sense of self are certain to have a powerful impact on
his or her acquisition of traditional knowledge and basic skills in the classroom.
Indeed, research has shown that, under conducive conditions, emotional and
intellectual growth go hand in hand; sensible techniques aimed at increasing a
child's emotional well-being also have a positive impact on learning the basics.
What are "conducive" conditions--and how can they be implemented? On the
following pages we will describe one classroom technique that, over the past 25
years has succeeded in establishing a classroom atmosphere that produces
exciting changes in the performance, the morale, and the well-being of children.
The technique is a very simple one; hundreds of teachers and thousands of
students have mastered it quickly and enjoy using it. In a nutshell, the technique
produces a classroom structure that enables children to cooperate with one
another to attain their educational objectives and, simultaneously, to develop
important interpersonal skills and a sharp increase in mutual appreciation in an
atmosphere that is exciting and challenging rather than threatening or anxietyproducing.
As class sizes have continued to grow, teachers who have used this
strategy have learned (to their delight) that they can rely, increasingly, on their
students' enhanced interpersonal skills to help with classroom management. In
the following chapters we will describe this technique and present some
evidence for its efficacy. We will then present detailed ways of establishing it in
the classroom. But first, let's take a brief look at the broader societal issues that
form the background out of which this educational strategy emerged.
Competition in Society
Americans have made a religion of winning. From the fans in football stadiums
chanting "We're number one" and the little leaguer who bursts into tears when
his team loses to business leaders and economic pundits who worry about trade
with Japan and the value of the dollar, our society asserts its allegiance to victory
and its contempt for losers. Our economic system is based on competition and
much of American life is framed in competitive terms; newspapers regularly
publish rankings of everything from sports teams to movie box office receipts;
magazines publish articles about the 50 most beautiful people, the 10 best
restaurants, or the 25 Americans with the highest incomes. One of the worst
things you can sat about your neighbor is that he or she is "a loser"!
What are the consequences of this attitude? How do people behave when
competition is a way of life? We experience a great deal of anxiety when our
performance is being observed or measured; we come to view one another as
competitors and potential enemies; we are forever looking over our shoulder lest
someone overtake us. We may experience pangs of envy when an acquaintance
lands a good job or becomes a successful doctor, lawyer, or barber and we come
to look down on those who don't succeed. Once on this treadmill there is no
respite, no resting place. For many people in our society, even reaching great
heights of accomplishment does not lead to peace but to still greater anxiety lest
they fall from grace. And this anxiety is not unwarranted. Coaches who don't
produce winning teams, salespeople who don't make quota, even scientists who
don't publish first, find themselves looking for employment. In a society
obsessed with winning, each of us is only as good as our most recent
performance. Some may become so anxious about losing that they decide to stop
competing altogether; they become listless in school or at work, simply trying to
get through the day--or they might drop out altogether.
This is not to suggest that competition is evil, or even that it is always
dysfunctional. Under many circumstances competition can be fun. It can add
zest to an otherwise dull assignment. Moreover there are situations where
adding a dash of competition can enhance performance. But, over and over
again, we have found that unbridled competition--the relentless concern with
being number one, with beating the other person can be, at best, limiting and, at
worst, destructive and debilitating.
Competition in the Classroom
Intense competitiveness is not inborn, but, in our society, it often seems to be
because it is learned so early and is so pervasive. Undoubtedly, for most of us,
it is communicated and fostered by the family and the media. But one of the
major places where it has been taught, indirectly but systematically, is the
classroom. Before looking at the competitive aspect of classroom education, it
might be useful for our adult readers to try to remember what it was like to be a
youngster in elementary school. Some may recall their elementary school days
with feelings of pleasant nostalgia, others with dread and anxiety. Either way, it
is almost invariably the bond (or lack thereof) with the teacher that stands at the
center of the memory. Recent innovations such as team teaching, computers in
the classroom, and the extensive use of outside resources have added new
dimensions to the atmosphere of many modern classrooms. But whether
primarily traditional or primarily innovative, virtually all classroom share two
common aspects: the major "process" that occurs is highly competitive, and the
ultimate goal of the competition among students is to win the approval and
respect of the teachers--to show these important people that we are worthy of
their or his respect--and perhaps even their love.
What do we mean by "process"? Whenever two or more people interact, two
events occur simultaneously. One of these is the content and the other is the
process. Content refers to the substance or subject matter of the encounter;
process refers to the dynamics of the encounter, how it occurs. For example, in a
classroom the content could be arithmetic, geography, social studies, or music;
the process is the manner in which these lessons are taught. It is through the
process that people learn a great deal about the world they live in. Indeed, it
might even be argued that in the elementary school classroom the process is a
broader and more important source of learning than the content itself.
The teaching process as it relates to competition is well known. Here is a
common scene: the teacher stands in front of the classroom and asks a question
which the children are expected to answer. A few children strain in their seats
and wave their hands in the teacher's face, seemingly eager to be called upon.
Several other students sit quietly with their eyes averted as if trying to make
themselves invisible. When the teacher calls on one of the students you can see
looks of disappointment, dismay, and unhappiness on the faces of the eager
students. If the student who is called upon comes up with the right answer, the
teacher smiles, nods her head, and goes on to the next question. That smile and
nod is a great reward. Among the other eager students, however, the success of
the fortunate student causes disappointment because now they will have no
opportunity to show the teacher how smart and quick they are - until the next
question. Others remain still, hiding.
Through this process, students learn several things. First they learn that there is
one and only one expert in the classroom: the teacher. They also learn that there
is one and only one correct answer to any question she may ask: the answer the
teacher has in her head. The task is to figure out what answer the teacher
expects. The students also learn that the payoff comes from pleasing the teacher
by showing her how quick, smart, neat, clean, and well behaved they are. If the
child does this successfully, she will gain the respect and love of this powerful
person. This powerful person may then be kind to the child and tell her parents
what a wonderful person the child is. Other children may opt out of the
academic race and satisfy their need for attention in other, less desirable ways.
This process, then, is a very competitive game. Moreover, the stakes are
extremely high. In conducting workshops in all regions of the country, one of
the most touching things we have discovered is that, most even--even those in
their sixties and seventies--have vivid recall of the name and face of their
elementary school teachers. Elementary school is a vivid place where important
and memorable things happened to all of us. It is a place where the stakes are
high precisely because it is important to be liked and respected by the teacher--
who, naturally enough, is usually one of the two or three most important people
in their world.
It is precisely because the teacher is so important, that the generally competitive
atmosphere in the classroom takes on such a powerful aura. Suppose you are a
fifth-grader; the teacher asks a question--and you know the correct answer. You
raise your hand; but the teacher calls on one of the other students. What do you
suppose is going on in your heart and mind? Are you hoping that the student
recites the correct answer? Possibly. But in our research we have found that it is
far more likely that you will sit there praying that he or she comes up with the
wrong answer so that you will still have a chance to show the teacher how smart
you are.
