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Teachers' scaffolding behaviours duringcooperative learningRobyn M. Gillies a & Michael Boyle aa The University of Queensland , AustraliaPublished online: 20 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Robyn M. Gillies & Michael Boyle (2005) Teachers' scaffolding behavioursduring cooperative learning, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 33:3, 243-259, DOI:10.1080/13598660500286242
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Teachers’ scaffolding behaviours
during cooperative learning
Robyn M. Gillies* and Michael BoyleThe University of Queensland, Australia
This paper outlines the types of verbal interactions teachers engage in to challenge children’s
thinking and problem-solving during cooperative learning. The paper also provides examples of
how children model many of the verbal interactions they have seen demonstrated in their discourse
with each other. It appears that when teachers are explicit in the types of thinking they want
children to engage in, it encourages children to be more focused and explicit in the types of help
they provide. Understanding the key role that teachers play in promoting thinking and problem-
solving in their students is particularly important given that it is the quality of talk that children
generate that is a significant predictor of their learning.
Introduction
There has been a plethora of research over the last three decades that has
documented the benefits of cooperative learning (Slavin, 1995; Johnson & Johnson,
2003). These benefits include academic gains (Gillies & Ashman, 1998; Gillies,
2003a; Stevens, 2003; Terwel, 2003) across diverse subjects areas from pre-school
to college and university settings (Battistich & Watson, 2003; McWhaw et al., 2003),
including those that accrue to children with diverse learning and adjustment needs
(Gillies & Ashman, 2000; Shachar, 2003). In the affective area, it has been
associated with feelings of enhanced competence and self-esteem (McInerney et al.,
1997), the development of positive social relationships (Jordan & LeMetaias, 1997),
and increased motivation to learn (Shachar & Fischer, 2004). Cooperative learning
has also been successful as a teaching strategy to help children learn to manage
conflict (Johnson et al., 1997; Stevahn et al., 1997) and for children identified as
bullies to learn appropriate interpersonal skills (Cowie & Berdondini, 2001). In fact,
it has been argued that cooperative learning experiences are crucial to preventing
and alleviating many of the social problems related to children and youth (Johnson
et al., 2001).
*Corresponding author. School of Education, University of Queensland, Australia 4072. Email:
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education
Vol. 33, No. 3, November 2005, pp. 243–259
ISSN 1359-866X (print)/ISSN 1469-2945 (online)/05/030243-17
# 2005 Australian Teacher Education Association
DOI: 10.1080/13598660500286242
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While the benefits of cooperative learning are unequivocal (Cohen, 1994), the
focus of this research has been on the effects of cooperative learning on students’
learning and socialization. In the last decade, attention has been directed to the
variables that mediate the learning that occurs in cooperative groups and, in
particular, how students interact to facilitate understanding and learning (Webb,
1992; Webb et al., 1995; Gillies & Ashman, 1998; Gillies, 2003a). This research
focus has highlighted the importance of student discourse in seeking help from
others and in providing help, and, in particular, providing elaborated and detailed
help to facilitate understanding and learning (Webb & Farivar, 1999). This includes
the helping behaviours that are necessary for both help seekers and help givers if help
is to be effective in facilitating students’ learning (Webb et al., 2002).
For help seekers this involves teaching students to be active in the learning process
and to ask questions, and to persist in asking them until the help that is required is
received. For help givers, this involves giving help that is detailed and ensuring that
the help given is understood by the recipient (Webb & Mastergeorge, 2003).
However, while much is known about students’ helping behaviours and their
effects on learning, little attention has been directed at the types of verbal behaviours
that teachers use to facilitate understanding and learning during cooperative, small-
group work. This is somewhat surprising given that it widely acknowledged that
teachers play a key role in inducting children into ways of using language to solicit
help, express ideas, and explicate reasons, and, in so doing, helping them to generate
new ways of thinking and learning (Meloth & Deering, 1999; Mercer et al., 1999).
In a study that did investigate teachers’ verbal behaviours as they interacted with
students in whole-class and cooperative settings, Hertz-Lazarowitz and Shachar
(1990) found that when teachers implement cooperative learning in their class-
rooms, it changes the way they interact with their students. In these classrooms,
teachers interact with small groups of children so their language is more personal,
friendly and supportive of their efforts than it is in whole-class settings where
teachers often spend more time directing, lecturing, questioning, and disciplining
students. In effect, the authors argued, when teachers change to cooperative learning
they become involved in a complex process of linguistic change where they move
from more formal and non-intimate interactions (typical of whole-class instruction)
to more informal and intimate interactions with their students.
