Cooperative Learning.
-Cooperative learning is an instructional task design that engages students actively in achieving a lesson objective through their own efforts and the efforts of the members of their small learning team.What distinguishes cooperative learning from other activities that involve working in small groups is a combination of features that weave through an academic task.Different schools of thought propose different ways to name and number these features, but they converge on the basic idea that the structure of the learning task engages students in productive and mutually supportive ways so that all achieve mastery of the lesson objective.In a good cooperative learning lesson, completing the assignment successfully is easier and more engaging to do as a team and more difficult to do any other way.
-Four features have been regularly shown to be central to the success of any cooperative learning lesson.These features increase students "efforts to achieve".They positively affect such factors as productivity,retention of learning, tome on task, higher-level thinking, transfer of learning, and positive feelings about school.First and foremost is positive interdependence, a spirit of "all for one and one for all". It may take several forms.Having goal interdependence means that for any individual member to succeed, all must succeed.With reward interdependence the prize or recognition is available to all members of the team when they all achieve a certain standard.For example, each will earn five extra minutes of free time in the library if all improve their scores on the test.Resource interdepence means that each group member has a share of the materials needed to complete the group task, which requires the shares held by all.Role interdependence is what characterized the Cougars's practice session; Each student's role is interlocked with the others' roles.
-Playing jump rope is a good example of positive interdependence:Two people must coordinate hand and arm motions while the third jumps in a pattern.The game goes smoothly only when all three do their jobs properly.Futhermore,the nature of the reward should make it equally available to high and low ability students who work hard and make progress.Interdependence is intrinsically unrewarding if the group is denied access
to rewards because the members have unequal resources for a given task.Recognizing achievement of a standard of growth-rather than absolute achievement-is one way to support interdependence within a team.
-Some models of cooperative learning have highly elaborated roles, while others are fairly simple. All the models that produce improved achievement have built-in positive interdependence.The second key feature is accountability at the group and the individual level.That is,the group cannot succeed unless each member demonstrates success or significant progress.The task structure rewards the group for cooperation and at the same time rewards individuals for achieving lesson objectives.In the opening scenario,for example, the Cougars gain recognition as a team for supporting each other's measureable learning,while each member of the team gains recognition for progress and absolute achievement.Whatever form team recognition takes,teams cannot earn it unless they work together and prove their effectiveness by means of individual growth.Slavin has conducted extensive research in this area and consistently comes up with evidence supporting the same conclusions:Grading strategies must be based on individual achivement and team rewards must be based on individual growth if cooperative learning is to work well.Every person who has worked on a team without individual accountability has stories to tell about "hitchhikers" who let the hard workers do what needed to be done and coasted along on others' efforts.Hitchhikers don't learn; workers learn.If every student is to succeed,lesson activities must promote every student's work at learning.
-The third essential feature is what the Johnsons call "face-to-face promotive interaction"-the acts of helping each other learn. Fine-tuned studies of what exactly goes on in successful cooperative groups have found that explaining what one knows is positively associated with mastery.Now,one might normally assume that the smart students who know more also get to explain more and, of course, eventually show higher achievement on tests.
-The fourth essential feature is the focus on interpersonal and small group skills that students use in completing cooperative learning lessons.Working successfully in a team demands particular social skills, which are best learned and practiced in the context of real tasks.
In conclusions,cooperative learning not only stimulates cognition but also gives play to the multiple forms of intelligence that students bring to any shared task.In the context of their small learning team,students have a chance to identify and take advantage of each other's strengths and expand their own notions of how to approach a challenge.
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