Aronson's Jigsaw Classroom Study

In 1971, following the desegregation of the Austin, Texas public schools, the social psychologist Elliot Aronson and his graduate students developed the jigsaw classroom, a cooperative learning technique created in direct response to the outbreaks of racial hostility and mistrust that had followed newly integrated white, Black and Hispanic students being placed in the same classrooms for the first time. In the jigsaw method, a class is divided into small mixed groups, and the day's lesson is broken into as many pieces as there are group members, so that each student becomes the sole classroom expert on one piece and must teach it to the rest of the group in order for anyone to learn the whole lesson. Because no student can succeed without depending on every other student's contribution, drawing on Gordon Allport's contact hypothesis that structured cooperation toward a shared goal reduces intergroup hostility, the technique was found to reduce competition and prejudice between students of different backgrounds while improving learning outcomes and self-esteem, particularly among minority students. The jigsaw classroom has since been studied, adapted and used in a wide range of educational settings from elementary school through graduate education.