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Classroom Structural Bias

Impact of Cooperative and Competitive Classroom Structures on Cooperative and Competitive Individuals and Groups

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Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn

Abstract

There is now considerable theoretical support for the claim that classroom structures common in the U.S. public schools discriminate against the achievement, the cultural values, and the well-being of Mexican-American and black students (Kagan, 1980, 1983). The purpose of the present chapter is to present empirical evidence that bears on that hypothesis, called the structural bias hypothesis. Although some of the evidence to be presented comes from published research, much of the evidence was generated by a large-scale investigation of the structural bias hypothesis conducted as part of a cooperative project by the School of Education and the Psychology Department at the University of California, Riverside. Before describing and discussing the empirical data relevant to the evaluation of the structural bias hypothesis, theoretical support for the hypothesis is reviewed, and the Riverside Cooperative Learning Project is described.

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© 1985 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Kagan, S., Zahn, G.L., Widaman, K.F., Schwarzwald, J., Tyrrell, G. (1985). Classroom Structural Bias. In: Slavin, R., Sharan, S., Kagan, S., Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., Webb, C., Schmuck, R. (eds) Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3650-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3650-9_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-3652-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-3650-9

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