Cooperation/Cooperative Studies

Cooperation was a distinctive educational concept in the field of curriculum during the 1930s and 1940s and much different from today's practices of cooperative learning. The term manifested itself in the classroom as cooperative planning and teacher–pupil planning, in student assessment as cooperative educational records, and in research and school reform as cooperative study. Cooperation and cooperative studies embraced a democratic ideal that participants would work together for a greater good and would maintain a fundamental belief (and faith) that a diversity of perspectives, coupled with open discourse, would serve to better disseminate information as a way to solve problems. [Page 142]Although no structured format or unified theory was developed, the practice of cooperation included a focus on problem solving, the workshop, and the use ...