Limitations and Benefits

The benefits to this approach are that students learn social skills by interacting with one another. They also learn to be independent from the teacher and to think for themselves. Although a teacher may prompt them, students basically work on their own to solve problems or tasks. Students also can give feedback to other students, so that they can better gauge their learning. This consequently also limits blame often placed on teachers for grading students harshly, not providing adequate feedback, and being biased. If peers show the same sort of feedback as a teacher does, this validates the teacher in the mind of the student, creating a better student-teacher relationship.

    The limitations of this approach are that if not structured properly, students may not be on-task or some may finish the task early and get bored. Also, working with peers can lead to inappropriate comments or behaviors, causing students to be afraid to speak. Only when a classroom has been structured as a safe environment can such learning function properly. Students also need to gain some practice in this type of approach, as they are typically used to direct instruction and could have difficulty formulating their ideas and using critical thinking skills. Students need modeling, so the teacher should model appropriate thinking and sometimes prompt students in the correct direction, allowing them to work it out on their own. However, this should be done gradually, moving from indirect instruction to this social instructional approach.