DOCUMENT RESUME ED 462 413 TM 033 675 AUTHOR Webb, Noreen M.; Farivar, Sydney H.; Mastergeorge, Ann M. TITLE Productive Helping in Cooperative Groups. CSE Technical Report. INSTITUTION California Univ., Los Angeles. Center for the Study of Evaluation.; National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, Los Angeles, CA. SPONS AGENCY Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC. REPORT NO CSE-TR-555 PUB DATE 2001-12-00 NOTE 27p.; Supported also by the Academic Senate on Research, Los Angeles Division, University of California. CONTRACT R305B60002 AVAILABLE FROM UCLA/Center for the Study of Evaluation, 301 GSE&IS, box 951522, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1522 ($3.50) . Tel: 310-206-1532. For full text: http://www.cse.ucla.edu/CRESST/Reports/TR555.pdf. PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Cooperative Learning; *Group Instruction; Help Seeking; *Helping Relationship; Middle School Students; Middle Schools; *Peer Teaching; Student Responsibility; *Teacher Responsibility ..ABSTRACT The past 20 years have seen a tremendous increase in the use of peer-directed collaborative group work both in classroom instruction and in assessments to give students an opportunity to learn from each other. Using examples drawn from a program of peer learning in middle school mathematics, this paper identifies a set of helping behaviors that best predict learning in collaborative small groups. The paper describes conditions that must be satisfied for helping behavior to be effective, the responsibilities of students seeking help and students giving help, and the responsibilities of teachers to make helping productive for students. (Contains 71 references.) (Author/SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.