Jigsaw (teaching technique)

The jigsaw technique is a method of organizing classroom activity that makes students dependent on each other to succeed. It breaks classes into groups and breaks assignments into pieces that the group assembles to complete the (jigsaw) puzzle. It was designed by social psychologist Elliot Aronson to help weaken racial cliques in forcibly integrated schools.

The technique splits classes into mixed groups to work on small problems that the group collates into a final outcome. For example, an in-class assignment is divided into topics. Students are then split into groups with one member assigned to each topic. Working individually, each student learns about his or her topic and presents it to their group. Next, students gather into groups divided by topic. Each member presents again to the topic group. In same-topic groups, students reconcile points of view and synthesize information. They create a final report. Finally, the original groups reconvene and listen to presentations from each member. The final presentations provide all group members with an understanding of their own material, as well as the findings that have emerged from topic-specific group discussion.

In the late 1950s, America was going through desegregation of public schools. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court of the United States created a legal requirement for integration of public schools by ruling that separating schools made them inherently unequal. Actual integration was a painful process, taking years.

Schools were plagued with fights, discrimination, and hate crimes. White supremacist groups and hateful white students terrorized new students. This prevented students from feeling safe in their schools and harmed all their learning abilities. Students often could hardly sit in the same room together without incident, much less work together. This created a problem for teachers, students, parents, communities, and the country alike, as an entire generation of students were distracted from learning by rampant hatred and discrimination.

It was at this time that psychologists were pulled in to advise schools on what to do to correct this problem. In 1971, Dr. Elliot Aronson was hired to advise an Austin, Texas school district on how to defuse the problems of hostile classrooms and distrust between the students. Aronson was a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin at the time, and took a psychological approach to help fix the problems in the classrooms. Competition among students had become extremely high. It was quickly realized that the competitive nature of the classroom encouraged students to taunt each other and discriminate against those different than them, so that they might vault themselves higher in status. In order to counter this problem, students were placed in diversified groups so that they would be required to work together and reduce the competitive atmosphere. Students were having difficulty adjusting to the mixing of ethnicity in the classroom. Aronson created an atmosphere for increased collaboration and reduction of the resistance to work with one another. Aronson created assignments that made every member of the group equally important. The students had to pay attention and obtain much information from other group members. This allows for each member of the group to add a small piece of the larger picture so that they are all important to the group. This teaches the students to rely on each other and reduces their competitive attitudes toward each other because they need everyone in their group to do well because their grade depends on the other students.

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