Influence of Group Processing on Achievement and Perception of Social and Academic Support in Elementary Inexperienced Cooperative Learning Groups

Sixty-one elementary school students who had never participated in cooperative learning lessons before were included in this study. Students were randomly assigned to the conditions of cooperative learning with and without group processing and participated to 5 instructional sessions during a period of approximately 15 instructional days. Results on achievement show that by the end of the study students assigned to group processing condition achieved higher than did students assigned to no processing condition. Results on perception of peer academic and personal support and teacher academic and personal support do not show significant differences between the experimental groups.