Furthermore, given the competitive atmosphere, it is likely that those who fail
when called upon or who do not even raise their hands will resent those who
succeed. They become envious, or try to denigrate a more successful student by
branding him a "nerd" and might find an excuse to mock him or taunt him
during recess. Or worse, they may tune out altogether. The successful students,
for their part, often hold the unsuccessful students in contempt, considering
them to be dumb, uninteresting, not worth knowing. The result is that, to a
greater or lesser extent, the process which takes place in most elementary school
classrooms is virtually guaranteed not to promote friendliness, understanding,
and cooperation among the children. Quite the reverse.
Desegregation and Competition: The Origins of Jigsaw
In 1971, an exciting event took place in Austin, Texas. In accordance with the
Supreme Court ruling of 1954, the public schools were desegregated.
Unfortunately, as in many communities, this event did not occur without
turmoil. Because Austin, at that time, was residentially segregated, the
desegregation of the schools was implemented by means of a busing program.
Thus, f or the first time in their lives, youngsters from various ethnic and racial
groups suddenly found themselves in close daily contact with one another.
There was a great deal of conflict across racial lines which occasionally flared
into physical violence.
As, it happened, one of us (E.A.) was living in Austin (teaching at the University
of Texas) at the time. As a social psychologist, Aronson had done a great deal of
research in interpersonal relations. Moreover, as a father, with four children in
the public school system, he took more than a passing interest in the turmoil in
the schools. As an experienced professional in crisis management, he
considered several possible intervention strategies that might help in the
immediate crisis, but he was much more interested in long term prevention than
in immediate alleviation of the symptoms. Let us explain.
When there is a "hot" crisis in the schools--with students engaging in inter-ethnic
conflict and aggression, the obvious short-term solution is to slap on a band-aid
by, for example, instituting emergency multi-ethnic human relations councils
that can begin discussing issues, problems, points of tension, and so forth. While
this may be adequate as crisis intervention, it would be far better for society if
methods could be devised to prevent these tensions from developing. Moreover,
it would be far more efficient and effective if these methods could be built into
the structure of the institution rather than stitched on as an afterthought.
Specifically, it would be valuable if the basic process could be changed so that youngsters
could learn to like and trust each other --not as an extracurricular activity but in the
course of learning their reading, writing, and arithmetic. In order to accomplish this
goal, it might be useful to deal with students who had not been completely
indoctrinated into the existing competitive process and had not yet developed
deep-seated distrust for people of different racial and ethnic groups. For this
reason, Aronson and his colleagues approached the situation as a learning
problem not as a crisis-management problem--and they began their research in
the elementary schools rather than in the high schools.
The Problem
Before describing the resulting research, a word about the social psychology of
desegregation. In 1954 in the landmark case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court declared that separate but equal schools were
by nature unequal. This decision was based, in part, upon social psychological
research which suggested that sending minority children to separate schools
damages their self-esteem. The reasoning was that segregation implies that
children from minority groups are inferior; thus there is no way that separate but
equal schools can ever be equal, at least in spirit. That is to say, even if schools
serving minority children were to have books and teachers and buildings of
comparable quality to those serving the children of the establishment, they
would still be by nature unequal because they are separate, and being separated
makes minority children feel inferior.
The Supreme Court decision was not only humane, it was also the beginning of
what to us, as working social psychologists, was a very exciting social
experiment. In those days, most social scientists believed that, as a direct result
of this ruling, prejudice would be markedly decreased because increased contact
among children of various racial groups would produce greater liking and
understanding. Moreover, we had reason to believe that busing as a means of
increasing interracial contact would not only increase mutual understanding but
would also provide minority children with a richer educational experience.
Indeed the monumental Coleman Report indicated that the exam performance of
black children improved as the percentage of white children in their classroom
increased. But Coleman's data were based primarily on black children who were
living in neighborhoods that were predominantly white. One might suspect that
these children might differ in many significant respects from children living in
impoverished inner city neighborhoods.
And, sure enough, subsequent research in the California public schools by
Harold Gerard and Norman Miller showed that when busing was used to
integrate schools, no such improvement in the performance of African American
children occurred. Moreover, several years later, when Walter Stephan reviewed
scores of studies done in the aftermath of desegregation , he found no clear
evidence that desegregation increased self-esteem among minority students.
Rather, in 25 percent of the studies, the self-esteem of minority children actually
decreased. This is ironic and tragic when viewed in the context of the reasoning
behind the 1954 decision.
For us, the crucial variable is not busing--but what happens when children get off
the bus--that is, the process that exists in the typical classroom. And, as we have
indicated, it is our contention that the academic competitiveness that exists in the
classroom is crucial--for it is not a process that encourages students to look
benevolently and happily upon their classmates; it is not a process that is
designed to increase understanding and interpersonal attraction even among
people of the same racial or ethnic background. Rather, the process induces
competitiveness, one-upmanship, jealousy, and suspicion. When one adds to
this situation the already existing racial tensions that are present in our
increasingly multi-cultural society, it is little wonder that turmoil and even
violence is frequently the result.
Moreover, the situation is even more volatile than we have pictured it. In most
American cities, when schools were first desegregated students were competing
with each other on unequal ground. Prior to 1954, the law of the land was
"separate but equal". Unfortunately, there was plenty of separation, but very
little equality. That is, schools in the neighborhoods that housed most ethnic
minorities were not providing the same quality of education that was being
offered in most middle-class white neighborhoods. Consequently, in Austin, for
example, just prior to busing, the knowledge, reading skills, intellectual curiosity,
and ability to compete in cognitive skills of most minority-group youngsters was
inferior to that of their more privileged counterparts. This inequality still exists.
Specifically, in most communities today there are impoverished neighborhoods
from which some of the neediest and least prepared students emerge, taxing
severely the resources of a school. Existing conditions can frustrate even the
most gifted teacher.
Today, integration issues are even more complex. Instead of students bused
from across town, teachers are now being asked to welcome into their crowded
classrooms, immigrant children from dozens of nations, some of whom have had
little schooling and speak no English. Other students are the children of
economic refugees with a history of frequent moves and family environments
that make education a low priority. The skills these children bring to school are
for survival in a world very different from the one the school culture assumes.
Teachers are also being asked to provide appropriate education for children with
assorted learning difficulties and include into their classrooms, disabled students
who were once educated in separate facilities. At the very least, these students
are also likely to experience increased anxiety and low self-esteem when entering
an educational environment for which they are not prepared.
Needless to say, we no longer believe that the simple act of desegregating
classrooms is, in and of itself, a panacea. We are convinced that it is a necessary
first step toward helping children accept and respect one another as individuals.
But it is only the first step. It is clear that changes in the classroom process itself
are vitally important.
Returning now to the Austin project, if our understanding of the process was
correct, it was necessary to find a way to change the process - that is, to change
the atmosphere in the classroom so that the children would no longer be
competing against each other but would begin to treat each other as resources.
