Research School Network: Using Group Work for Effective Learning For any teacher looking to implement or improve peer-to-peer learning in their lessons, Slavin’s paper is essential reading

In the world of education, group work has done its rounds in terms of being lauded and derided. Whilst many teachers are understandably wary of the pitfalls that group work can engender, the EEF’s guide on metacognition and self-regulated learning posits that pupil-to-pupil and pupil-teacher talk can help to build knowledge and understanding of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Whilst direct instruction and explicit modelling from the teacher remain central to effective teaching and learning, it seems that there is a need to explore how we can structure the relationships between students in classrooms to support their learning as well.

For any teacher who is looking to implement or improve peer-to-peer learning in their lessons, Slavin’s paper Co-operative Learning: What Makes Group Work Work is essential reading.

Slavin states that ​‘having students work in groups can be enormously beneficial or it can be of little value’. This will come as no surprise to teachers who have witnessed chaotic group work lessons with a wide range of results in terms of student engagement and learning. To help explain why there can be such diversity in group work outcomes, Slavin identifies ​‘two kinds of co-operative learning methods’: Structured team learning and informal learning methods.

What are the two approaches to co-operative learning?

Structured Team Learning

Structured team learning is based on the principle that ​‘students don’t just do something together – they learn something as a team’. Slavin suggests that this objective can be successfully implemented through establishing ​‘individual accountability’ and ​‘rewards to teams based on the learning and progress of their members’. Individual accountability means that the success of the team is dependent on every member learning something. This means that the team is responsible for explaining ideas and concepts to each other and ensuring that all team members are ready for an assessment that they will take on their own. The team earns a reward if they achieve above a designated threshold. Crucially, improvement on the team’s past performance is emphasised. This means that every individual contribution, irrespective of starting point, is valued as it can increase the aggregate outcome for the team.

An example of structured team learning might be a lesson where a group of students work together to master a topic, for example fractions or spellings, and then take individual quizzes at the end. This would still require direct input from the teacher in the first instance to ensure that dialogue is purposeful and challenging and based on accurate prior knowledge.

Informal Group Learning

Informal group learning is more focused on social dynamics. With this approach, the group are given a task and break this down into sections to complete on an individual basis. The group then reforms and stitches together the sections to create a whole response. Due to the nature of this type of group learning, the team members become experts on their particular section. Consequently, this type of group work involves careful listening to team mates in order to learn all of the material. This approach is often used on a whole-class basis as well, for example when students prepare and deliver presentations covering various sub-topics from the same category.

An example of informal group learning might be a lesson where the class have an umbrella topic such as a single poem. Small groups, pairs or individuals explore smaller sections of the one poem and then present their findings and ideas to the rest of the class. Every student has to listen to all of the contributions to learn about the whole poem.

Findings About the Two Approaches

Slavin reports a review of 99 studies of co-operative learning in which the two co-operative learning approaches were compared to control groups that used more ​‘traditional approaches’. However, the nature of these ​‘traditional’ approaches is not specified in this paper. Furthermore, Slavin cites that ​‘of 64 studies that involved structured team learning methods, 50 found significantly positive effects on achievement and none found negative effects’ Conversely, studies of informal group learning methods ​‘found few positive effects’. Again, however, the specific nature of these ​‘achievements’ are not reported in this paper, therefore making it more difficult to ascertain the exact impact of the co-operative learning approaches being tested.


In terms of how the groups work, Slavin suggests that structured group learning is the most effective approach because of the individual accountability inherent to the method. If students have to complete a task, a worksheet for example, then it is very easy for one or two members of the group to do so without involvement from others. However, individual accountability means that the group is responsible for ensuring that every member learns something, and so are required to spend time giving and receiving explanations.

Ideas for Practice

1.

When setting up group work spend time considering the aims. If it to improve student learning, then a structured team learning approach is most likely to be the best way forward. This would still require considerable input from the teacher in the through direct instruction, explicit modelling and feedback.

2.

If the aim is to improve all students’ learning then think carefully about how you will create individual accountability. Slavin seems to highlight individual quizzing or assessment, with the scores accumulated for the group, as particularly beneficial for the learning of all students.

3.

Support colleagues in reflecting on and discussing how they set up group tasks. This may help to generate some purposeful activities that can be shared and developed and avoid group work lessons where, for some students, very little learning occurs.

Take a look at James Crane’s blog on effective group work in practice here.