Fairness as a Determinant of the Jigsaw Procedure’s Success in Teaching Undergraduate Psychological Statistics

Abstract

Undergraduate students (n = 46) completed four lab assignments (two “jigsaw group” assignments and two more traditional individual statistics lab assignments), followed by quizzes and evaluations of their assignments, instructor, and classmates, in a study designed to confirm and extend previous findings of positive effects of the jigsaw procedure in a psychological statistics course. Findings of the study (a) showed expected quiz performance improvement following jigsaw assignments, (b) provided preliminary support for Aronson’s and colleagues’ position that the success of the jigsaw classroom is due in part to decreased perceptions of unfairness, and (c) further established the ecological validity of fair process effects in a setting not previously investigated—the jigsaw classroom. Moreover, our findings suggest that the jigsaw procedure is well-suited for supplementing psychological statistics lectures.