Collaborative Learning: Comparison of Outcomes for Typically Developing Children and Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Collaborative learning is widely used in mainstream education but rarely utilized with children who have intellectual disabilities, possibly on the assumption that the metacognitive skills on which it capitalizes are less likely to be available. Effects of collaborative learning experience on a core cognitive skill, sorting by category, were investigated in three child groups: typically developing (TD) children, children with nonspecific intellectual disabilities (NSID) and children with Down syndrome (DS). Following collaboration, sorting performance improved significantly in lower ability partners in TD-TD pairings, with this pattern reversed in NSID-NSID pairings. Neither partner improved significantly in DS-NSID pairings, suggesting that the sociability attributed to children with DS did not necessarily support either their or their partner's learning in this social context.