Think-Pair-Share Research Paper

Bowling Green State University

ScholarWorks@BGSU
Honors Projects

Honors College

Spring 4-29-2013

Finding the Effects of Think-Pair-Share on Student
Confidence and Participation
Ariana Sampsel

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Repository Citation
Sampsel, Ariana, "Finding the Effects of Think-Pair-Share on Student Confidence and Participation" (2013). Honors Projects. Paper 28.

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Finding the Effects of Think-Pair-Share on Student Confidence and Participation
Ariana Sampsel

This research
Also, cooperative learning has been shown to aid critical thinking, problemsolving, and decision-making skills (Cortright et al., 2005). Action research has also concluded that cooperative learning, and specifically the think-pair-share strategy, increased student participation in large group discussions. The think-pair-strategy is one way to incorporate cooperative learning into a classroom in order to give students the opportunity to actively process and develop a meaningful understanding of class material.
One middle school math teacher, Steven C. Reinhart, conducted his own study of his classes over a number of years, trying to improve his teaching by using a problem-based, student-centered approach and incorporating more cooperative learning techniques (2000). He did this because he noticed many of his students did not understand concepts he thought he had taught well with direct instruction. He decided to do what he could to allow students the

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opportunity to process information and explain their ideas. One technique he often used was think-pair-share. He found that in his classroom, think-pair-share helped to improve class discussions more than any other technique he incorporated into his teaching. He noticed that
These higher goals and the student’s self efficacy would in turn help motivate the student to succeed in the future. There are so many positive aspects to the cooperative learning technique think-pair-share that could allow for the positive momentum in this system of triarchic reciprocal determinism.
There are also other beneficial aspects to the think-pair-share strategy in addition to peer cooperation. Think-pair-share also allows students wait time (McTighe & Lyman, 1988). There are two different types of wait time. The wait time 1 is the time spent after a teacher’s question and wait time 2 occurs after a student speaks (Rowe, 1972). Think-pair-share allows for the wait time 1 because students are all given that time to think to themselves in silence before they begin to discuss. Think-pair-share can also allow for wait time 2, depending on how students react to each other in discussion and how long the teacher waits before responding to a student’s comment (McTighe & Lyman, 1988). Mary Budd Rowe conducted a study of wait time in elementary science programs over five years. The study concluded that allowing three or more seconds for the wait time 1 decreased the number of times students failed to respond