Cooperative Learning Research Paper

Cooperative learning in high schools

Cooperative learning has been shown to be beneficial for students across a wide racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and disability spectrum, as well as those from differing academic skill levels. Teachers who use a cooperative learning approach assign students to heterogeneous groups to complete instructional activities. Successful cooperative learning programs focus on social skills, positive interdependence, individual student accountability, one on one interaction and group processing. Cooperation exists when individuals work together in a group in order to promote both their individual learning outcomes as well as the learning outcomes of their peers (Johnson and Johnson, 1989). Cooperative learning is rooted

Cooperative learning should be there from lower schools because we cannot expect to transfer directly to high schools. Under certain conditions cooperative efforts are expected to be more productive than competitive and individualistic efforts. The first condition is positive interdependence where each group member 's efforts are required and indispensable for group success and they make a unique contribution to make a joint effort because of his or her resources. Second condition is face to face interaction where learners come together, share their knowledge, orally explain how to solve problems and discuss concepts that were taught to them. Third condition is individual and group accountability where teacher keep the size of the group small. The smaller the size of the group, the greater the individual accountability may be. Give an individual test to each student to examine students orally by calling on one student to present his or her group 's work to the teacher or to the entire class. Then observe each group and record the frequency with which each member-contributes to the group 's work. Teacher assigns one student in each group the role of checker. The checker asks other group members to explain the reasoning and rationale underlying group answers, having students teach what they learned to someone else. Fourth condition is

Different activities are practiced to use in cooperative learning such as jigsaw where students are divided into groups and they are assigned with some unique material to learn. To help in the learning, students work on the same sub-section get together to decide what is important and how to present it. After practice in these "expert" groups the original groups’ reform and students teach each other. (Wood, p. 17). Other activity could be think-pair-share where it involves a three step cooperative structure. During the first step individuals think silently about a question posed by the instructor. Individuals pair up during the second step and exchange thoughts. In the third step, the pairs share their responses with other pairs, other teams, or the entire group. Circle the sage is another interesting activity where first the teacher polls the class to see which students have a special knowledge to share. For example the teacher may ask who in the class was able to solve a difficult math homework question and who knows the chemical reactions involved in how salting the streets help dissipate snow. Those students (the sages) stand and spread out in the room. The teacher then has the rest of the classmates each surround a sage, with no two members of the same team going to the same sage. The sage explains what they know while the classmates listen, ask questions, and take notes. All students then return to their teams. Each in turn, explains what they learned. Because