Does Cooperative Use of Reading Strategies lead to Improved Text Comprehension?

Comprehending texts usually requires students in primary education to deploy reading strategies, especially when texts are difficult. The dearth of possible reading strategies might overwhelm the individual and may actually detract from rather than add to text comprehension. In this study, students worked together either unstructured or structured. In the structured cooperative reading condition, participants each received a card that summarized which phase of the reading process that participant was responsible for. Three hundred and twenty-seven students were assigned to either an unstructured group, a structured group or a control wherein students read individually. The expectation was that students who could work together, especially those who only had to focus on a specific set of reading strategies, would outperform students in the control condition and would experience less mental effort. The results are mostly contrary to these expectations, as individuals outperformed group-members. With regards to mental-effort, text-difficulty proved to be an influential factor.