Can Students Learn by Teaching Their Peers during Cooperative Learning?

Abstract

No one doubts that students can learn from others when they receive explanations and support from other students when they work cooperatively together during team work. However, can the student who offers this pedagogical help to their teammates learn by teaching? Or, on the contrary, is cooperative learning (CL) only beneficial—in terms of learning—for students who receive the help? This is a common barrier that CL faces. In this chapter, evidence of learning by teaching will be reviewed, organising studies into four stages: (1) Expecting to teach; (2) Presenting information; (3) Explaining the knowledge; and (4) Questioning the understanding. This organisation will help to build an explanatory framework of how students can learn by teaching their peers, and what limits or conditions teachers need to consider. Several pedagogical practices implement the principle of learning by teaching, and CL is one of them. We will focus on it, showing how the different components of learning by teaching underlie CL settings and how they can be promoted. In CL settings, students learn from each other, which means that they teach each other.