Further, if our reasoning was correct, changing the process could have a
beneficial effect upon the interpersonal relations of all the students, not simply
minority-group members. Recall that in the process we described, there was
only one human resource in the classroom: the teacher. The teacher is the source
of all answers and virtually all reinforcements. In that process there is no payoff
for consulting and collaborating with one's classmates. They are your enemies,
your competitors; they, too, are trying to impress the teacher and get that
approval and respect you want. Indeed, if a student does try to use the others as
resources in the typical classroom, he may be reprimanded. Thus, not only is the
process highly competitive and destructive to interpersonal relations - which is
itself a heavy cost - but, in addition, a potentially valuable pool of human
resources in the classroom is out of bounds.
The Cooperative Classroom1
Our attempt to change the process was a relatively simple one employing a
synthesis of principles gleaned from Aronson's years of work on small-group
dynamics and social interaction. First, Aronson and his colleagues changed the
basic structure of one expert (the teacher) and thirty listeners . This was
accomplished by placing the students in small groups of five or six students
each. The role of the teacher was changed so that he or she was no longer the
major resource for each of the learning groups by creating a process that made it
imperative that the children treat each other as resources. This was achieved in three
ways:
1. The learning process was structured so that individual
competitiveness was incompatible with success.
2. It was certain that success could occur only after cooperative behavior
among the students in a group.
3. Each student (no matter what her prior status in the classroom) was in
a position to bring to her group-mates a unique gift of knowledge (i.e.,
a piece of vital knowledge that was not readily available accept from
that student).
1 Throughout, we use the term "cooperative classroom" or "jigsaw classroom." By this we do not mean to
imply that cooperation is used exclusively in the classroom, merely that it is systematically used some of
the time.
As mentioned earlier, in a traditional classroom, the students are often rewarded
when they succeed in attracting the teacher's attention by outshining their
competitors. In the cooperative classroom, the students achieved success as a
consequence of paying attention to their peers, asking good questions, helping
each other, teaching each other, and helping each other teach.
How did this come about? An example will clarify. In the initial experiment,
Aronson and his colleagues entered a fifth-grade classroom where the students
were studying biographies of great Americans. The upcoming lesson happened
to be a biography of Joseph Pulitzer. The researchers created a biography of
Joseph Pulitzer that consisted of six paragraphs. The first paragraph was about
Pulitzer's ancestors and how they came to this country; the second described his
childhood and growing-up years; the third covered Pulitzer as a young man, his
education, and his early employment; the fourth told of his middle-age years and
how he founded his newspaper; and so forth. Each major aspect of Pulitzer's life
was contained in a separate paragraph.
They copied the biography, cut it into six one-paragraph sections and gave each
child in the six-person learning group one of the paragraphs. Thus, each
learning group had within it the entire biography of Joseph Pulitzer, but each
child had no more than one-sixth of the story. In order to learn about Pulitzer,
the students had to master their paragraph and teach it to the others in their
group. For example, David was responsible for Pulitzer as a young man, Geoff
for Pulitzer as a child, and so forth. Each student took his paragraph, read it over
a few times, and then joined his counterparts from the other groups. That is,
David, who had Pulitzer as a young man, consulted with Geoff, Christy, Lori,
and Jon, who had also been given Pulitzer as a young man. They could use each
other to rehearse and to be sure they understood the important aspect of that
phase of Pulitzer's life. In this way, each student would become an expert in his
or her segment of Joseph Pulitzer's life. We call these temporary groupings
"expert groups".
This part of the process is of great importance in that it provides time, space and
practice for the less articulate and less skillful students to learn the material and
affords them an opportunity to make use of the more adept students as models
for organizing and presenting their report. The mediation of the expert group,
helps to make the jigsaw experience virtually foolproof. As psychologist Roger
Brown has pointed out, if it weren't for the expert groups, the jigsaw method
might backfire; Brown likens the jigsaw experience to a group of youngster's
playing baseball: If the boy playing right field keeps dropping fly balls, it hurts
your team and you might begin to get a little annoyed at him. By analogy,
suppose you are dependent on the performance of a Hispanic youngster who is
less than perfectly adept in English, and he is having some difficulty articulating
his segment of the lesson. You might resent him. The "expert" groups provides
all students with the opportunity to get a clear idea of how to present the
material--regardless of prior inequities in skill or preparation.
After spending ten or fifteen minutes in their expert groups, the children went
back to their original jigsaw groups, where they were informed that they had a
certain amount of time to teach that knowledge to each other. They were also
told that, at the end of that time (or soon thereafter) each person would be tested
on her individual knowledge of Pulitzer's entire life. Clearly the students had to
depend on one another to learn all their material. The process is highly
reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle, with each student possessing a single vital piece
of the big picture. Because of this resemblance, we came to refer to our system as
the "jigsaw" model.
When left to their own resources in such a structured situation, the children
eventually learned to teach and to listen to each other. The children began to
learn two important lessons:
1. None of them could do well without the aid of every other person in
that group, and
2. Each member had a unique and essential contribution to make.
Suppose you and I are in the same group. You have been dealt Joseph Pulitzer
as a young man; I have Pulitzer as an old man. The only way that I can learn
about Pulitzer as a young man is if I pay close attention to what you are saying.
You are a very important resource for me. The teacher is no longer the sole
resource; indeed, he is not even in the group. Instead, every kid in the circle
becomes important to me. I do well if I pay attention to other kids; I do poorly if
I don't. It's a whole new ball game.
A jigsaw classroom is not a loose, "anything goes" situation. It is highly
structured. Interdependence is required. It is the element of "required"
interdependence among students which makes this a unique learning method, and it is
this interdependence that encourages the students to take an active part in their learning.
In becoming a teacher of sorts, each student becomes a valuable resource for the
others. Learning from each other gradually diminishes the need to try to outperform
each other because one student's learning enhances the performance of
the other students instead of inhibiting it, as is usually the case in most
competitive, teacher-oriented classrooms. Within this cooperative paradigm the
teacher learns to be a facilitating resource person, and shares in the learning and
teacher process with the students instead of being the sole resource. Rather than
lecturing to the students, the teacher facilitates their mutual learning, in that each
student is required to be an active participant and to be responsible for what he
learns.
Cooperative behavior does not happen all at once. It requires time and practice
for children to use this technique effectively because it is not easy to break old
habits. In Austin, for example, the children had grown accustomed to competing
during their first four years in school; accordingly, for the first several days of
jigsaw, the students tried to find a way to compete, even though competitiveness
was useless--and even dysfunctional. Let us illustrated with an actual example,
which is typical of the way the children stumbled toward the learning of the
cooperative process.
Carlos: A Case Study
In one of our groups there was a boy whom we will call Carlos. Carlos was not
very articulate in English because it was his second language. He had learned
over the years to keep quiet in the classroom because, frequently, when he had
spoken up he had been ridiculed by some of his classmates. In the Jigsaw
method, Carlos was assigned Joseph Pulitzer's middle years. But the Jigsaw
method is not magic; when it was Carlos's turn to communicate his paragraph to
the other students, he had a great deal of trouble and was very uncomfortable
about it. Indeed, he later told us that, early on, he actually liked the traditional
way better. This is not surprising; in the system we had introduced, Carlos was
forced to speak, whereas before he could avoid discomfort simply by remaining
quiet.