Building on this research, Gillies (2004) examined whether teachers who
implement cooperative learning in their classrooms engage in more facilitative,
learning interactions with their students than teachers who implement group-work
only. It has been argued that small-group work has many of the characteristics of
whole-class settings because children often work individually on tasks for their own
ends because there is no specific requirement that they work together (Sharan et al.,
1999; Johnson & Johnson, 2003). This is in contrast to cooperative learning where
students are expected to work together as a group, exchange ideas and resources,
contribute to the group’s discussions, challenge others’ reasons and understandings,
discuss alternatives and accept responsibility for the group’s decisions (Johnson &
Johnson, 1990; Mercer et al., 1999).
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The Gillies (2004) study involved 26 teachers and 303 students in Years 8–10 in
four high schools in Brisbane. All participating teachers agreed to embed
cooperative, small-group activities into a unit of work (four–six weeks) once a term
for three school terms. The teachers were audio-taped twice during these lessons and
random samples of the children’s language were also collected. The results show that
when teachers implement cooperative learning in their classrooms they engaged in
more mediated-learning interactions (i.e., interactions designed to foster learning)
and made fewer disciplinary comments than teachers who implemented small-group
work only. Moreover, the teachers in the cooperative condition engaged in nearly
50% more mediated-learning interactions and made less than one-fifth of the
disciplinary comments of their peers in the group-work only condition. Interestingly,
a similar pattern of interactions was observed among the student groups with the
children in the cooperative groups recording nearly twice as many elaborative
responses designed to assist understanding. Furthermore, they were more verbally
interactive than their peers in the group-work only condition. Because talk is widely
recognized as a social mode of thinking that assists in the joint construction of
knowledge (Mercer, 1996; Rojas-Drummond & Mercer, 2003), both these verbal
behaviours are important for fostering learning among group members (Cohen,
1994; Webb & Farivar, 1999).
Teachers’ scaffolding behaviours
Given that the research indicates that when teachers implement cooperative learning
they engage in more facilitative learning interactions and it is these interactions that
have the potential to influence understanding and learning, the purpose of this paper
is to present a detailed summary of the types of verbal behaviours that teachers use
when they embed cooperative learning in their curriculum and they use specific
communications skills to promote thinking and scaffold learning with their students.
Scaffolding learning occurs as more competent adults or peers work within the
child’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) to exchange ideas,
information, perspectives, attitudes and opinions. The interaction that results often
leads individuals to model their patterns of thinking and reasoning and, in so doing,
the recipient often learns new ways of internalizing understandings and problem-
solving (Mercer, 1996; King, 1999). Mercer et al. (1999) were able to demonstrate
that when children are inducted into a process of how to reason together, in this case
through exploratory talk, they are able to transfer this model of reasoning to other
educational experiences. Moreover, the students’ individual scores on a standard
non-verbal reasoning test increased significantly by learning how to use exploratory
talk during group discussions. Similarly, King (2002) found that when children are
taught to ask specific questions that are designed to challenge others’ perspectives
and understandings, they are motivated to reconcile these differences through
discussion, elaboration, explanation, and justification to reach negotiated meaning.
In essence, both Mercer et al. and King were able to demonstrate that learning is
socially constructed during interaction and activity with others.
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The study reported here involved 30 teachers and 826 children from Years 5–7 in
11 primary schools in Brisbane (Gillies, 2003b). All the schools had a similar socio-
economic and demographic profile (i.e., 5–12% of the children came from different
ethnic backgrounds; 10–15% of the children came from single-parent families; and
over 75% of the parents were salaried workers). All teachers were volunteers and all
agreed to implement cooperative learning activities into one unit of work (i.e., four–
six weeks) once a term for two school terms. Prior to the commencement of the
study, the teachers participated in a two-day workshop designed to introduce them
to the basic tenets of cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1990; Mercer et al.,
1999) discussed previously. This also included information on how to establish
problem-solving tasks that were open and discovery-based so the children would be
required to interact about the task, share information and ideas, and discuss how
they will proceed as a group.
The workshop provided the teachers with the opportunity of interacting with their
peers and discussing issues concerning the implementation of cooperative learning
in their classrooms, reflecting on the benefits for themselves, and receiving ongoing
support from their colleagues as they contemplated transforming their teaching
practices to include this approach to learning (Desjean-Perrotta & Buehler, 2002).
