Cohen, Elizabeth, & Lotan, Rachel
Researchers: Elizabeth CohenRachel Lotan
University Affiliation: Stanford University
Email: rlotan@stanford.edu
Research Question:
Argues that multicultural classrooms should be equitable classrooms through heterogeneous grouping.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Josey-Bass
Journal Entry: Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, Chapter 35, pp 736-749
Year: 2003
Findings:
- In classrooms the most important status characteristics are academic and peer status or popularity.
- How the choice of classroom tasks and how the teacher evaluates and rewards students helps to create academic and peer status orders in the classroom. Once they are created, the undesirable effects of status generalization of participation, effort and learning follow.
- When uncertainty present, the more students talk and work together, the more they learn.
- Cooperative learning in the multicultural classroom can improve intergroup relations and achieve cognitive goals.
- Reshaping the classroom social system, including the status relations among the students, should make it possible to attain the desired state of interpersonal and intercultural understanding along with the goals of equity in interpersonal relations and access to academic achievement.