Gender differences in a cooperative computer‐based language task

Summary Teachers have expressed a preference for group work over individual work in an earlier survey of the social organization of the computer‐based classroom, and in a variety of activities a group facilitation effect has been observed. Mixed‐gender groups are reported to be preferred over single‐gender groups. However, girls tend to be dominated by boys in computer‐based tasks which require co‐operative work, even though girls have no disadvantages in these tasks when tested individually or in single‐gender groups. The present experiment observed the performance of three types of pairings in an upper primary school — boys with boys, girls with girls and boys with girls — on a task involving the completion of a short piece of text from which certain letters had been deleted. The task required the co‐operative use of the computer keyboard, and the experiment asked whether there would be gender differences in the success with which the task was completed, in comparison with the same children working individually. Four measures of performance gave consistent results: both types of single‐gender pairs improved in comparison with individuals working alone, but mixed‐gender pairs did not. There were no gender differences in performance other than this effect of groups. Informal observations of group organization suggested that single‐gender pairs tended to share the components of the task and to discuss possible solutions, whereas the mixed‐gender pairs tended to separate the task components and to work on each other's instructions. On the basis of this small‐scale experiment, it is suggested that if group facilitation effects are to be seen in mixed‐gender groups, then cross‐gender discussion and negotiation will need to be encouraged.