The Effect of the Explicit Teaching of Social Skills on the Retention of Science Content Knowledge i

1
The Effect of the Explicit Teaching of Social
Skills on the Retention of Science Content
Knowledge in the Cooperative Group Setting

• Ellen Bensusan Smedley
• June 29, 2007

2
Purpose

• The purpose of this project was to determine if
  explicitly teaching social skills and positive
  interactions among students would improve the
  retention of content knowledge (and thus test
  scores) after working in heterogeneous
  cooperative groups.

3
Population

• CMSD Hannah Gibbons Nottingham School
• Fourth/Fifth grade split class
• Approximately 20 students
• High-achieving fourth grade students
• Lower-achieving fifth grade students
• High mobility rate

4
Questions to Ponder

• Does the explicit teaching of social skills and
  conflict mediation have an impact on
  content-level retention in cooperative science
  groups?
• Does the explicit teaching of social skills and
  conflict mediation, therefore, have an impact on
  test scores?
• Does the explicit teaching of social skills and
  conflict mediation change students attitudes
  about working in groups?
• Does the explicit teaching of social skills and
  conflict mediation transfer to other classes, the
  cafeteria, and the playground?

5
Literature Review

• Johnson studied urban and rural students in
  grades K-9 and demonstrated that conflict
  resolution procedures can be taught in a way that
  increases academic achievement.
• Banks looked at social skills training that was
  not culturally specific and examined the effects
  of an Afrocentric social skills training
  curriculum. The Afrocentric model did not have a
  statistically significant impact on the students
  involved.

6
Literature Review, Continued

• Casella studied a high school peer mediation
  program and concluded that it was the peer
  mediators that benefited most from the program.
• Heydenberk studied the effects of conflict
  resolution and related social skill development
  on students meta-cognitive competencies. A pre-
  post-intervention scale was administered and the
  students were divided into a control and
  experimental group. The pretest showed no
  significant differences between the two groups,
  but the post-tests showed that the treatment
  group had increases in use of meta-cognitive
  strategies.

7
Data Collection

• A Likert Scale was administered at the beginning
  and end of the study.
• Pre- and post-tests were administered for the two
  units.
• Archived office referrals were studied.
• Field notes on student interactions were taken.

8
(No Transcript)
9
Pre- and Post-test Data
10
Number of Observed Interactions
11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
Archived Referral Data
14
Conclusions

• The explicit teaching of social skills and
  conflict mediation does appear to have an impact
  on content-level retention in the cooperative
  science group.
• The explicit teaching of social skills did have
  an impact on test scores on the post intervention
  post-test
• The teaching of social skills had a large impact
  upon the students attitudes about working in
  groups.
• This training did not seem to transfer to other
  areas of the school (unless I was watching!)

15
Some Thoughts

• I was encouraged to engage the students in
  interactive, hands-on investigative science
  experiences.
• I was often disappointed in the outcome of these
  lessons.
• The ah-ha moment came when I realized that the
  reason that this method was not working well was
  that the students in our population were having
  problems working together, not with the work!

16
What Now?????

• At the beginning of the school year, I will spend
  time explicitly teaching the skills needed for
  cooperative learning.
• The Pyramid of Success was a great start, but
  there is more to working together than Respect,
  Responsibility and Safety.

17
Readings

• Alder, N. (2002). Interpretations of the meaning
  of care. Creating caring relationships in urban
  middle school classrooms. Urban Education, 37 (2)
  241 266.
• Banks, R., et al. (1997). An afrocentric approach
  to group social skills training with inner-city
  African-american adolescents.
• Casella, R. (2000). The benefits of peer
  mediation in the context of urban conflict and
  program status. Urban Education, 35 (3),
  324-355.
• Heydenberk, R., Heydenberk, W. (2005) Increasing
  meta-cognitive competence through conflict
  resolution. Education and Urban Society, 37 (4),
  431-452.
• Johnson, D., Johnson, R. (1999). What makes
  cooperative learning work. Cooperative Learning,
  23 26.
• Johnson,D., Johnson, R. (2001). Teaching students
  to be peacemakers a meta-analysis. Paper
  presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
  Educational Research Association. (Seattle, WA,
  April 10 14).
• Martinek, T., Schilling, T., Johnson, D. (2001)
  transferring personal and social responsibility
  of underserved youth to the classroom. Urban
  Review, 35 (1) 29.