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Volume 5 Number 4, Winter 2008, Pages 1-210   


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Role Assigning in Jigsaw Classroom: An Asian Classroom Reality Revealed

    Siti Mina Tamah


Taking the principles of constructivist thinking, teachers are required to transform their traditional class into a ‘constructive' one. A Jigsaw class is an alternative. Jigsaw teachers believe that each student owns the capability to be the contributor of knowledge. Students are encouraged to learn from their fellow students in their expert team and when they go back to their home team they are encouraged to teach one another the material they have worked on in the expert team.
Assigned different roles of captain, time keeper, secretary, and common member to maintain smooth functioning groups, the students from two junior high schools in Surabaya, Indonesia were involved in the experiment to reveal a reality of role assigning. Totally 32 students having the role of ‘captain', 32 ‘secretary', 32 ‘time keeper', and 69 ‘common member' were available. The analyzed questionnaires cross-checked with classroom observation, and some interviews eventually revealed one particular reality in Jigsaw classroom. The classroom reality revealed covers students' perception concerning their own role, students' perception concerning their own role related to the other roles in their expert team, and overall perception on roles assigned. Some underlying theories ? Cooperative Learning, Jigsaw and Positive Interdependence ? precede the main discussion.

Keywords: cooperative learning, Jigsaw, role assigning