Cooperative learning is the name given to a range of educational instruction methods in which students work in groups with defined goals (Nattiv, 1994). Cooperative learning has been described as “one of the greatest success stories in the history of educational innovation” (Slavin, 1999, 74) and has been found to improve student learning.
An important part of cooperative learning is that students are individually accountable for their own learning, quite often with individual goals within the group goal. Individual accountability and goals are very important components, as without them a single student in the group may do all the work, dictate roles to the other group members or group members may ostracise a group member, ignoring any contributions they may make (Slavin, 1999). Antil, Jenkins, Wayne, & Vadasy (1998) report that in six schools in a single region of the United States of America, 81% of the teachers used cooperative learning activities daily, however only 24% of those teachers used any form of individual accountability within those activities.
There are a range of different structures which can be applied for different educational exercise. The term structure is used because an activity has a “specific content-bound objective” (Kagan, 1989, p. 12), whereas a structure can be modified for any specific learning task. As there are a range of structures, it is important to consider the type of cognitive, academic and social development desired by the activity. Where the activity occurs in the lesson plan and the resources required also needs to be considered. Some structures encourage inductive reasoning, review of knowledge, equal participation, debate, role-taking and team building. The social interaction component of the structure has equal time with the cognitive and academic components.
Numbered Heads Together is a cooperative learning structure which Kagan (1989) suggest can replace the traditional Whole-Class Question-Answer structure. In the Numbered Heads Together structure, the teacher numbers off students who form groups based upon the number they are given. The teacher asks a question and the groups then discuss the question and how it should be answered. Finally, the teacher picks a number and that group answers the question. In this structure the students are group tutoring for knowledge and comprehension, where the Whole-Class Question-Answer structure had individual students competing for the teacher's attention.
A different cooperative learning structure is the Jigsaw method, in which a group assigned learning task is divided into distinctive components and given to individual members of a group (Sharan, 1980). The completion of the learning task is dependant on each member finishing their component and teaching it to the other group members, as each member is required to learn the content for assessment. The task components are structured so that one member of each group in the class is doing the same component, but for different group tasks. When combined with communication and tutoring training, the Jigsaw method has been observed to improve academic achievement as well as self-esteem and student cooperation (Sharan, 1980).
A cooperative learning structure used in the cooperative learning in mathematics studies is Student Teams and Achievement Divisions (STAD) (Nattiv, 1994; Slavin, 1999). In this structure students are split into small groups, usually of mixed gender, ability, ethnicity, for group problem solving and peer tutoring. The teacher instructs the class in a new topic and instead of traditional individual exercises the students split into their groups to do the exercise. The execution of the group work can vary, some groups may form problem solver and solution checker pairs, who then check their solution with the whole group, or a whole group approach may be taken with the problems. Nattiv (1994) performed a study where primary students were taught how to give explanations to other students when they encountered difficulty with problems. Using the STAD structure and this training, it was found that there was a strong, statistical correlation between giving or receiving explanations and improvement in student achievement. Not surprisingly, high achieving students gave more explanations, while low achieving students received more explanations from group members.
Currently, cooperative learning appears to be an excellent technique at improving student achievement. Of interest for further research are additional structures and studies identifying structures for mathematical learning.
References
Antil, L.R., Jenkins, J.R., Wayne, S.K., and Vadasy, P.F. (1998). Cooperative learning: Prevalence, conceptualizations, and the relation between research and practice. American Educational Research Journal, 35, 419-454. doi:10.3102/00028312035003419
Kagan, S. (1989). The structural approach to cooperative learning. Educational Leadership, 47(4), 12-15. Retrieved from MasterFILE Premier database.
Nattiv, A. (1994). Helping behaviors and math achievement gain of students using cooperative learning. Elementary School Journal, 94(3), 285-297. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.
Sharan, S. (1980). Cooperative learning in small groups: Recent methods and effects on achievement, attitudes, and ethnic relations. Review of Educational Research, 50, 241-271. doi:10.3102/00346543050002241
Slavin, R. (1999). Comprehensive approaches to cooperative learning. Theory Into Practice, 38(2), 74-79. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.
No comments:
Post a Comment