The existing situation was even more complex. It might even be said that the
teacher and Carlos had entered into a kind of implicit conspiracy: During the
first few weeks of school, the teacher had gradually learned not to call on Carlos
because when she did he would stumble, stammer, and fall into an embarrassed
silence, and some of the other children would make fun of him. Her decision
undoubtedly came from the kindest of intentions - she simply did not want to
humiliate him. But, unfortunately, by ignoring him, she had, in effect, written
him off, which reinforced his counterproductive behavior. In addition, the
teacher's attitude implied that Carlos was not worth bothering with--and this
message was unintentionally conveyed to the other children in the classroom.
Children notice things and draw their own conclusions; they came to believe that
there was one good reason why the teacher was not calling on Carlos: She felt he
wasn't smart enough. Indeed, it is likely that even Carlos himself began to draw
this conclusion. When one looks at the dynamics of that situation, it is no
wonder that research had shown that desegregation often resulted in a further
decrease in the self-esteem of underprivileged minority children.
Let us go back to our six-person group. Carlos had to report on Joseph Pulitzer's
middle years, and was having a very hard time. He stammered, hesitated, and
fidgeted. The other children were not very helpful; they had grown accustomed
to a competitive process and responded out of this old, over-learned habit. They
knew perfectly well what one does when a rival kid stumbles - especially a kid
from a different ethnic group whom one believes to be stupid. They ridiculed
him, put him down, teased him. During our experiment a couple of the
youngsters in Carlos's group said such things as "Aw, you don't know it,"
"you're dumb," and "You don't know what you are doing."
In our first experiment, the groups were being loosely monitored by a research
assistant who was moving from group to group. Observing this situation, our
assistant intervened by saying something like: "O.K., you can say things like that
if you want to; it might be fun for you, but it's not going to help you learn about
Joseph Pulitzer's middle years, and you will be having an exam on Pulitzer's life
in about 20 minutes."
Notice how the reinforcement contingencies have shifted! No longer do the
children gain much from putting Carlos down, and they stand to lose a great
deal. After a few days and several similar experiences, it began to dawn on the
children that the only way they were going to learn about Pulitzer's middle years
was by paying attention to what Carlos had to say. Out of necessity they
gradually began to develop into pretty good interviewers. If Carlos was having
a little trouble communicating what he knew, instead of ignoring him or
ridiculing him, they began to ask probing questions. They became junior
versions of Barbara Walters or Charlie Rose, asking the kinds of questions that
made it easier for Carlos to communicate what he was thinking. Carlos began to
respond to this treatment by becoming more relaxed, and as he relaxed his ability
to communicate improved. After a couple of weeks, the other children realized
that Carlos was not dumb, as they had originally thought, and began to respect
him, open up to him, like him. Carlos began to enjoy school more and began to
see the Anglo kids in his group not as show-offs and tormentors but as helpful
and responsive. He began to like them.
Basic Results
What happened in Carlos' group is a good example of the technique and how it
frequently worked to produce beneficial effects, but it hardly constitutes
acceptable scientific data. For that, we must turn to the field experiments
performed by Aronson and his colleagues in Texas and California in which the
effects of the jigsaw techniques on interpersonal attraction, self-esteem, and
happiness in school were investigated systematically. Initially, in Austin, the
jigsaw technique was instituted in several classrooms for six weeks and assessed
for its effectiveness by taking measures at the beginning and end of the period -
comparing the performance of the children in the jigsaw classrooms with the
performance of children in more traditional, competitive classrooms being taught
by some of the most effective teachers in the school system.
This research will be described in detail later but as a preview we will tell you
that the findings were quite consistent:
1. Children in the jigsaw classrooms grew to like their groupmates even
more than they liked others in their classroom.
2. Both white and African American children in the jigsaw classrooms
liked school better (or hate school less) than the white and black
children in competitive classrooms. Absenteeism among jigsaw
students decreased dramatically.
3. The self-esteem of the children in the jigsaw classrooms increased to a
greater extent than that of children in competitive classrooms.
4. In terms of the mastery of classroom material, children in the jigsaw
classrooms out-performed children in competitive classrooms. This
difference was primarily due to improvement in the performance of
underprivileged minority students; specifically, while white children
performed as well in either type of classroom, black and Hispanic
children performed significantly better in jigsaw classrooms than in
competitive classrooms.
5. As the result of their experience in jigsaw groups, children learned to
empathize with one another; that is, compared to children in
traditional classrooms they found it easier to put themselves in another
person's shoes and experience the world as if they were that other
person.
These basic results have been replicated and extended in several school districts
in different parts of the country.
While the jigsaw technique was developed as an attempt to bridge the gap
between children from different ethnic groups, these results make clear that its
function is not limited to multiracial situations. In any classroom situation, the
jigsaw method curbs some of the undesirable aspects of excessive competition
and increases the excitement children find in cooperating with one another.
Thus the research demonstrated that what seemed to be a deeply ingrained kind
of behavior - competitiveness - can be modified. Our aim is not to eliminate a
child's ability to compete; a certain amount of competition can be fun and may,
in many circumstances, enhance performance without producing negative
consequences. What we want to do is teach cooperativeness as a skill so that when a
person finds herself in a situation where cooperativeness is the most productive
strategy she will not view everyone in sight as competitors and doggedly try to
defeat them.
Also, cooperative learning in general, and the jigsaw method in particular, can be
a useful addition to individualized learning programs. When individualized
instruction utilizes independent study it frequently results in reducing the child's
opportunity to develop social skills in the learning environment.
Complementing individualized instruction and other classroom experiences with
cooperative groups could provide a beneficial balance as well as an interesting
set of experiences. In this context, it should be noted that the children in these
experiments were exposed to the jigsaw technique for only a small fraction of
their time in school - often as little as three or four hours per week. The rest of
the time they were learning in a generally competitive atmosphere. These results
show that children can learn the skills of cooperation and that cooperative
activities can have an important and beneficial effect on their lives, even when
these activities are presented in a basically competitive atmosphere. This is
encouraging because it means that parents and teachers do not need to choose
between cooperation and competition; both can occur in the same classroom.
Moreover, by working in jigsaw groups, the children learned that it is possible to
work together in a helpful way without sacrificing excellence and that working
together increases their positive feelings about themselves and their happiness in
school. Finally, it is our contention that experiencing cooperativeness will
increase tolerance for temporary failure both in others and in oneself; our hope is
that this technique can lead to a reduction in the anxiety that is too frequently
associated with performance in our society.
www.jigsaw.org
American education has been in a state of crisis for almost as long as we can
remember. This has been particularly true during the past four decades, when
dramatic changes in our society as a whole have are reflected in our public
schools, turning them into veritable pressure cookers. Added demands are being
placed on teachers who struggle to open minds and guide the development of
skills in increasingly crowded and impoverished surroundings. Declining test
scores have had many explanations: Teachers view many children as
unprepared for learning when they first arrive at school. Parents point the finger
at the schools as incompetent to educate their children. Politicians put the blame
on "frills" and periodically demand that schools go back to basics. Everyone
blames society for lowered standards of behavior. But finger pointing and
blaming are not the best way to solve problems.
