There have been studies on action research in small-group learning in exact and social sciences in colleges and universities in Israel and worldwide (Gorsky & Caspi, 2005; Gorsky, Caspi and Trumper, 2006). This paper is based on research which investigates teaching social sciences in higher education by means of a Training Lecturer (TL). This teaching method uses frontal instruction, immediately followed by the students working in small groups under the TL guidance. The main research question was: How do both following the class with the tutorial, as well as the lecturer himself guiding the students , affect the students’ thinking and learning process, their conceptualization skills, and their satisfaction with the learning process?
The method in this study was based on combination of qualitative (open interviews) and quantitative samples of 92 students, from two classrooms. Our new method (TL) was the independent variable, the students' academic achievement, self efficiency and demographic characteristics were our dependent variables.
The main research finding was a correlation between students' attitudes toward the TL method, and improvements in both self-efficacy and academic achievements. There was a strong correlation between the TL method and friendliness, self efficacy, comprehension, interest and success. The TL method discussion group, which serves as a platform for developing thinking and learning, is the greatest contributor to explained variance at 13.971% and credibility Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.779. The students participating in this project generally had higher achievements in the final test in comparison to the average achievements after previous teaching. There are usually 40% failures in courses such as “organizational behavior”; the amount of students failing dropped to 10-15%.