This study investigated the influences of the cooperative and the individualistic learning strategies on the academic achievement and the attitudes toward science instruction and science by the level of achievement. These two learning strategies endow...
This study investigated the influences of the cooperative and the individualistic learning strategies on the academic achievement and the attitudes toward science instruction and science by the level of achievement. These two learning strategies endowed students with the responsibility of learning and emphasized student-centered learning which included higher order thinking activities. Cooperative learning group students studied the tasks through small group discussion, and individualistic learning group students solved the same ones individually. In the traditional group, teacher-centered expository lesson was used. The subjects of this study were 7th graders of coed middle school, and were taught about separation of mixture for 10 class periods. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the test scores of academic achievement for cooperative learning group were significantly higher than those of individualistic and traditional learning groups. The attitudes toward science instruction and science were also more positive in cooperative learning group than the others. No interactions between the treatment and the level of previous achievement indicated that the cooperative learning strategy was effective regardless of the level of achievement.