What is clear is that our society is moving toward increased diversity and
children come to the classroom with as almost as many different experiences and
expectations as there are children. They have different personalities, different
skills, different abilities, different cultural backgrounds, different levels of selfesteem
and different emotional needs. All of these must be accommodated--at
least to some extent--in order for a child to learn efficiently. Most teachers are
well aware that classroom learning is not an "either-or" thing: Rather, a child's
emotional well-being and sense of self are certain to have a powerful impact on
his or her acquisition of traditional knowledge and basic skills in the classroom.
Indeed, research has shown that, under conducive conditions, emotional and
intellectual growth go hand in hand; sensible techniques aimed at increasing a
child's emotional well-being also have a positive impact on learning the basics.
What are "conducive" conditions--and how can they be implemented? On the
following pages we will describe one classroom technique that, over the past 25
years has succeeded in establishing a classroom atmosphere that produces
exciting changes in the performance, the morale, and the well-being of children.
The technique is a very simple one; hundreds of teachers and thousands of
students have mastered it quickly and enjoy using it. In a nutshell, the technique
produces a classroom structure that enables children to cooperate with one
another to attain their educational objectives and, simultaneously, to develop
important interpersonal skills and a sharp increase in mutual appreciation in an
atmosphere that is exciting and challenging rather than threatening or anxietyproducing.
As class sizes have continued to grow, teachers who have used this
strategy have learned (to their delight) that they can rely, increasingly, on their
students' enhanced interpersonal skills to help with classroom management. In
the following chapters we will describe this technique and present some
evidence for its efficacy. We will then present detailed ways of establishing it in
the classroom. But first, let's take a brief look at the broader societal issues that
form the background out of which this educational strategy emerged.
Competition in Society
Americans have made a religion of winning. From the fans in football stadiums
chanting "We're number one" and the little leaguer who bursts into tears when
his team loses to business leaders and economic pundits who worry about trade
with Japan and the value of the dollar, our society asserts its allegiance to victory
and its contempt for losers. Our economic system is based on competition and
much of American life is framed in competitive terms; newspapers regularly
publish rankings of everything from sports teams to movie box office receipts;
magazines publish articles about the 50 most beautiful people, the 10 best
restaurants, or the 25 Americans with the highest incomes. One of the worst
things you can sat about your neighbor is that he or she is "a loser"!
What are the consequences of this attitude? How do people behave when
competition is a way of life? We experience a great deal of anxiety when our
performance is being observed or measured; we come to view one another as
competitors and potential enemies; we are forever looking over our shoulder lest
someone overtake us. We may experience pangs of envy when an acquaintance
lands a good job or becomes a successful doctor, lawyer, or barber and we come
to look down on those who don't succeed. Once on this treadmill there is no
respite, no resting place. For many people in our society, even reaching great
heights of accomplishment does not lead to peace but to still greater anxiety lest
they fall from grace. And this anxiety is not unwarranted. Coaches who don't
produce winning teams, salespeople who don't make quota, even scientists who
don't publish first, find themselves looking for employment. In a society
obsessed with winning, each of us is only as good as our most recent
performance. Some may become so anxious about losing that they decide to stop
competing altogether; they become listless in school or at work, simply trying to
get through the day--or they might drop out altogether.
This is not to suggest that competition is evil, or even that it is always
dysfunctional. Under many circumstances competition can be fun. It can add
zest to an otherwise dull assignment. Moreover there are situations where
adding a dash of competition can enhance performance. But, over and over
again, we have found that unbridled competition--the relentless concern with
being number one, with beating the other person can be, at best, limiting and, at
worst, destructive and debilitating.
Competition in the Classroom
Intense competitiveness is not inborn, but, in our society, it often seems to be
because it is learned so early and is so pervasive. Undoubtedly, for most of us,
it is communicated and fostered by the family and the media. But one of the
major places where it has been taught, indirectly but systematically, is the
classroom. Before looking at the competitive aspect of classroom education, it
might be useful for our adult readers to try to remember what it was like to be a
youngster in elementary school. Some may recall their elementary school days
with feelings of pleasant nostalgia, others with dread and anxiety. Either way, it
is almost invariably the bond (or lack thereof) with the teacher that stands at the
center of the memory. Recent innovations such as team teaching, computers in
the classroom, and the extensive use of outside resources have added new
dimensions to the atmosphere of many modern classrooms. But whether
primarily traditional or primarily innovative, virtually all classroom share two
common aspects: the major "process" that occurs is highly competitive, and the
ultimate goal of the competition among students is to win the approval and
respect of the teachers--to show these important people that we are worthy of
their or his respect--and perhaps even their love.
What do we mean by "process"? Whenever two or more people interact, two
events occur simultaneously. One of these is the content and the other is the
process. Content refers to the substance or subject matter of the encounter;
process refers to the dynamics of the encounter, how it occurs. For example, in a
classroom the content could be arithmetic, geography, social studies, or music;
the process is the manner in which these lessons are taught. It is through the
process that people learn a great deal about the world they live in. Indeed, it
might even be argued that in the elementary school classroom the process is a
broader and more important source of learning than the content itself.
The teaching process as it relates to competition is well known. Here is a
common scene: the teacher stands in front of the classroom and asks a question
which the children are expected to answer. A few children strain in their seats
and wave their hands in the teacher's face, seemingly eager to be called upon.
Several other students sit quietly with their eyes averted as if trying to make
themselves invisible. When the teacher calls on one of the students you can see
looks of disappointment, dismay, and unhappiness on the faces of the eager
students. If the student who is called upon comes up with the right answer, the
teacher smiles, nods her head, and goes on to the next question. That smile and
nod is a great reward. Among the other eager students, however, the success of
the fortunate student causes disappointment because now they will have no
opportunity to show the teacher how smart and quick they are - until the next
question. Others remain still, hiding.
Through this process, students learn several things. First they learn that there is
one and only one expert in the classroom: the teacher. They also learn that there
is one and only one correct answer to any question she may ask: the answer the
teacher has in her head. The task is to figure out what answer the teacher
expects. The students also learn that the payoff comes from pleasing the teacher
by showing her how quick, smart, neat, clean, and well behaved they are. If the
child does this successfully, she will gain the respect and love of this powerful
person. This powerful person may then be kind to the child and tell her parents
what a wonderful person the child is. Other children may opt out of the
academic race and satisfy their need for attention in other, less desirable ways.
This process, then, is a very competitive game. Moreover, the stakes are
extremely high. In conducting workshops in all regions of the country, one of
the most touching things we have discovered is that, most even--even those in
their sixties and seventies--have vivid recall of the name and face of their
elementary school teachers. Elementary school is a vivid place where important
and memorable things happened to all of us. It is a place where the stakes are
high precisely because it is important to be liked and respected by the teacher--
who, naturally enough, is usually one of the two or three most important people
in their world.
