Tag: Jigsaw

Resources: lessons on reconstructive memory

Here are some resources for teaching reconstructive memory.  There are some lesson plans, three slideshows, one for the theory, one for a jigsaw activity and one on evaluation and writing.  There is also an associated paper quiz, an application scenario, the jigsaw materials and a Socrative quiz on reconstructive memory.

Resources: evaluating the working memory model

Here’s a jigsaw activity for developing students’ evaluations of the working memory model. It’s designed for four ‘expert’ groups and three or four ‘jigsaw’ groups and covers (1) experimental support; (2) support from studies of the brain; (3) practical applications; (4) limitations of the model. There’s a set of working memory jigsaw stimuli and a slideshow with a couple of recall/application exercises tagged on at the end.

Better evaluation with spectacles

One way of developing students’ evaluation of research studies is to use the ‘spectacles’ activity. I got it from Geoff Petty’s (2009) ‘Evidence Based Teaching: A Practical Guide’, which I recommend.  It’s a variant of the jigsaw approach. In ‘spectacles’ students are already familiar with the material they are working with (unlike in jigsaw, where they are typically encountering material for the first time). Students are in small groups, each thinking about the material in a different way. Each way is presented as a different pair of spectacles that brings a different aspect of the material into focus. They are then rearranged into mixed groups where they share their insights with each other in a co-constructive manner.

I most commonly use it when students are developing evaluation of research studies, particularly the key ‘classic’/’contemporary’ studies required by Edexcel’s psychology specification. Students are required to read about the studies in advance. The five ‘spectacles’ groups correspond to the GROVE evaluation criteria I use (Generalisability, Reliability, Objectivity, Validity and Ethics). Generally, 10 minutes in ‘spectacles’ groups followed by 15 minutes in ‘sharing’ groups seems to work well for my students but, obviously, YMMV. As a follow-up I often give out an A3 summary sheet where students can compile an overview of the whole study for revision purposes. Here are a couple of these for Raine et al (1997) and Howells et al (2005).

Provided that students remain directed towards developing a shared understanding rather than simply dictating and copying ideas, it’s an approach with few downsides. See my previous post on Jigsaw for more background.

Petty, G. (2009). Evidence-based teaching: A practical approach. Cheltenham: Nelson-Thornes.

Resources: labelling theory and crime

Here are some bits I’ve made recently for teaching labelling theory and crime.  There’s a jigsaw activity with slideshow and material on recent studies of the effect of labelling.  There’s also an applied learning scenario on labelling for developing application and analysis skills.

Resources: evolution and aggression

Source: wikimedia commons.Here is a lesson to develop students’ evaluation skills around evolutionary explanations of aggression. There is a lesson plan and PowerPoint slides. The main activity uses the jigsaw format and covers some research and critical points about evolutionary theory and aggression.

Resources: 47,XYY kayrotype and criminality

Souce: wikimedia. Creative commons license.

Here’s a lesson on the 47,XYY karyotype (XYY syndrome) using the jigsaw format. It starts with a factual learning check and some slides to support an explanation of three different explanations of the association between XYY and offending. The jigsaw element is oriented towards using research into 47,XYY as a way of discussing various issues and debates in psychology. These are based on some of those specified by Edexcel (reductionism, socially sensitive research, development of knowledge over time and nature/nurture) but I imagine they’re fairly broadly applicable. There’s a slideshow, a Socrative true/false quiz on XYY and a set of jigsaw materials on XYY for four groups.

Teaching eyewitness testimony (and many other things) using the jigsaw approach

Image by Jared Tarbell; used under Creative Commons license.
An oblique approach to image choice would add subtlety but, frankly, it’s been a long week.

I’m a big fan of the jigsaw classroom (Aronson et al, 1978) to the point where I probably overuse it. If you’re not familiar, it’s a cooperative learning activity format in which students learn part of a topic so they can teach it to others and, in turn, are taught other parts by them. The aim is that all the students end up learning the whole topic. The students are organised into ‘jigsaw’ groups. Each jigsaw group is then split up and rearranged into ‘expert’ groups. Each expert group is given responsibility for mastering one part of the topic knowledge. The expert groups are then returned to their jigsaw groups, where they teach each other. There’s a good guide to the jigsaw technique here.

