EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 15 page 370

motivating, which enhances engagement. To that end, all group members must work together to complete
complex task because the tasks are difficult enough that multiple perspectives are needed to solve the
problems. To complete complex tasks successfully, students must attend to each others’ ideas, especially
when peers offer new perspectives that others had not yet considered. In these cases, students are using
high-level cognitive strategies to complete these tasks.
Many different collaborative learning approaches have been developed that implement most or all of
these principles of developing tasks. Following are three different cooperative learning methods that employ
complex tasks and that have shown positive results in empirical studies.

Pedagogy 15.9. Designing Instruction. Alvin’s Masterpiece.

Fourth-grade students are to discuss a story called “Alvin’s Masterpiece.” In the story, a boy named Alvin

is trying to create a painting on canvass for an art contest at a local art museum. After many failures,

Alvin sees that he is largely covered in paint as a result of all of his efforts and decides that he himself is a

masterpiece. He takes a large frame and stands in the museum behind the frame. He wins a prize in the

contest.

Rank order these four tasks for use with groups of five. The particular goals of the task are to

arouse engagement, stimulate high-level strategy use, encourage a good understanding of the story, and

promote a good understanding of the issues raised by the story.

#1

Discuss these

questions:

1. What did Alvin
   want to do?


2. Why did he want to
   do it?


3. What did Alvin’s
   masterpiece turn out
   to be?


4. What did he decide
   at the end of the
   story?

#2

Did Alvin really

create a

masterpiece?

There is a table

of resources at

the back of the

room that you

can use you help

you decide.

Be ready to

report all your

group’s best

arguments to

the class.

#3

Create a

storyboard

showing 5

important

occurrences in

this story. You

should have five

images in your

storyboard.

#4

Students are given a folder with pictures of

works of four works of art and short

descriptions of how each of the four artists

created this work. The pieces of art are:

Jackson Pollock, Shimmering Substance

Paul Klee, Red and White Domes

Abramovic & Ulay, Rest Energy (performance

art)

Elena Madden, Unexpected Discoveries of

Nature.

All of these works are viewed as masterpieces

by at least some art experts. What do they

have in common? If these are masterpieces,

did Alvin create a masterpiece?

Response. #1 is not a complex task. There is no need for multiple sources of information or various kinds

of investigations. The students merely answer comprehension questions about the story. #3 is also not

complex. Although the students may enjoy drawing pictures, most students probably already understand

most of the central events in the story, so the task of generating 5 important occurrences is probably not

cognitively challenging for most students.

#2 qualifies as a complex task. This question engages students in high-level thinking about some

of the fundamental questions of philosophy—what makes art beautiful? If the resources include

information about how different people define art, then students will be exploring different sources of

information and asking exploring different subquestions as they explore the available materials.

Although the students do not construct a public artifact , they do prepare a public presentation.