It is precisely because the teacher is so important, that the generally competitive
atmosphere in the classroom takes on such a powerful aura. Suppose you are a
fifth-grader; the teacher asks a question--and you know the correct answer. You
raise your hand; but the teacher calls on one of the other students. What do you
suppose is going on in your heart and mind? Are you hoping that the student
recites the correct answer? Possibly. But in our research we have found that it is
far more likely that you will sit there praying that he or she comes up with the
wrong answer so that you will still have a chance to show the teacher how smart
you are.
Furthermore, given the competitive atmosphere, it is likely that those who fail
when called upon or who do not even raise their hands will resent those who
succeed. They become envious, or try to denigrate a more successful student by
branding him a "nerd" and might find an excuse to mock him or taunt him
during recess. Or worse, they may tune out altogether. The successful students,
for their part, often hold the unsuccessful students in contempt, considering
them to be dumb, uninteresting, not worth knowing. The result is that, to a
greater or lesser extent, the process which takes place in most elementary school
classrooms is virtually guaranteed not to promote friendliness, understanding,
and cooperation among the children. Quite the reverse.
Desegregation and Competition: The Origins of Jigsaw
In 1971, an exciting event took place in Austin, Texas. In accordance with the
Supreme Court ruling of 1954, the public schools were desegregated.
Unfortunately, as in many communities, this event did not occur without
turmoil. Because Austin, at that time, was residentially segregated, the
desegregation of the schools was implemented by means of a busing program.
Thus, f or the first time in their lives, youngsters from various ethnic and racial
groups suddenly found themselves in close daily contact with one another.
There was a great deal of conflict across racial lines which occasionally flared
into physical violence.
As, it happened, one of us (E.A.) was living in Austin (teaching at the University
of Texas) at the time. As a social psychologist, Aronson had done a great deal of
research in interpersonal relations. Moreover, as a father, with four children in
the public school system, he took more than a passing interest in the turmoil in
the schools. As an experienced professional in crisis management, he
considered several possible intervention strategies that might help in the
immediate crisis, but he was much more interested in long term prevention than
in immediate alleviation of the symptoms. Let us explain.
When there is a "hot" crisis in the schools--with students engaging in inter-ethnic
conflict and aggression, the obvious short-term solution is to slap on a band-aid
by, for example, instituting emergency multi-ethnic human relations councils
that can begin discussing issues, problems, points of tension, and so forth. While
this may be adequate as crisis intervention, it would be far better for society if
methods could be devised to prevent these tensions from developing. Moreover,
it would be far more efficient and effective if these methods could be built into
the structure of the institution rather than stitched on as an afterthought.
Specifically, it would be valuable if the basic process could be changed so that youngsters
could learn to like and trust each other --not as an extracurricular activity but in the
course of learning their reading, writing, and arithmetic. In order to accomplish this
goal, it might be useful to deal with students who had not been completely
indoctrinated into the existing competitive process and had not yet developed
deep-seated distrust for people of different racial and ethnic groups. For this
reason, Aronson and his colleagues approached the situation as a learning
problem not as a crisis-management problem--and they began their research in
the elementary schools rather than in the high schools.
The Problem
Before describing the resulting research, a word about the social psychology of
desegregation. In 1954 in the landmark case of Brown vs. the Board of Education of
Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court declared that separate but equal schools were
by nature unequal. This decision was based, in part, upon social psychological
research which suggested that sending minority children to separate schools
damages their self-esteem. The reasoning was that segregation implies that
children from minority groups are inferior; thus there is no way that separate but
equal schools can ever be equal, at least in spirit. That is to say, even if schools
serving minority children were to have books and teachers and buildings of
comparable quality to those serving the children of the establishment, they
would still be by nature unequal because they are separate, and being separated
makes minority children feel inferior.
The Supreme Court decision was not only humane, it was also the beginning of
what to us, as working social psychologists, was a very exciting social
experiment. In those days, most social scientists believed that, as a direct result
of this ruling, prejudice would be markedly decreased because increased contact
among children of various racial groups would produce greater liking and
understanding. Moreover, we had reason to believe that busing as a means of
increasing interracial contact would not only increase mutual understanding but
would also provide minority children with a richer educational experience.
Indeed the monumental Coleman Report indicated that the exam performance of
black children improved as the percentage of white children in their classroom
increased. But Coleman's data were based primarily on black children who were
living in neighborhoods that were predominantly white. One might suspect that
these children might differ in many significant respects from children living in
impoverished inner city neighborhoods.
And, sure enough, subsequent research in the California public schools by
Harold Gerard and Norman Miller showed that when busing was used to
integrate schools, no such improvement in the performance of African American
children occurred. Moreover, several years later, when Walter Stephan reviewed
scores of studies done in the aftermath of desegregation , he found no clear
evidence that desegregation increased self-esteem among minority students.
Rather, in 25 percent of the studies, the self-esteem of minority children actually
decreased. This is ironic and tragic when viewed in the context of the reasoning
behind the 1954 decision.
For us, the crucial variable is not busing--but what happens when children get off
the bus--that is, the process that exists in the typical classroom. And, as we have
indicated, it is our contention that the academic competitiveness that exists in the
classroom is crucial--for it is not a process that encourages students to look
benevolently and happily upon their classmates; it is not a process that is
designed to increase understanding and interpersonal attraction even among
people of the same racial or ethnic background. Rather, the process induces
competitiveness, one-upmanship, jealousy, and suspicion. When one adds to
this situation the already existing racial tensions that are present in our
increasingly multi-cultural society, it is little wonder that turmoil and even
violence is frequently the result.
Moreover, the situation is even more volatile than we have pictured it. In most
American cities, when schools were first desegregated students were competing
with each other on unequal ground. Prior to 1954, the law of the land was
"separate but equal". Unfortunately, there was plenty of separation, but very
little equality. That is, schools in the neighborhoods that housed most ethnic
minorities were not providing the same quality of education that was being
offered in most middle-class white neighborhoods. Consequently, in Austin, for
example, just prior to busing, the knowledge, reading skills, intellectual curiosity,
and ability to compete in cognitive skills of most minority-group youngsters was
inferior to that of their more privileged counterparts. This inequality still exists.
Specifically, in most communities today there are impoverished neighborhoods
from which some of the neediest and least prepared students emerge, taxing
severely the resources of a school. Existing conditions can frustrate even the
most gifted teacher.
Today, integration issues are even more complex. Instead of students bused
from across town, teachers are now being asked to welcome into their crowded
classrooms, immigrant children from dozens of nations, some of whom have had
little schooling and speak no English. Other students are the children of
economic refugees with a history of frequent moves and family environments
that make education a low priority. The skills these children bring to school are
for survival in a world very different from the one the school culture assumes.
Teachers are also being asked to provide appropriate education for children with
assorted learning difficulties and include into their classrooms, disabled students
who were once educated in separate facilities. At the very least, these students
are also likely to experience increased anxiety and low self-esteem when entering
an educational environment for which they are not prepared.
Needless to say, we no longer believe that the simple act of desegregating
classrooms is, in and of itself, a panacea. We are convinced that it is a necessary
first step toward helping children accept and respect one another as individuals.