In addition to the information that was presented on how to embed cooperative
learning into classroom lessons, one cohort of teachers (cooperative-interactional
group) received additional training in the specific communication skills that
challenge children’s thinking and promote meaningful engagement with the task.
These included the skills of reflecting meaning (It sounds as though …), tentatively
offering suggestions (Have you thought about …?), reframing statements to enable
children to consider an alternative perspective (On the one hand, I hear you saying
that you’re stuck but on the other, you seem to be indicating that you’ve found
the solution. I wonder what it is?), and validating efforts and focusing on key issues
and solutions (You’ve worked that part out after a lot of hard work. I wonder what
you may need to do now if you want to find the solution?). These skills are non-
directive yet are designed to challenge children’s understandings and perspectives
with the intention of helping them to focus more clearly on the problem to be solved
(Egan, 2002; Ivey, 2002). The teachers spent time rehearsing these skills in
triads and verbally processing the role-plays with each other. They were also asked to
think and talk about their reactions to the role-play situations, their assessment of
the quality of the skills they were practising and their hypothesis about how the
children would react to these specific communication skills (Duys & Hedstrom,
2000). The authors moved among group members and encouraged them to think
and talk about their reactions to the use of these communication skills and how they
might be used in classroom settings to promote discussion and thinking among
group members.
While the teachers in the cooperative-interactional group received the additional
training in specific communication skills, the teachers in the cooperative group only
(i.e., group that did not receive the communication skills training) spent an equal
length of time working with the authors and each other to embed cooperative
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learning activities into specific classroom lessons. This included discussing
curriculum issues, resources needed for planning these lessons, and ways of
evaluating of the processes and outcomes of cooperative learning.
The teachers were audio-taped during lessons in which they used cooperative
learning activities. The teachers’ verbal behaviours were coded according to a
schedule originally developed by Hertz-Lazarowitz and Shachar (1990) and
modified for the purposes of this study based upon previous trialling in four, Year
5 classrooms where teachers had embedded cooperative learning into the
curriculum. The six categories of teacher behaviour that were identified were:
control (instructing, lecturing), questions (questions designed to elicit an expected
response), disciplines (reprimands directed at the students), mediates (i.e., prompts,
scaffolds, paraphrases, uses open questions in a tentative manner), encourages
(praises students for their efforts with their work), and maintenance (helps students
during learning, facilitates group learning). Verbal behaviours were coded according
to frequency across each taping session.
The results of this study show that when teachers are trained to use specific
communication skills during cooperative learning (cooperative-interactional group),
12% of their total talk involved mediated-learning interactions or interactions
designed to foster learning, 41.1% involved questioning; and 1.3% was directed at
disciplining students either individually or in their groups. (The remaining
behaviours recorded were: 16.8% lecturing, 15.1% encouraging, 13.7% main-
tenance behaviours.) In contrast, when teachers implement cooperative learning
only, 7.6% of their total talk involved mediated-learning interactions; 21.6%
involved questioning, and 5.7% involved disciplining students (The remaining
behaviours recorded were: 22.8% lecturing, 18.4% encouraging, 23.9% main-
tenance behaviours). These results show that the teachers who had received
additional training in the specific communication skills designed to challenge
children’s thinking engage in mediated-learning interactions and ask questions
nearly twice as frequently as their peers in the cooperative learning only cohort.
Interestingly, these teachers were also four times less likely to have to discipline their
groups than their peers in the cooperative learning cohort.
While the propensity of the teachers to ask questions that often elicited expected
information was evident (i.e., ask questions that require only a short, expected
response), Turner et al. (2002) argue that this type of verbal behaviour can be
effective if used in combination with instructional scaffolding or, as occurred in this
study, mediated-learning interactions. Certainly, Rojas-Drummond and Mercer
(2003) agree and argue that teachers’ questioning behaviour can also encourage
children to make their thoughts and reasons explicit to share with others, model
ways of using language that children can appropriate for themselves, and provide
opportunities for children to express their understandings or articulate their
difficulties. Questioning involves more than the initiation-response-feedback
exchange commonly attributed to teachers but also includes a wider repertoire of
functional purposes that are often designed to encourage children to their make
understandings and reasoning more explicit in order to contribute to the
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development of their own and others’ learning (Alexander, 2000). In effect,
the additive benefits of implementing cooperative learning in classrooms when
teachers are trained in those specific communication skills were apparent in the
proportion of total talk that was devoted to engaging in mediated-learning and
questioning; verbal behaviours designed to challenge children’s thinking and
promote learning.
