Failure of Cognitive Group Tasks in Secondary Schools of Pakistan

In order to undertake a cognitive developmental study of secondary school children of Pakistan, it was decided to try-out cognitive group tasks. However, difficulty in using these tasks led to an exploratory study for assessing relative advantages and disadvantages of using group tasks in place of traditional Piagetian method of individual interviewing. Two comparable groups of 50 secondary school children were administered identical tasks in individual and group situations. Individual situation proved consistently superior in assessing children at their optimum cognitive levels. Though there was a significant positive correlation between results of individual tasks and group tasks, differences between the means of scores of two methods also proved significant on a number of statistical tests. The experience of administering group tasks in classrooms pointed out peculiar cognitive styles of children which hindered their optimum cognitive functioning.