穨Review. Pdf

3.2.2.5 Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) 
As a way to enhance the interdependence and individual accountability of all the 
students, the Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) was introduced to 
measure students’ academic achievement. The participants were given a weekly 
quiz by way of STAD, which was a method to account for individual achievement and 

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group contingency at the same time.
In order to be able to grade the quiz quickly and recognize the team 
accomplishments, the weekly quizzes were short and limited to one language skill at a 
time. A typical procedure for STAD was the group preparation for the quiz first and 
then individual quiz taking. Before taking the quiz individually, Ms. Lee gave all the 
students some worksheets to work on. They had to tutor each other until all the team 
members knew how to solve the problems and got the correct answers or spelling.
Then, the students took the quiz individually.
Each student’s grade was based on his or her own score on the quiz. But, at the 
same time, they also contributed to their group score by being better than their own 
previous scores. In other words, each student’s contribution to their group’s score 
was based on how well they did on the quiz compared to their own average score on 
past quizzes. Thus, a relatively low achiever could contribute as much to their team 
as a high achiever without doing as well on the quiz. How well one did on the quiz 
would affect their group score. Therefore, they had to study hard for themselves as 
well as for their group members.
The difference between this individual quiz taking and a traditional individual 
test lied in the way that one’s individual score could contribute to his or her group 
scores. Students could earn points for their teams based on the degree to which their 
quiz scores exceeded their first base scores.
The first base score for each of them was derived from their previous semester’s 
final grades. The second base scores were from the first quiz, the third base scores 
from the second quiz, and so forth. This humanistic way of quiz taking and personal 
contribution to team points emphasized individual accountability and respect for 
individual uniqueness at the same time. The way to calculate the improvement 
points in this study was adapted from Slavin (1995), as shown in Table 3.5. 

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