Teachers’ mediated-learning interactions
In order to elucidate the types of verbal interactions that mediate learning, a detailed
transcription of three of the teachers’ discourse with their students is provided in the
vignettes below. These teachers were chosen, at random, from a pool of 14 teachers
who were in the cooperative-interactional group (i.e., the teachers who had received
the communication skills training mentioned previously) in the Gillies (2003b)
study. The extracts (which were also chosen at random from the discourse the
teachers used) represent typical examples of the types of dialogues that occurred as
the teachers moved among the groups and interacted with the children. An
examination of these transcripts revealed that these teachers used a range of verbal
behaviours designed to prompt children’s thinking, clarify concerns, challenge
perspectives and promote understanding and learning. These are behaviours that are
clearly designed to mediate or scaffold learning.
The first two vignettes (Extracts 1 and 2) provide examples of the types of
interactions that occurred between Therlene, the teacher (T) and her Year 5
students (S). In the first vignette, the children are working in small, cooperative
groups (three–four students) on a social science activity that was investigating issues
related to conservation, pollution and wildlife protection. The focus of this activity is
on the protection of wildlife habitats for specific animals. The vignette involves the
children discussing how to write an information report on king penguins where they
have to work out headings and then decide what information needs to be included.
The transcript involves continuous reciprocal interactions between the teacher and
her students. The interaction that occurred represented only a few minutes of the
teacher’s time with the students in this group as she moved among the groups in the
room to monitor progress, provide assistance and actively challenge the children’s
thinking and ideas.
Extract 1
1. T: So you’re doing the king penguin. Right?
2. S1: There’s a long breeding season.
3. S2: Put it under adaptation.
4. T: Long breeding season. So it’s adapting. What makes you think it might be
adapting? [T is probing the students to extend their thinking and get them to see
if there are other issues that they need to consider.]
5. S: Because they don’t ...
6. T: Because you think that’s how they cope with the environment and by having a
very long breeding season. Did the information you read give you any
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information? why? [T is probing the children and helping them to clarify what
further information they may need.]
7. S: No.
8. T: It was just a point that came out of the video.
9. S: No, it was a book that we read. It just had a dot point, ‘unusually long breeding
period’ and that was it.
10. T: You don’t know whether it’s their adapting to the cold weather. What do you
think it should go under? [T paraphrases to let the children know that she
understands what they’re saying. The question that follows is designed to help
the children clarify which category the information needs to be included in.]
11. S1: Any other feature.
12. S2: Adaptation because it how it gets the penguins to live.
13. T: So you think it gives them longer to look after their young so they can adapt.
Now that’s what you as a group have to decide whether you want to put it under
that or under any other features. [T is acknowledging and validating students’
understanding while also helping them to focus on key issues.]
14. S1: I think adaptation.
15. S2: Same.
16. T: Do you all agree on that?
17. S: Yes.
18. T: So you can develop a sentence around that when you later do your notes.
19. S: Yes.
In the above extract, the teacher focused on extending the children’s thinking
to encourage them to consider other issues or alternative solutions to the points
they are discussing (see Turns 4 and 6). She has also engaged in discourse where
she carefully acknowledged their efforts or validated their achievements before
she challenged their focus to help them clarify the issue further (see Turns 10 and
13).
In the second vignette, Therlene, the teacher (T) and her students (S) are
discussing how to keep people from riding their bikes in Bargain Town Shopping
Centre. This activity required the children to examine the issues (i.e., why people
needed to ride their bike in the shopping centre), propose possible solutions to this
problem, and discuss the consequences of these solutions. The children are working
in small, cooperative groups on this social science activity, which is investigating the
impact of people on the environment.
Extract 2
1. T: Where are we up to?
3. S: Up to the solution.
3. T: You’ve found the problem. So what have you decided the problem’s going to be?
[T is challenging the students to identify the problem.]
4. S: People riding their bikes in Bargain Town Shopping Centre.
5. T: It looks as if you’ve got a solution. Whose solution is that? Is it yours Matthew?
And what is the solution you’ve got? Tell them why they shouldn’t ride in
Shopping Town. [T is seeking clarification on a possible solution.]
6. T: Right now you all agree that’s a good solution. OK the others thinking up another
possible solution. You’ve got one ready, have you Nick? Have you discussed it
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with the rest of your group? [T is encouraging group discussion to reach
consensus.]
7.T: So what’s yours Nick?
8. S: Ask the police to patrol the shopping centre so the bike riders won’t come
through the shopping centre.
