Boosting Student Belonging With the Jigsaw Technique
This classic group learning strategy can help students communicate, collaborate, and empathize with one another鈥攆ighting back against a growing sense of disconnection in schools.
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Go to My Saved Content.The 鈥渏igsaw classroom鈥� is a cooperative learning approach originally designed by psychologist Elliot Aronson to build up empathy in recently desegregated classrooms. In the , each student receives one small part of a bigger lesson鈥攖hen, in small groups, students have to pool their knowledge together and teach each other what they learned. 鈥淎ronson compared it to gift-giving,鈥� says social psychologist Geoffrey Cohen. 鈥淲hen I give a gift, I feel a sense of attachment to the person I鈥檓 giving it to鈥攁nd vice versa.鈥�
Cohen walks us through the classic jigsaw research from the 1970s and lays out how the strategy can help the modern-day teacher looking to boost empathy, collaboration, and a sense of belonging in their classroom. To learn more from Daniel Leonard鈥檚 interview with Cohen for 麻豆传媒入口, read 鈥�The Science of Belonging and Connection.鈥�
To read the original research, along with several newer studies on the approach, check out the links below:
- Elliot Aronson and Diane Bridgeman鈥檚 (1979)
- Iain Walker and Mary Crogan鈥檚 (1998)
- Soohyun Nam Liao, William G. Griswold, and Leo Porter鈥檚 (2018)
- Jean Twenge et al.鈥檚 (2021)