The present study investigated the extent to which 18 dyads in 5th and 6th grade, who experienced low levels of social challenge, differed from 12 dyads who experience high levels of social challenge in terms of the quality of their written assignment, as well as the frequency and sequential pattern of their cognitive, metacognitive, relational,…

When students are working together, some off-task conversations actually smooth the way to working together more effectively. While many assume that off-task talk is unproductive, our study revealed that students used off-task talk predominantly for productive purposes. We found that off-task talk supported student access to collaboration, and…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are beneficial for individual students learning in several domains, including mathematics where they have been used to support both secondary and elementary students. Collaborative learning may be beneficial to include in ITSs, particularly for conceptual knowledge. There is little work on collaborative ITSs,…

Research on problem-based learning (PBL) has tended to focus on the graduate level of education, paying less attention to the primary school level and to what is involved for students during the implementation of PBL. In this paper we take a step towards addressing this need for research by reporting findings from a descriptive, explanatory case…

The Hong Kong Education Bureau recommends that primary school pupils' mathematical achievement be enhanced via collaborative discussions engendered by group work. This pedagogic change may be hindered by Confucian heritage classroom practices and Western-dominated group work approaches that predominate in Hong Kong. To overcome these obstacles, we…

While research indicates that technology can be useful for supporting learning and collaboration, there is still relatively little uptake or widespread implementation of these technologies in classrooms. In this paper, we explore one aspect of the development of a multi-touch classroom, looking at two different designs of the classroom environment…

Robotics provide the opportunity for students to bring their individual interests, perspectives and areas of expertise together in order to work collaboratively on real-world science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) problems. This paper examines the nature of collaboration that manifests in groups of elementary and middle school…

This article presents the findings of ethnographic case studies of three girls on the autistic spectrum attending mainstream primary schools and illustrates the difficulties they experience and the ways in which these are often unrecognised. The observations of the girls and subsequent individual interviews with their mothers, class teachers,…

Little is known about the skills children need to successfully collaborate with classmates on academic assignments. The purposes of this study were to identify grade-schoolers' collaborative skills, evaluate the importance of identified skills for collaborative work, and determine whether differences in skill use were related to children's social…

Conversation is a strategy that helps students build reading skills and improve reading comprehension. This study describes the implementation of connection prompts in a 2nd-grade classroom to support students in making predictions, questioning the text, and initiating further conversation. Research suggests that once conversation is initiated,…

The authors used a withdrawal design to evaluate the effects of a modified Color Wheel System (M-CWS) on the on-task behavior of 7 students enrolled in the 4th grade. Standard CWS procedures were modified to include a 4th set of rules designed to set behavioral expectation for cooperative learning activities. Mean data showed that immediately…

This article examines the qualitative findings from a mixed-methods comparison study of the use of an online multi-user virtual environment called Anytown which supplemented face-to-face writing instruction in a fourth grade classroom to determine implications for the design of such environments and the reported impact of this design on students…

This Action Research Project Report was conducted at one elementary school and two different high schools from August 20, 2007 to December 14, 2007. The purpose of this research was to decrease student off-task behavior in the classroom. There were four teacher researchers and 94 students at the beginning of the research, but during the action…

A study of groups of fifth graders working in competitive or cooperative learning conditions found that in the cooperative condition, most student interactions were on-task, whereas in the competitive condition, all student interactions were off-task. Groups that began the term in the competitive condition and then switched to cooperative learning…

Findings of a study that examined the effects of teacher behavior and organizational factors on student behavior in peer work groups are presented in this paper. Methodology included observation of one classroom from each of 10 Dutch elementary schools that frequently used forms of peer work groups and teacher interviews. Findings indicate that…