Essay on Cooperative Learning ( Johnson and Johnson, 2006)

For teachers, it is essential to set a structure in groups in order to allow students to bring their abilities to the group effort. This type of learning helps to link findings of a special topic together, helping students to discover that working in groups brings about higher effectiveness especially for practical plans.

There will be four people in each group and each person will have a job, there will be a leader, speaker, reader, and notetaker. After modeling each role, I will allow the students to create groups with four people in each group. At each table will be a discussion question or a project set up for each group. Once students are in groups, I will have the students decide who will be in each role. I will then have the students begin reading the group discussion question or begin the group project. As the students are working I will be walking around and encouraging the students to dig deeper to explore a concept. By teaching the students how to work together in groups with the different roles will ensure that each group member is evenly contributing to the group and teaching the students important skills for working collaboratively for the future.

Cooperative Learning is a method of teaching and learning in which students work together to explore a significant question or create a meaningful project. In Cooperative Learning, students work together in small groups on a structured activity in order to accomplish shared learning goals. (Abass)

Secondly, the intervention goal is to improve students’ comfortability and motivation to work together to co-create knowledge. To promote group work and collaboration, cooperative learning will be used so students can work together to make sense of new information and solve problems. The first step is to ensure that the students understand and believe that the classroom is a safe and a nonjudgmental environment which will be accomplished by having students at the beginning of the schoolyear introduce themselves, provide their interests, and state what they would like to learn from the class. The teacher will establish pre-assigned, diverse, semester-length, groups for students to complete group work. Once students are acquainted with each other, they will engage in team-building exercises pertinent to a particular American history topic being learned to help develop rapport (e.g., each group member teaches each other something new about the topic). Overall, these steps will create a cooperative learning environment that will initiate motivation and comfortability.

Cooperative learning will be a method I use in my classroom. I believe that in a cooperative learning group a student can learn socialization skills and how to work with others. This goes along with the pragmatic/progressive philosophy that children learn by doing. The progressivism teaching style also includes the incorporation of problem-solving and critical thinking techniques. I want my students to learn to think for themselves and be able to function in society. At the same time, I will be a fellow learner myself and

Cooperative learning consist of five basic elements, 1) Positive Interdependence, 2) Face-to-face Interaction, 3) Individual Accountability, 4) Social Skills and 5) Group Processing. Research backs up Marzano’s cooperative learning strategy as a key component of a progressive learning tool. Positive interdependence is the idea that when students are grouped together, they will consciously be held accountable to one another and share in the responsibility of the project. Team members work together with the idea that each member plays a vital role in the achievement of their overall goal due to the obligation to the other members. Face-to-face Interaction involves students working together to teach each other the material. We have found, through various studies that one of the best ways to learn a given material is for each member of the group to teach a section to the rest of the group .Individual Accountability speaks for itself. When a student is held accountable for their portion of the project and is held accountable by their respective peers, they feel obligated to do their part of the project. The fourth part of cooperative learning is, in my opinion, the most important skill learned in this process, the Social Aspect. In the social dynamic of the group, students learn skills that will take them beyond the walls of the educational institution. Social skills will guide students in learning communication skills, decision making, cultural learning, conflict resolution,

Cooperative learning should be considered the natural progression of the American education system. Traditional education techniques place students in a competitive atmosphere. Cooperative learning requires students to work together to achieve success. A democratic method for a democratic society. Cooperative learning does not allow for a single winner, instead through group efforts, each student’s strengths help the collective achieve success. This paper will address the history of cooperative learning, along with its social, academic, and teacher benefits. Most importantly, it will highlight the positive effects of cooperative learning techniques upon students of all abilities.

In the growing global society of the 21st century we must prepare our students for a team oriented approach to learning. Cooperative learning allows the development of many different skills in the classroom. As many educators know every student is at different intellectual levels when they enter their classrooms. Cooperative learning allows small groups of students with different abilities to learn from their peers. Through teamwork students learn to appropriately commend others when a task is accomplished. Although, students will be working together for a common goal, each individual student will be responsible for their own work. There are several positive outcomes for students through the use of cooperative learning. In particular, it promotes positive interaction between members of different cultures and socio-economic groups. Additionally, it motivates students to learn new material ensuring student metacognition. To sum up my thoughts about cooperative learning I feel this learning technique offers many benefit’s to students and should be evident in daily learning.

On cooperative learning help in viewing the teammates as responsible, 41.7% strongly agree, 33.3% agree as 25% were neutral. This also indicates that cooperative learning is of great importance in creating the sense of responsibility among the students in the schools. This makes a student come out of the institutions with a sense of responsibility on their later areas of life.

First, cooperative learning is a kind of group work. Learners have to work together in small groups between two and six members.

A cognitivism theory that aligns with my belief statement is cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is where students work in small groups on a common task or project while the teacher acts as a facilitator (Coffey, 2017). In my belief statement I stated, learners should collaborate together and build upon their prior knowledge, this is the core of cooperative learning.

Some researchers have shown a disadvantage in group work with student learning. Lower achieving students could fall behind due to their passive nature or lack of confidence (King, 1993). If the high achieving students dominate the group and discussions, the lower achieving students may not feel comfortable sharing in the discussion. In this instance, the learning opportunity could pass them by without anyone realizing the lack of understanding. Other shortcomings of cooperative learning is the time required for some groups to work cohesively and the inability to teach the curriculum in a small group Cooperative Learning setting (Good, Reys, Grouws, & Mulryan, (1989;1990).

Cooperative learning is more than just letting students sit next to each other and complete an assignment together. If implemented the wrong way cooperative learning can become ineffective for the students, therefor stunting their ability to grow as learners. A cooperative learning environment will exist if groups are structured in a way that group member’s co-ordinate activities to facilitate one another’s learning (Van Dat, 2013). In order to achieve this kind of environment there are five elements that must be present in a cooperative learning classroom: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual accountability, interpersonal & social skills, and group processing. Let’s look further into these give elements to have a better understanding of cooperative learning. In order for cooperative learning to be successful students need to be able to reflect on what they learned as a group to ensure all members have an

When referring back to the topic of cooperative learning technique, a lot of efforts and steps were taken throughout the previous years, and there are still a lot of works that can be done on it too.

Cooperative learning is classroom structure that incorporates the collaboration of students into small groups to work together for an overall community goal. It is a structure to maximize each student’s educational strengths in a classroom setting to achieve, not only academic success but also social learning experience. How to implement students in cooperative learning make it difficult versus traditional individualism teaching, where the success of the student relies on each student. There three different types of cooperative learning: Formal, Informal and Cooperative Base Groups. Each type has different benefits of interdependence structured depending on how individuals interact with each other, to determine the overall outcome.