Why Use Collaborative Pairs?

Laurian Phillips
Jul 21, 2008

Setting up collaborative pairs in a school system creates an environment that more closely resembles the real world.  This increases the effectiveness of the system since it is based in a real world context.  Anytime the learning environment can be made more authentic, the student becomes more interested and the learning becomes more natural.  Piaget believed that collaboration between peers was equally shared. This was not the case in pairings between adults and children or teachers and students.  In those cases, the adult or teacher is usually in control and the child or student simply follows what the adult says.  This may lead to correct answers but does not follow natural learning or construction of one's own understanding.  According to Miyake, 1986, constructive criticisms occur while students learn in collaboration. His experiment showed that about 80% of self-critiquing (reflection) took place during collaborative learning compared to 20% which took place when students were learning alone. Self-critiquing is a major contributor to the success of collaborative learning. Miyake's experiment showed that the students might have missed the opportunity for understanding if they had not collaborated with their peers.

Miyake, N. 1986. Constructive Interaction and the Iterative Process of Understanding. Cognitive Science 10:151--177.