Chapter 15 page 393
Many successful methods—including Group Investigation, Complex Instruction, jigsaw, and
constructive controversy—employ complex, open-ended tasks so that students must pool their knowledge
and abilities to complete the task successfully.
Complex tasks often require effective scaffolding for students to accomplish. Common scaffolding
methods include preteaching needed knowledge and strategies, decomposing tasks into manageable chunks,
providing cognitive prompts and hints, assigning social and cognitive roles, setting of mechanisms for self-
evaluation. Scaffolding provides students with tools that enable them to succeed at a task that they could
not have completed without experience.
Preparing students for group work includes leading team-building exercises, teaching norms, and
teaching social and cognitive skills.
Teachers can ameliorate status differences by convincing students that multiple abilities are needed
for complex tasks and that no one student has all these abilities. Teachers can also assign competence to
low-status students.
No single group size is ideal for group work. There are different perspectives on the appropriate
group composition.