9. T: More police patrols in that area? So do you think that ... [T is probing the
students to help them identify a possible solution.]
10. S: Ask the centre management if it’s all right.
11. T: So approach the shopping centre management first. Why would you do that? [T
is extending the children’s thinking by asking them to provide additional
reasons.]
12. S: Because they might not approve of it.
13. T: So they might approve of the children riding through. OK, did you think that
would be a solution to approach the management first or the police or both? [T
is seeking clarification on the two potential solutions.]
14. S: Ask the management first.
15. T: What one do you want to put down, Nick?
16. S: The manager because they might not want the police outside the shopping
centre.
17. T: Why do you think they might not want the police outside the shopping centre?
[T is probing the children’s thinking to see if they can provide reasons why a
potential solution may not be possible.]
18. S: Might scare the customers.
19. T: Yes, it might possibly. Yes, people might think there’s a lot of police around here,
I might not bother going into the shopping centre. OK, so which one have you
decided to agree upon. [Group response.] OK so what you’ve discussed should
help you people come up with some more solutions. Ready to write yours
in Nick. And are you two ladies thinking of what you’re going to do. Ready to
discuss it?
20. T: This looks really great. You’ve nearly finished. Has the group been on task the
whole time? [T acknowledges and validates the effort that the children have put
into working through their problem-solving task.]
21. S: Yes.
22. T: Who’s the leader?
23. S: Jacob.
24. T: Has he been a good leader?
25. S: Yes.
26. T: How has he been a good leader? [T trying to get the children to identify the
characteristics of a good leader to encouraging supportive behaviours in other
group members.]
27. S: By doing a lot of the work. He’s been helping us.
28. T: Right well done. [T acknowledging effort.]
In the extract above, Therlene focused on helping the children to discuss their
ideas and clarify the problem through consensus (see Turns 3 and 6). As the
students suggest a possible solution, Therlene probes the students to help them
identify a possible consequence of the solution they propose (see Turn 9). This
interaction continues until clarification is sought on the two potential solutions that
the children are discussing (Turn 13). This probing continues until Therlene asks
them to explain why a potential solution may not be possible (see Turn 17). As the
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children are challenged to consider their answers, Therlene is careful to acknowledge
their efforts at working on the task (Turns 20 and 28). Validating children’s efforts
are important for their sense of self-efficacy and continuing engagement as
participants in the learning process (Bandura, 1993).
In the two vignettes presented above, Therlene is engaged in a series of reciprocal
interactions with her students which are designed to extend their thinking by probing
their ideas, challenging them to clarify their understandings, and focusing their
attention on key issues that they may like to consider. She does this in the context of
acknowledging and validating their efforts while encouraging them to discuss their
ideas with others. Dialoguing together is a prerequisite to being able to reach
consensus on co-constructing new understandings and knowledge (Mercer, 1996)
and teachers play a key role in creating the conditions that will enable this to occur
(Blatchford et al., 2003).
The next vignette (Extract 3) provides an example of the types of discussions that
occurred between Chris (T) and her Year 5 students (S) as the students engaged
in cooperative group work on a science problem they were trying to solve. This
activity was part of an integrated unit of work in the social sciences that was focusing
on sources of power. The children are working in small, cooperative groups (three–
four students) to try and work out how to create a light ray that would fall on a ruby for
exactly one minute to open a treasure cave. This was an imaginative task to which the
children had to apply scientific principles. As part of the task the students were
required to consider the following meta-questions: What do we know? What do we need
to know? What are the possible tools that we could use? The task was complex, open and
discovery-based which required contributions from all members of the group in order
to arrive at an agreed-upon resolution of the problem. The extract below represents a
few minutes of interaction that Chris had with one group of students as she moved
around the different groups in her classroom to monitor their progress.
Extract 3
1. T: What are we going to have to do?
2. S: Break the code.
3. T: Who decides on the wondrous things?
4. S: [Response unclear.]
5. T: I think Scot has got some ideas here. You are giving us an idea. Scot what are you
telling us? So where did you get the ideas for a ‘wondrous’ thing? [T
acknowledges idea and seeks clarification about the ‘wondrous’ thing.]
6. S: Out of our heads.
7. T: Good girls! Out of our heads. I’m not going to tell you. You’re going to make it up
yourselves. [The teacher listened quietly to the discussion before intervening.]
8. T: Now Allan’s come up with a question, ‘Where are we going to get these things?’
Do we have them in the school? [T probes the children to think about the
resources they will need.]
