Peer Work Groups in Elementary Schools

This study investigated the use of peer work groups (PWGs) in fifth-grade math and social studies classrooms. Social studies PWGs were more frequent than math PWGs and involved a broader variety of student behaviors and cognitive levels. Classification according to a proposed PWG typology revealed that the majority of social studies groups was cooperative in both task and reward structures. Helping task structures, with individualistic reward structures, were more common in math. Competitive reward structures occurred only in math. For both subjects, student involvement was highest in cooperatively task-structured groups. The findings are compared with those of field experiments in cooperative learning.