The importance of social skills for mental health and social participation has been investigated sufficiently. As teachers are required to foster social skills in daily class but are also confronted with limited time resources, an economical way of fostering social skills implicitly by using specific teaching methods seems to be expedient.

Investigating a form of implicit learning that doesn’t involve the teacher directly in the mechanisms of peer influence seems to be promising. Peer influence has been confirmed repeatedly for antisocial behavior while studies on this effect for social skills or similar constructs is scarce but promising (Busching & Krahé, 2020). Consequently, the question arises if small effects of peer influence concerning social skills might be enhanced by providing students with opportunities to learn from their peers and therefore be influenced by them. Bandura (1971) postulated, that only behavior that it shown explicitly can be adapted and later repeated by learners. A teaching method that requires social skills in terms of communication and cooperation is cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 2002). Cooperative learning evidently fosters academic achievement (Slavin, 1983) and requires social skills (Johnson & Johnson, 2002). Furthermore, it seems to foster prosocial behavior (van Ryzin, 2020). Accordingly, it supports teachers on both teaching goals. Within the SOZIUS project (www.sozius-projekt.de) a specific form of cooperative learning was established that allows to focus on social interactions (Hank, Weber & Huber, 2022). In this way, especially children who are lacking social skills are supposed to get the chance to observe socially successful behavior and ultimately adapt it.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether cooperative learning might enhance social learning opportunities concerning social skills. Therefore, it is hypothesized that social skills increase in classes conducting cooperative learning (Hypothesis 1). Furthermore, especially students with lower social skills are expected to benefit from highly skilled peer contexts in cooperative learning settings (Hypothesis 2).

This intervention study was conducted with the help of N = 585 (49.3 % female; Mage = 8.66; SDage = 0.77) pupils from 26 classes. 13 classes were part of the intervention group and received one unit of cooperative learning per day over the course of four weeks. Each unit was implemented by the teacher. Teachers received two days of training enabling them to conduct the daily units. To determine individual social skills, the German translation (Hank & Huber, submitted) of the Social Skill Improvement System Rating Scales (SSIS RS; Gresham & Elliott, 2008) was used and assessed for pretest, posttest, and follow-up measurement (three months later). An individual score as well as a context score derived from the social skills of the whole class were calculated and considered in multilevel analysis.

There were neither significant effects confirming increasing social skills for the intervention group in general, nor significant indicators for children with lower social skills to especially benefit from cooperative learning. However, when taking social subskills as measured by the SSIS RS into account, we found that children with higher initial levels of self-perceived communication (tfollow-Up; β = 5.06; p < .01), cooperation (tpost; β = 3.24; p < .01), and responsibility (tfollow-Up; β = 4.28; p < .01) were able to benefit from this teaching method and reported higher respective skills in the intervention group over time. While these results do not accompany the hypotheses, they might be relevant for using cooperative learning effectively for fostering social skills. Implications The results do not support that cooperative learning works as a sufficient mean to use the mechanisms of peer influence in class. However, the intervention time of four weeks might have been insufficient to illustrate social skills as beneficial. Due to that, the peer influence’s underlying mechanism of social learning could not take effect as postulated. Concluding, this study discusses how cooperative learning could be augmented to foster social skills in class using social learning and students’ existing social skills. Thus, for example, a feedback training for teachers focusing on desirable social behavior could be a way to emphasize peers’ behavior that should complement children’s own skillset.

Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory. General Learning Press. Busching, R., & Krahé, B. (2020). With a Little Help from Their Peers: The Impact of Classmates on Adolescents' Development of Prosocial Behavior. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(9), 1849–1863. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01260-8 Gresham, F. M., & Elliott, S. N. (2008). Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS): Rating Scales Manual. NCS Pearson. Hank, C., & Huber, C (submitted). Soziale Kompetenzen im Selbstbericht bei Kindern der Primarstufe: Übersetzung und Validierung des Teilbereichs der sozialen Kompetenz der Social Skill Improvement System Rating Scales für den Primarbereich. Diagnostica. Hank, C., Weber, S., & Huber, C. (2022). Potenziale des Kooperativen Lernens. Die Unterrichtsmethode des Integrationsförderlichen. Vierteljahresschrift Für Heilpädagogik Und Ihre Nachbargebiete(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.2378/vhn2022.art05d Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2002). Learning together and alone: Overview and meta‐analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 22(1), 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/0218879020220110 Slavin, R. E. (1983). When does cooperative learning increase student achievement? Psychological Bulletin, 94(3), 429–445. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.94.3.429 van Ryzin, M. J., Roseth, C. J., & Biglan, A. (2020). Mediators of effects of cooperative learning on prosocial behavior in middle School. International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology, 5(1-2), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41042-020-00026-8