ABSTRACT
Research on cooperative learning shows that working collaboratively with others has the potential to increase achievement (Slavin, 1990). However, simply putting students in small groups does not guarantee that they will interact with each other in ways that benefit learning (Bossert, 1988-1989; Webb & Palincsar, 1996). Much attention has been paid to help giving and receiving and the significant role these behaviors play in predicting how well students learn how to solve problems in cooperative groups. Previous research identifies several important categories of help-related behavior: the level of help exchanged (explanations rather than just answers) and whether recipients of help apply it themselves to the problem or task at hand (Webb & Palincsar, 1996).