9. S: Yes.
10. T: Yes we do. So when it says possible material we actually have these in the school.
So it’s a matter of actually going and finding them in the science room. If we
come down to these questions what do we do now. We actually do know a lot.
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Tom has actually been doing this at Cubs. Rafael has an idea. You’ve all got an
idea but we actually know more than we think we do. What do we need to know?
How are we actually going to find out about this? [T challenges students’
thinking.]
11. S: [Response unclear.]
12. T: So you’re saying get all the stuff, put it in the middle and have a go at it. So hands
on, get going, see if it works. What’s another way? You came up with an idea a
long time ago. You said Allan that you had this little thing at home. [T
challenges students’ thinking.]
13. S: I have this little book.
14. T: A little book.
15. S: It teaches you how to make these things with batteries and magnets and stuff.
16. T: So you might have a book at home that has this type of information. Does
anybody else have a book about this sort of thing about batteries and wires?
17. S: My brother might.
18. T: Where’s another place where we might get this type of information, Tom?
19. S: Library, Internet?
20. T: So we’ve got a couple of things on the go. Do you think by the next time we meet
that’s the sort of thing we can really get stuck into? See what we’ve got at home,
what we’ve got in the school and talk and see who can bring what. OK, by
talking you’ve come out with a lot. Tom I bet you’d forgotten all that you’d done
at Cubs. I bet you didn’t realize that all that great stuff you were doing there is
going to be very helpful. OK, you are a very valuable worker. [T acknowledges
and validates children’s knowledge and further challenges their thinking.]
Chris, like Therlene is focused on trying to extend her students’ thinking by
challenging them to think of what they may still need to know if they are to find a
solution to the imaginative task she has posed. Once again like Therlene, she did this
in the context of a highly supportive social environment where she acknowledged
and validated the children’s efforts while simultaneously challenging their thinking
and understandings. She created the conditions that encouraged the children to
collaborate and co-construct solutions to their problems in an environment that was
supportive of their learning (Palincsar, 1998; Meloth & Deering, 1999).
In the final vignette (Extract 4), Andrew (T) is moving around the small-groups in
his Year 5 classroom and discussing different aspects of a science experiment that
the children are working on which deals with force and resistance. This small-group
activity is a follow-up to a previous lesson that taught the concepts needed to manage
the task. While the vignette presented below depicts only a brief interaction with
each group, it nevertheless provides insightful information on the teaching strategies
Andrew used to motivate his groups, facilitate their learning and, generally, create an
environment that was conducive to students engaging with the task at hand.
Extract 4
Group 1:
1. S: … up and down?
2. T: Is this the question?
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3. S: One of the ramps goes up here. One of the ramps slopes downwards. At the end
of the first ramp is a marble. You drop one of here and there’s a marble at …
How can we do that with this like that?
4. T: I guess that’s the problem for you to solve. Evan, it seems to me it’s being
explained very well because you told me exactly what to do. [T is acknowl-
edging student’s idea.]
5. S: I know but why do we have to …
6. T: I would suggest the panic stage you’re at the moment is not going to be overly
helpful. And utilizing the vast experience and scientific talent surrounding you
because at the moment you’re internalizing this and letting yourself think it
can’t be done as opposed to talking to these wonderful people around you who
have the capacity and ability to achieve it. [T is validating students’ capacities to
work on resolving the problem and tentatively suggesting that they have enough
personal resources in the group to be successful.]
7. S: [Group response.]
8. T: OK, guys get it done and I’m going to have to take your question cube too. But what
Evan was describing there guys was what you have to do and the diagram is what it
needs to be. OK, and the way he showed me the diagram there is what it needs to be.
If you’re not sure keep going back to the sheet because it does spell out exactly what
has to be done and how it needs to be completed. You’ll need to refer back to this
constantly. It’s all there.
Andrew moves on to the next group to check on their progress and facilitate their
learning.
Group 2:
9. T: OK, guys how are you going there?
10. S: [Group response.]
11. T: OK, so you’re looking forward to your brainstorming time. OK Spencer, how is
it going? Talk me through what you’ve got. [T is challenging student’s
thinking.]
12. S: I’ve put up this one on my first one … [unclear].
13. S2: If it goes too fast the string is across there because it stops the marble.
14. T: Ah! So what will that string be doing? Acting as what? [T is challenging the
children’s thinking.]
