There is no quick and easy answer to these questions. Some teachers design groups so that each group has a mixture of boys and girls, students of different ability levels, students who are fluent in English and those who are emerging speakers, etc. Other educators use random groupings each time and change group compositions around frequently. Others group students homogeneously according to ability level. Yet others allow students to choose with whom they'll work.

Several research studies have looked at grouping variations and analyzed them to see how equitable they are. They are trying to answer the question of how do you group students together so that each individual is engaged in high-quality learning. One study of middle school students showed that females with an internal locus of control (those who view themselves as influencing outcomes) do better when paired with another female during a cooperative task and a male during a competitive task.¹ Studying a similar age group, another researcher found that females and males displayed similar patterns of achievement and interaction in groups with equal numbers of both sexes. In majority-female and majority-male groups, males showed higher achievement than females did.² A third study looked at the achievement in mixed-ability versus homogeneously groupings. Homogeneous groupings were found to exacerbate achievement level differences between high- and low-ability students, whereas differences in heterogenous groupings remained constant from the initial assessment. Moreover, the average scores for low-ability students in homogeneous groupings were significantly lower than those in mixed groups at the end of the study; the scores of high-level students in same-ability groups were not significantly higher than those in heterogeneous groups.³

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics offers tips on how to design equitable cooperative groups. Some of their suggestions are: to ensure heterogeneity teachers should set up groups; structure group tasks so that each students must contribute to the work at hand helps students recognize their dependence on one another; peer teaching can be an effective learning tool; and assessment should look at whole-group work as well as individual's performance.⁴

Noted researcher and writer Elizabeth Cohen discusses the importance of dealing with students' status within groups as a way to ensure equity. Low-status members talk less than others, often their ideas are not taken seriously, and they have difficulty getting their hands on manipulatives. All of these behaviors lead to fewer and less-effective learning opportunities for such students. Status comes from academic performance, popularity among peers, attractiveness, gender, race, and class. To treat such status inequalities, teachers must convince students that: (1) Cooperative tasks require many types of abilities. (2) No one will have all of these abilities. (3) Everyone will have some of these abilities. Teachers can also assign competence to a student by giving a positive evaluation publicly that is truthful and on skills that are relevant to the group task. ⁵

To learn more, please read Weaving Gender Equity staff member Hollee Freeman's article on designing equitable cooperative groups at http://www.terc.edu/wge/coopgroups.html.





¹Dillow, Karen, Marilyn Flack, and Francince Peterman. (1994). "Cooperative Learning and the Achievement of Female Students." Middle School Journal, Vol. 26 (No. 2), 48-51.

²Webb, Noreen. (1984). "Sex Difference in Interaction and Achievement in Cooperative Small Groups." Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 36 (No. 1), 33-44.

³Linchevski, Liora and Bilha Kutscher. (1998). "Tell Me With Whom You're Learning, and I'll Tell You How Much You've Learned: Mixed-Ability Grouping Versus Same-Ability Grouping in Mathematics." Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 29 (No. 5), 533-554.

⁴Artzt, Alice, and Claire Newman. (1998). How to Use Cooperative Learning in the Mathematics Classroom. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

⁵Cohen, Elizabeth. (1998). "Making Cooperative Learning Equitable." Educational Leadership, Sept.

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