Chapter 9: Effective Practices in Group Project Work: Exploring the Views of Students and Teachers

Many authors have extolled the benefits of cooperative learning strategies, such as group project work, when these are applied in diverse school contexts. Although a great deal of research has been carried out on the effects of cooperative learning on student achievement, there is scant information on what constitute effective practices in the implementation of group work, specially for students of low academic caliber. This chapter attempts to translate current research findings into effective practices that can be easily implemented in authentic classroom settings. First, we describe a study conducted to assess the views of students and teachers on various attributes such as motivation, competence, relatedness, enjoyment, and metacognition, with regards to group project work. The second part of this chapter explores a number of good practices, gleaned from international studies, that have been found to be effective and are likely to be applicable in a wide variety of classroom contexts.