Does Cooperative Learning Increase Student Participation? Essay

Moreover, despite all those well documented benefits of cooperative learning, many teachers still do not prefer to use this pedagogical practice in class, stated by Baines, Blatchford, and Kutnik (2003). The fact is that the cooperative learning requires teachers to have high awareness of students’ learning, good control of students challenging behaviors.

With the heterogeneous groups the level of discussion and cooperative work is increased, providing benefits for every student partaking. According to Paul Burden and David Byrd (2012), “Having students work in groups generally has a positive effect on their achievement when compared to their work as individuals.” Small-group work and discussions allows for students to improve their communication skill, cooperation skills, and gain new insight and understanding from their peers in a way that could not be achieved working alone.

There are several reasons why cooperative learning works well. The idea that students learn more by doing something active than by simply watching and listening has long been known to both cognitive psychologists and effective teachers (Bransford, et. al., 2000) and cooperative learning is by its nature an active method. Beyond that, cooperation enhances learning in several ways. Weak students working individually are likely to give up when they get stuck; working cooperatively, they keep going. Strong students faced with the task of explaining and clarifying material to weaker students often find gaps in their own understanding and fill them in. Students working alone may tend to delay completing assignments or skip them altogether, but when they know that others are counting on them, they are motivated to do the work in a timely manner.

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 is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative efforts result in participants striving for mutual benefit so that all group members: * gain from each other's efforts. (Your success benefits me and my success benefits you.) * recognize that all group members share a common fate. (We all

Cooperative learning “creates a vibrant, interactive community in the classroom” (Pratt, 2003). This strategy is used more for inquiry based activities which facilitates learning in a safe learning environment. Slavin (1991) feels that “cooperative learning approaches have incorporated two key elements: group goals and individual accountability” (p. 74). There have been positive effects which are consistently found in the students, as a growth in their self-esteem, group relationships, acceptance of diverse students, attitudes, and their ability to work communally. This strategy has some similarities to collaboration.

Using differentiated instruction helps build existing knowledge and activates prior knowledge. Once students have gained a deeper level of understanding, using cooperative learning groups is beneficial because it enhances academic achievement, student attitudes, and student retention (Hsiung, 2012). Cooperative learning also provides a natural

Cooperative learning is known as small group learning. It is an instructional strategy in which small heterogeneous group of learners work together on a common academic goal or task given to them by teachers. By interacting with one another learners can improve their acquisition of academic knowledge and skills. Such interaction amongst learners based on equal partnership in the learning experience, is termed as cooperative learning. With cooperative situations, learners seek outcomes that are beneficial to themselves as well as to other group members.

According to the Johnson & Johnson model, cooperative learning is instruction that involves students working in teams to accomplish a common goal, under conditions that include the 5 essential elements and they aim to help learners to work together in order to succeed, it is done by taking the results of the group instead of the individuals (P. Dillenbourg, 1994) since learners are not equally gifted academically.

Cooperative learning is part of a group of teaching/learning techniques where students interact with each other to acquire and practice the elements of a subject matter and to meet common learning goals (Macpherson, 2000, p.1). In other words, it is a learning method that consists of groups of students coming together for a common purpose. Cooperative learning has been the center of worldwide attention because it has been shown to have strong effects on student learning, as well as other positive outcomes (Tran, 2013, p. 101). This paper explains the core elements of cooperative learning method.

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.

Collaborative learning is founded on the idea that the learning process is a naturally social act which requires the participants to talk among themselves. Collaborative learning involves small groups of students who act on a structured learning activity to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. In simpler terms, the students work in groups to learn or understand a new concept they are studying. In this learning approach, it is important to understand that the students are accountable for individual work as well as the group work they do as a group in collaborative learning

Collaborative learning is an instructive way to deal with teaching and learning that involves groups of students working together to tackle an issue, finish a task, or make a product. According to Gerlach (1994), collaborative learning is “based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves.” When collaborative learning strategies are utilized to support instruction, students have tendency to be more engaged, retain information better, and have preferable learning results over those of individual learners (McLaren, 2014)

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.

‘Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves. It is through the talk that learning occurs.’