But it is only the first step. It is clear that changes in the classroom process itself
are vitally important.
Returning now to the Austin project, if our understanding of the process was
correct, it was necessary to find a way to change the process - that is, to change
the atmosphere in the classroom so that the children would no longer be
competing against each other but would begin to treat each other as resources.
Further, if our reasoning was correct, changing the process could have a
beneficial effect upon the interpersonal relations of all the students, not simply
minority-group members. Recall that in the process we described, there was
only one human resource in the classroom: the teacher. The teacher is the source
of all answers and virtually all reinforcements. In that process there is no payoff
for consulting and collaborating with one's classmates. They are your enemies,
your competitors; they, too, are trying to impress the teacher and get that
approval and respect you want. Indeed, if a student does try to use the others as
resources in the typical classroom, he may be reprimanded. Thus, not only is the
process highly competitive and destructive to interpersonal relations - which is
itself a heavy cost - but, in addition, a potentially valuable pool of human
resources in the classroom is out of bounds.
The Cooperative Classroom1
Our attempt to change the process was a relatively simple one employing a
synthesis of principles gleaned from Aronson's years of work on small-group
dynamics and social interaction. First, Aronson and his colleagues changed the
basic structure of one expert (the teacher) and thirty listeners . This was
accomplished by placing the students in small groups of five or six students
each. The role of the teacher was changed so that he or she was no longer the
major resource for each of the learning groups by creating a process that made it
imperative that the children treat each other as resources. This was achieved in three
ways:
1. The learning process was structured so that individual
competitiveness was incompatible with success.
2. It was certain that success could occur only after cooperative behavior
among the students in a group.
3. Each student (no matter what her prior status in the classroom) was in
a position to bring to her group-mates a unique gift of knowledge (i.e.,
a piece of vital knowledge that was not readily available accept from
that student).
1 Throughout, we use the term "cooperative classroom" or "jigsaw classroom." By this we do not mean to
imply that cooperation is used exclusively in the classroom, merely that it is systematically used some of
the time.
As mentioned earlier, in a traditional classroom, the students are often rewarded
when they succeed in attracting the teacher's attention by outshining their
competitors. In the cooperative classroom, the students achieved success as a
consequence of paying attention to their peers, asking good questions, helping
each other, teaching each other, and helping each other teach.
How did this come about? An example will clarify. In the initial experiment,
Aronson and his colleagues entered a fifth-grade classroom where the students
were studying biographies of great Americans. The upcoming lesson happened
to be a biography of Joseph Pulitzer. The researchers created a biography of
Joseph Pulitzer that consisted of six paragraphs. The first paragraph was about
Pulitzer's ancestors and how they came to this country; the second described his
childhood and growing-up years; the third covered Pulitzer as a young man, his
education, and his early employment; the fourth told of his middle-age years and
how he founded his newspaper; and so forth. Each major aspect of Pulitzer's life
was contained in a separate paragraph.
They copied the biography, cut it into six one-paragraph sections and gave each
child in the six-person learning group one of the paragraphs. Thus, each
learning group had within it the entire biography of Joseph Pulitzer, but each
child had no more than one-sixth of the story. In order to learn about Pulitzer,
the students had to master their paragraph and teach it to the others in their
group. For example, David was responsible for Pulitzer as a young man, Geoff
for Pulitzer as a child, and so forth. Each student took his paragraph, read it over
a few times, and then joined his counterparts from the other groups. That is,
David, who had Pulitzer as a young man, consulted with Geoff, Christy, Lori,
and Jon, who had also been given Pulitzer as a young man. They could use each
other to rehearse and to be sure they understood the important aspect of that
phase of Pulitzer's life. In this way, each student would become an expert in his
or her segment of Joseph Pulitzer's life. We call these temporary groupings
"expert groups".
This part of the process is of great importance in that it provides time, space and
practice for the less articulate and less skillful students to learn the material and
affords them an opportunity to make use of the more adept students as models
for organizing and presenting their report. The mediation of the expert group,
helps to make the jigsaw experience virtually foolproof. As psychologist Roger
Brown has pointed out, if it weren't for the expert groups, the jigsaw method
might backfire; Brown likens the jigsaw experience to a group of youngster's
playing baseball: If the boy playing right field keeps dropping fly balls, it hurts
your team and you might begin to get a little annoyed at him. By analogy,
suppose you are dependent on the performance of a Hispanic youngster who is
less than perfectly adept in English, and he is having some difficulty articulating
his segment of the lesson. You might resent him. The "expert" groups provides
all students with the opportunity to get a clear idea of how to present the
material--regardless of prior inequities in skill or preparation.
After spending ten or fifteen minutes in their expert groups, the children went
back to their original jigsaw groups, where they were informed that they had a
certain amount of time to teach that knowledge to each other. They were also
told that, at the end of that time (or soon thereafter) each person would be tested
on her individual knowledge of Pulitzer's entire life. Clearly the students had to
depend on one another to learn all their material. The process is highly
reminiscent of a jigsaw puzzle, with each student possessing a single vital piece
of the big picture. Because of this resemblance, we came to refer to our system as
the "jigsaw" model.
When left to their own resources in such a structured situation, the children
eventually learned to teach and to listen to each other. The children began to
learn two important lessons:
1. None of them could do well without the aid of every other person in
that group, and
2. Each member had a unique and essential contribution to make.
Suppose you and I are in the same group. You have been dealt Joseph Pulitzer
as a young man; I have Pulitzer as an old man. The only way that I can learn
about Pulitzer as a young man is if I pay close attention to what you are saying.
You are a very important resource for me. The teacher is no longer the sole
resource; indeed, he is not even in the group. Instead, every kid in the circle
becomes important to me. I do well if I pay attention to other kids; I do poorly if
I don't. It's a whole new ball game.
A jigsaw classroom is not a loose, "anything goes" situation. It is highly
structured. Interdependence is required. It is the element of "required"
interdependence among students which makes this a unique learning method, and it is
this interdependence that encourages the students to take an active part in their learning.
In becoming a teacher of sorts, each student becomes a valuable resource for the
others. Learning from each other gradually diminishes the need to try to outperform
each other because one student's learning enhances the performance of
the other students instead of inhibiting it, as is usually the case in most
competitive, teacher-oriented classrooms. Within this cooperative paradigm the
teacher learns to be a facilitating resource person, and shares in the learning and
teacher process with the students instead of being the sole resource. Rather than
lecturing to the students, the teacher facilitates their mutual learning, in that each
student is required to be an active participant and to be responsible for what he
learns.
Cooperative behavior does not happen all at once. It requires time and practice
for children to use this technique effectively because it is not easy to break old
habits. In Austin, for example, the children had grown accustomed to competing
during their first four years in school; accordingly, for the first several days of
jigsaw, the students tried to find a way to compete, even though competitiveness
was useless--and even dysfunctional. Let us illustrated with an actual example,
which is typical of the way the children stumbled toward the learning of the
cooperative process.