15. S: Resistance.
16. T: Acts as a bit of resistance or friction. Good! That’s what you had to do. You had
to include it. You’ve obviously gone through this very well together. So well
done guys! Excellent! Pleased to see it guys. A few other groups could follow
your example. Terrific, I’m pleased with that. [T is acknowledging and
validating students’ efforts at trying to solve the problem.]
Andrew has completed his discussion with Group 2 and moves on to Group 3 to
check on their progress and provide assistance if needed.
Group 3:
17. S: If I use the red ‘thing’ will you answer me?
18. T: Sure! OK, tell me again because you’ve had a chance to go over your plan. [T is
challenging students’ thinking.]
19. S: We have a marble here in the middle and a marble here to roll down. It’s going
to roll down this way and the marble has to go up and over.
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20. T: Right idea excepting, Georgia just read this bit of information here. [T is
confronting discrepancies.]
21. S: What! Well. How does it go up?
22. T: Just reversing what you told me! You were using your rulers as your up ramp.
They go the other way. [T helping to clarifying options.] That’s what I gave
you to use. Our brains are just sinking as one [laughing]. OK, I think you’re
right to go there mate.
Although Andrew acknowledged and validated the children’s efforts at trying
to work on their problem task, he was also quite confrontational in how he
challenged their thinking: ‘Talk me through what you’ve got’ (Turn 11), ‘OK, tell
me again because you’ve had a chance to go over your plan’ (Turn 18). He
was asking the student/s to be quite explicit with their thinking and articulate
their understandings. When children have to make their ideas or under-
standings explicit, they not only have to reorganize their own thinking, but also
explain themselves in ways that others will accept as valid. It is this process of
personal reconstruction and explanation that contributes to the development of
children’s own and others’ learning (Alexander, 2000; Rojas-Drummond & Mercer,
2003).
Discussion and implications for teaching
The purpose of this paper was to present an overview of the types of mediated-
learning interactions teachers demonstrate when they use specific communications
skills designed to challenge children’ thinking and understanding during cooperative
learning. The communication skills the teachers were taught included: reflecting
meaning, tentatively offering suggestions, reframing statements to enable children to
consider alternative perspectives, validating efforts, and focusing on key issues and
solutions. These skills are designed to challenge children’s perspectives and
problem-solving processes (Egan, 2002; Ivey, 2002); however, their use by teachers
to facilitate discussion during cooperative learning is not well documented. This
is a concern because Meloth and Deering (1999) were able to demonstrate that
cognitively sophisticated talk only emerges with low frequency when left to emerge
naturally or as a by-product of cooperative learning. Similarly, Chinn et al. (2000)
found that when children were required to discuss reasons for their conclusions, they
used higher quality discourse than their peers who did not engage in argumentative
discourse. In effect, Meloth and Deering and Chinn et al. argue that teachers need to
be explicit in the thinking skills they teach if children are to use these skills to enrich
their own discourse and learning.
In the current study, the teachers’ mediated-learning interactions or interactions
that are designed to scaffold learning included: probing and clarifying to extend
children’s thinking, acknowledging and validating children’s understandings,
focusing on key issues, confronting discrepancies in their thinking, challenging
children to identify problem issues, validating children’s ideas, and tentatively
offering suggestions—discourses designed to prompt children’s cognitive and
metacognitive thinking (Palinscar, 1998; King, 1999). Although the discourses the
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children used in response to their teachers’ explicit probing, challenging, confronting
and validating behaviours are not reported in this paper, it is clear, from the
examples below, that the children did model these verbal behaviours in
their discussions with each other. The following extract is a small part of a
continuous discussion that occurred in one of the small-groups in Therlene’s room
which was engaged in writing the information report on king penguins (mentioned
previously):
What do you think about this? I wrote down [information about king penguins]. That’s
pretty good. [Encouragement by student of another’s efforts.] What are you going to write
down? [Challenge to group member to identify what he was going to contribute.] What
are you doing? [Challenge to student.] I found they go further north—north of Antarctica.
Enemies would be? What do you reckon enemies would be? [Challenge to group’s thinking.]
Yeah! That’s what I’m thinking. [Validation of idea.] It has many enemies. Put many
enemies. [Children engage in a vibrant discussion about predators.] Was any other
features? Yeah! Any other features? What do you reckon? [Seeks group’s opinion on any
other information to be included.]
The above passage illustrates how the children modeled many of the verbal
behaviours that they had seen their teacher demonstrate in her interactions with
them. The children encouraged each other: ‘That’s pretty good’; challenged the
group’s thinking: ‘What do you reckon enemies would be?’; and sought each other’s
opinion on ideas or information: ‘What do you reckon?’ These types of interactions
occurred many times over as the children discussed the king penguin report they
were co-constructing.
