Individual Accountability Of Cooperative Learning

The theories of learning have undertaken important developments over the years to determine how best an educator can develop their students to survive in the 21st century. The major advancements in education have focused its attention on learning that concentrates on skills and competencies (Dumont et al, 2010). “Learning is a process of active engagement with experiences and involves the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, values, ideas and feelings” (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, 2008). Many theorists have realized that the classroom should not only be a particular set of education experiences that develop students academically but additionally to enhance their social skills, which are critical to work

The teacher ought to enforce the idea that students cannot piggy back on other group members. Common ways to structure individual accountability include randomly selecting an individual from each group to present an answer to the teacher or entire class, observing each group and recording the frequency with which each member contributes to the group 's work, giving an individual exam to each student, and having students teach what they have learnt to other

In the cooperative learning groups, students help and learn from each other, but most importantly, researchers believe that the teacher plays a key role for cooperative learning to be successful. According to Smith (1979) and Smith (1996), the teacher acts as an organizer/planner. He/she initially has to make decisions and plan the lesson: ensuring the lesson that is adapted to cooperative learning, identifying specific learning objectives that are academic, affective and social (Lee, Ng & Jacobs, 1997), and deciding on the group size that is appropriate for the lesson. Consequently, the teacher must determine the type of cooperative learning method to be used that complements the student learning outcomes and active cognitive processing of information during the lesson (Johnson & Johnson 1999). Some of these methods are: jigsaw, learning together, group investigation and student teams-achievement divisions to name few (Slavin 1982). In addition, a decision must also be made on a method to assign students to their groups and this could be done by randomly assigning students, allowing students to form their own groups, or using a purposive approach of students where the group gets a mixture of high, average and low performance students. Additionally, the teacher must design a room arrangement that allows students to work efficiently and effectively together by interacting,