Mehan shows how the dyadic socialization increases the student's
undertsanding. His eight month ethnographic study was conducted in
four elementary schools in the "North County area" of San Diego.
He discovers, through the qualitative study, that dyadic peer
instruction helps students develop a different, more cooperative,
sense of social relations. Another consequence was that it provided
social resources which facilitated learning. When the students began
an assignment without an idea of what to do, the discussion of the
problem often presetned students with the way to proceed. In the
process of working on the assignment, students would take turns
focusing on local issues as spelling, while the other student worked
on global issues such as construction of essay and coherence among
sentences.
This fits one way into findings ways to implement Scans Report, Goals
2000 and what business desires for the future of their employees.
If you would like more information or even more current research on
this topic, please contact me personally.
Kimball R. Croft
Doctoral Student (teacher for 9 years)
Educational Leadership
Northern Arizona University
krc@dana.ucc.nau.edu