The second extract is a small part of a continuous discussion that occurred among
members in a group that was working on how to create a light ray that would open a
treasure cave in Chris’s classroom:
What can we write out? OK! We’ll have to make something glow for exactly one minute.
That’s going to be hard to make it glow for exactly one minute. We need to decide how
we’re going to make it glow for exactly one minute. [Seeks group consensus.] So that
it would go. We’re not allowed to touch it … we could use batteries? [Seeks group’s opinion.]
We can use those. [Validates other child’s idea.] I have those batteries. Why a watch
battery? A bulb could go there. [Discussion about bulbs from a battery.] So we could do …
[Tentative suggestion to group.] The only trouble with that is … [Challenges
another’s perspective.] What about timing it so…. [Tentative suggestion.] We could
try … [Tentative suggestion.] What are the mechanics in the device? [Challenge to
children’s thinking.] [Further discussion.] I was thinking like … [making his thinking
explicit]. If we put it in, the instrument is mechanical and it would turn it off. [Tentative
suggestion.]
It is clear from both examples above that the children engaged in challenging each
other’s perspective, validating and acknowledging others’ efforts, and seeking the ideas
of others—models of interacting that their teachers had demonstrated with them. It
has been suggested that children probably learn new ways of thinking and talking by
listening to teachers model these behaviours in their interactions with students (Cohen
et al., 2002). Moreover, when teachers are explicit in the types of thinking they want
children to use, it encourages the children to be more focused and explicit in the types
of help they provide to each other in their group discussions. This is particularly
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important because it is the quality of talk that groups generate that is a significant
predictor of students’ learning (Webb & Farivar, 1999; King, 2002).
Certainly, the behaviours that the children demonstrated emanated from the
teacher–student dialogues that occurred where teachers modeled not only how to
engage in problem-solving discourse or thinking about thinking (King, 2002), but
also the behaviours that invite participation as partners in developing shared
understandings of the issue at hand (Palinscar & Herrenkohl, 2002). When teachers
are explicit in the issues they want children to consider in their discussions and they
provide direct guidance on how this can be achieved, children have been found to be
enthusiastic and effective at grasping knowledgeable ways of using language for
sharing and constructing understandings (Mercer, 1996; Rojas-Drummond et al.,
1997). Moreover, it has been argued that if the rules for language engagement were
more carefully explicated, justified and scaffolded by teachers, this would improve
the educational quality of all classroom-based activities, including small group
discussions (Mercer et al., 1999). By enabling children to dialogue together, they not
only benefit from the intellectual guidance provided by the teacher but also become
skilled participants in intellectual communities of discourse and practice (Mercer
et al.). Rojas-Drummond and Mercer (2003) were able to demonstrate that children
obtain particular benefits in reasoning and learning from dialoguing together when
there is a careful integration of teacher-led discourse and peer interaction.
Furthermore, this is something teachers must be willing to do if they are to ensure
that the ‘social pedagogic’ potential of classroom group work is to be fully realized
(Blatchford et al., 2003).
Teachers have the capacity to create opportunities for children to dialogue
together when they establish cooperative learning activities in their classrooms.
However, these activities alone are not sufficient to enhance intellectually
sophisticated talk. Teachers also need to be explicit in the thinking skills they teach
if children are to use these skills in their own discourse. This involves teachers
demonstrating and modeling skills that challenge, probe, and confront anomalies in
children’s thinking and learning. When this happens, children often learn new ways
of reasoning and thinking and they will use these use these skills in their interactions
with each other.
Conclusion
This paper has outlined the types of verbal interactions teachers engage in to
challenge children’s thinking and problem-solving during cooperative learning. The
paper also provides examples of how children model many of the verbal interactions
they have seen demonstrated in their discourse with each other. It appears that when
teachers are explicit in the types of thinking they want children to use, it encourages
children to be more focused and explicit in the types of help they provide to each
other. Understanding the key role that teachers play in promoting thinking and
problem-solving in their students is particularly important given that it is the quality
of talk that children generate that is a significant predictor of learning.
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Notes on contributors
Robyn Gillies is Associate Professor in the School of Education, University of
Queensland. Her major research interests include student behaviours, discourses,
and learning during cooperative, small-group work.
Michael Boyle is a senior research associate in the School of Education, University of
Queensland where he has worked on a number of projects that have focused on
students’ learning during cooperative, small-group work.
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