When it’s done well, jigsaw promotes a high degree of interdependence amongst learners and exposes all the students to the material to be learned, both of which contribute to its effectiveness as a psychology teaching strategy (Tomcho & Foels, 2012). Compared to non-cooperative methods (i.e. those that do not require interdependence) techniques like jigsaw provide more effective learning of conceptual knowledge, a greater sense of competence and more enjoyment of learning. This is particularly so when the activity is highly structured with assigned roles, prompts for self reflection, and both individual and group feedback on performance (Supanc et al, 2017).

When I use it I like to keep group sizes to a maximum of four. If you have 16 or 32 students in a class that’s great because you can divide the material into four and have four students in each jigsaw/expert group. A group of 25 also works well, with the material divided into five parts. It can be a headache to assign groups when you have inconvenient numbers of students so you need to plan ahead and think about how you will ensure that every student learns all the content.

In my experience, the jigsaw approach works best when:

  • You stress that the activity is all about understanding what they are learning and remind students throughout of their responsibility for both teaching and learning the material. The danger is that it can easily become an ‘information transfer’ exercise, with students copying down material verbatim and dictating to each other without understanding. It is sometimes useful to impose rules to prevent this (e.g. limit the number of words students are allowed to use when making notes in their expert groups, only allowing them to draw pictures etc.)
  • The learning material is tailored to the students. This means adjusting the difficulty/complexity level of the material to be just difficult enough so that the students need to engage with it and each other to co-construct an understanding. Too difficult and they can’t do it; too easy and it becomes trivial; either way, they lose interest.
  • The learning material is tailored to the timescale. Again, we want the students to create meaning from the materials and this takes time. If too little time is given then either some of the material won’t get taught, or students will resort to ‘information transfer’ and there will be no co-construction.
  • You actively monitor what’s going on in the groups, particularly the expert groups. This is how we moderate the difficulty of the materials. We don’t want the students teaching each other things that are wrong. At the same time, it’s important not to just charge in and instruct the learners directly. Doing that undermines the point of the approach. In any case, I wouldn’t use jigsaw to teach fundamental concepts for the first time; it’s just too risky. I prefer to use it to elaborate on and deepen understanding of ideas.
  • You have an accountability mechanism (i.e. a test). Multiple choice/online assessment is quick and effective if the test items are well written. Plickers and Socrative are useful tools for this. One approach that can work here is to tell the students that everyone will do the test but that each student will receive the average mark for their jigsaw group. This creates an incentive for students to ensure that everyone in the group does well (although it also creates an incentive to blame people if the group does badly, so YMMV).

Here’s a set of materials for teaching some of the factors that moderate the misinformation effect on eyewitness testimony using the jigsaw method. This is for a one-hour lesson with a 10-15 minute expert groups phase and a 15-20 minute jigsaw groups phase. There is a slideshow that structures the lesson and a set of learning materials covering the moderating effects of time, source reliability, centrality and awareness of misinformation. You can extend the activity by prompting students to evaluate the evidence offered.  If you are a Socrative user (free account with paid upgrades) you can get the multiple choice quiz using this link. As with all these approaches, there is no guarantee that it’s superior to the alternatives but the available evidence suggests it is worth trying.  And, like everything, its effectiveness is likely to grow when both teacher and students are practised in the technique.

Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephin, C., Sikes, J., & Snapp, M. (1978). The Jigsaw Classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publishing Company

Supanc, M., Vollinger, V.A. & Brunstein, J.C. (2017).  High-structure versus low-structure cooperative learning in introductory psychology classes for student teachers: Effects on conceptual knowledge, self-perceived competence, and subjective task values.  Learning and Instruction, 50, 75-84.

Tomcho, T.J. & Foels, R. (2012).  Meta-analysis of group learning activities: Empirically based teaching recommendations.  Teaching of Psychology, 39 (3), 159-169.