The term "cooperation" refers to the cooperative behavior among people, such as working with or helping others. In a competitive classroom, students are in negative interdependence for rewards. That is, for one person to be successful, another must fa...
The term "cooperation" refers to the cooperative behavior among people, such as working with or helping others. In a competitive classroom, students are in negative interdependence for rewards. That is, for one person to be successful, another must fail. But in a cooperative classroom, two or more students are allowed, encourage, and required to work together on some task.
Cooperative learning has been studied by Mailer in 1929, and has been used in schools by early the 1970'. Cooperative learning, unlike the traditional method that heavily depends on the teachers, is a more productive method of learning that depends on the cooperation among the students and with the teachers. Some studies were conducted to find the effects of cooperative learning. Researches indicated that cooperative learning improved academic achievement and positive intergroup relations, helped the mainstreamed students, and enhanced self-esteem.
The purpose of this article is to suggest for the effective cooperative learning in a classroom while helping the teachers understand the importance of the cooperative learning. For this purpose, I provided an overview of the conception and common elements of the cooperative learning, and major cooperative learning methods. Also, for some successful implementations of cooperative learning, I suggested teacher's role.
The basic elements of cooperative learning are positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual accountability, social skills, and group processing.
The stretagies for cooperative learning are student team achievement divisions, TGT, Jigsaw I , Jigsaw II , four students group, Co-Op Co-Op, group investigation, cooperative integrated reading and composition, team assisted individualization learning.
And for successful implementations of cooperative learning, teachers should decide the group's size, group's function, group's rules, group's skills, and group's objectives and role.