Carlos: A Case Study
In one of our groups there was a boy whom we will call Carlos. Carlos was not
very articulate in English because it was his second language. He had learned
over the years to keep quiet in the classroom because, frequently, when he had
spoken up he had been ridiculed by some of his classmates. In the Jigsaw
method, Carlos was assigned Joseph Pulitzer's middle years. But the Jigsaw
method is not magic; when it was Carlos's turn to communicate his paragraph to
the other students, he had a great deal of trouble and was very uncomfortable
about it. Indeed, he later told us that, early on, he actually liked the traditional
way better. This is not surprising; in the system we had introduced, Carlos was
forced to speak, whereas before he could avoid discomfort simply by remaining
quiet.
The existing situation was even more complex. It might even be said that the
teacher and Carlos had entered into a kind of implicit conspiracy: During the
first few weeks of school, the teacher had gradually learned not to call on Carlos
because when she did he would stumble, stammer, and fall into an embarrassed
silence, and some of the other children would make fun of him. Her decision
undoubtedly came from the kindest of intentions - she simply did not want to
humiliate him. But, unfortunately, by ignoring him, she had, in effect, written
him off, which reinforced his counterproductive behavior. In addition, the
teacher's attitude implied that Carlos was not worth bothering with--and this
message was unintentionally conveyed to the other children in the classroom.
Children notice things and draw their own conclusions; they came to believe that
there was one good reason why the teacher was not calling on Carlos: She felt he
wasn't smart enough. Indeed, it is likely that even Carlos himself began to draw
this conclusion. When one looks at the dynamics of that situation, it is no
wonder that research had shown that desegregation often resulted in a further
decrease in the self-esteem of underprivileged minority children.
Let us go back to our six-person group. Carlos had to report on Joseph Pulitzer's
middle years, and was having a very hard time. He stammered, hesitated, and
fidgeted. The other children were not very helpful; they had grown accustomed
to a competitive process and responded out of this old, over-learned habit. They
knew perfectly well what one does when a rival kid stumbles - especially a kid
from a different ethnic group whom one believes to be stupid. They ridiculed
him, put him down, teased him. During our experiment a couple of the
youngsters in Carlos's group said such things as "Aw, you don't know it,"
"you're dumb," and "You don't know what you are doing."
In our first experiment, the groups were being loosely monitored by a research
assistant who was moving from group to group. Observing this situation, our
assistant intervened by saying something like: "O.K., you can say things like that
if you want to; it might be fun for you, but it's not going to help you learn about
Joseph Pulitzer's middle years, and you will be having an exam on Pulitzer's life
in about 20 minutes."
Notice how the reinforcement contingencies have shifted! No longer do the
children gain much from putting Carlos down, and they stand to lose a great
deal. After a few days and several similar experiences, it began to dawn on the
children that the only way they were going to learn about Pulitzer's middle years
was by paying attention to what Carlos had to say. Out of necessity they
gradually began to develop into pretty good interviewers. If Carlos was having
a little trouble communicating what he knew, instead of ignoring him or
ridiculing him, they began to ask probing questions. They became junior
versions of Barbara Walters or Charlie Rose, asking the kinds of questions that
made it easier for Carlos to communicate what he was thinking. Carlos began to
respond to this treatment by becoming more relaxed, and as he relaxed his ability
to communicate improved. After a couple of weeks, the other children realized
that Carlos was not dumb, as they had originally thought, and began to respect
him, open up to him, like him. Carlos began to enjoy school more and began to
see the Anglo kids in his group not as show-offs and tormentors but as helpful
and responsive. He began to like them.
Basic Results
What happened in Carlos' group is a good example of the technique and how it
frequently worked to produce beneficial effects, but it hardly constitutes
acceptable scientific data. For that, we must turn to the field experiments
performed by Aronson and his colleagues in Texas and California in which the
effects of the jigsaw techniques on interpersonal attraction, self-esteem, and
happiness in school were investigated systematically. Initially, in Austin, the
jigsaw technique was instituted in several classrooms for six weeks and assessed
for its effectiveness by taking measures at the beginning and end of the period -
comparing the performance of the children in the jigsaw classrooms with the
performance of children in more traditional, competitive classrooms being taught
by some of the most effective teachers in the school system.
This research will be described in detail later but as a preview we will tell you
that the findings were quite consistent:
1. Children in the jigsaw classrooms grew to like their groupmates even
more than they liked others in their classroom.
2. Both white and African American children in the jigsaw classrooms
liked school better (or hate school less) than the white and black
children in competitive classrooms. Absenteeism among jigsaw
students decreased dramatically.
3. The self-esteem of the children in the jigsaw classrooms increased to a
greater extent than that of children in competitive classrooms.
4. In terms of the mastery of classroom material, children in the jigsaw
classrooms out-performed children in competitive classrooms. This
difference was primarily due to improvement in the performance of
underprivileged minority students; specifically, while white children
performed as well in either type of classroom, black and Hispanic
children performed significantly better in jigsaw classrooms than in
competitive classrooms.
5. As the result of their experience in jigsaw groups, children learned to
empathize with one another; that is, compared to children in
traditional classrooms they found it easier to put themselves in another
person's shoes and experience the world as if they were that other
person.
These basic results have been replicated and extended in several school districts
in different parts of the country.
While the jigsaw technique was developed as an attempt to bridge the gap
between children from different ethnic groups, these results make clear that its
function is not limited to multiracial situations. In any classroom situation, the
jigsaw method curbs some of the undesirable aspects of excessive competition
and increases the excitement children find in cooperating with one another.
Thus the research demonstrated that what seemed to be a deeply ingrained kind
of behavior - competitiveness - can be modified. Our aim is not to eliminate a
child's ability to compete; a certain amount of competition can be fun and may,
in many circumstances, enhance performance without producing negative
consequences. What we want to do is teach cooperativeness as a skill so that when a
person finds herself in a situation where cooperativeness is the most productive
strategy she will not view everyone in sight as competitors and doggedly try to
defeat them.
Also, cooperative learning in general, and the jigsaw method in particular, can be
a useful addition to individualized learning programs. When individualized
instruction utilizes independent study it frequently results in reducing the child's
opportunity to develop social skills in the learning environment.
Complementing individualized instruction and other classroom experiences with
cooperative groups could provide a beneficial balance as well as an interesting
set of experiences. In this context, it should be noted that the children in these
experiments were exposed to the jigsaw technique for only a small fraction of
their time in school - often as little as three or four hours per week. The rest of
the time they were learning in a generally competitive atmosphere. These results
show that children can learn the skills of cooperation and that cooperative
activities can have an important and beneficial effect on their lives, even when
these activities are presented in a basically competitive atmosphere. This is
encouraging because it means that parents and teachers do not need to choose
between cooperation and competition; both can occur in the same classroom.
Moreover, by working in jigsaw groups, the children learned that it is possible to
work together in a helpful way without sacrificing excellence and that working
together increases their positive feelings about themselves and their happiness in
school. Finally, it is our contention that experiencing cooperativeness will
increase tolerance for temporary failure both in others and in oneself; our hope is
that this technique can lead to a reduction in the anxiety that is too frequently
associated with performance in our society.
www.jigsaw.org
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