PROMOTING THE EXPERIENCE OF COOPERATION AMONG STUDENTS IN CLASSROOM LEARNING GROUPS THROUGH GOAL STRUCTURING AND POSITIVE REFRAMING.

摘要

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of three incentive methods, cooperative goal structure, individual goal structure, and positive reframing, in promoting the experience of cooperation among students in classroom learning groups. It was anticipated that in the course of the four day study, the goal structure and reframing interventions would differently influence the course of group stage development.;At the beginning of the experiment, the students were informed of the goal structure condition under which they were to work. The positive reframing intervention was made at the beginning of Session 3 of the study. A total of four groups participated under each experimental condition. On each of the four days, the students were given an assignment to complete. After they finished their assignments, the students rated their perceptions of one another and their experience of their own behavior and that of the group, on two questionnaires, the SYMLOG Adjective Rating Scales and the Interpersonal Reaction Form.;The results of the analyses performed on the students' responses to the questionnaires revealed that positive reframing in combination with cooperative or individual goal structure facilitated the experience of intragroup cooperation among students to a greater extent than did either cooperative or individual goal structure alone.;Contrary to expectations, the pattern of experiences of the students in the four conditions did not follow an orderly sequence of stage development as described by previous researchers. In the present study, no pattern of stage development could be identified.;The subjects for the study were 64 ninth-grade high school students who attended classes in science in a suburban New Jersey community. Their teachers randomly assigned the students to one of 16 small, leaderless, learning groups. The groups were assigned to experimental conditions consisting of one or a combination of intervention conditions. The four intervention conditions were: cooperative goal structure, individual goal structure, cooperative goal structure and reframing, and individual goal structure and reframing.