Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is an instructional process that engages students in collaborative discussions about the content to promote learning. The discussions may involve teaching, explaining, asking questions, quizzing, or checking, in an instructional activity where students actively share in the responsibility for learning. Cooperative learning processes significantly restructure classrooms from passive learning environments, with the teacher dominating the instructional conversation, into engaging environments where students actively participate in the learning environment. Cooperative learning also attempts to change the social and motivational environment in the classroom to promote positive and supportive peer interactions and a positive orientation toward achievement and learning. This selection on cooperative learning will describe the philosophical and historical roots of cooperative learning. It will describe the theory behind the positive effects of cooperative learning and finally discuss some of the common cooperative learning methods used in elementary, secondary, and college instruction.

In many forms of cooperative learning, teachers initially lead instruction as a way to communicate new information or skills to students. As the students practice the new learning, the teacher guides them to develop more proficiency. Gradually, the students take the instructional lead as they interact with peers practicing collaboratively. This type of transfer of responsibility for learning, from the teacher increasing gradually to the students, is characteristic of most forms of cooperative learning.

There is an important distinction between cooperative learning and more traditional group work. Cooperative learning has structural features that are important to determining how the students work within the group and the effects that cooperative learning has on both academic and social outcomes. Most researchers believe it is important for well-structured cooperative learning to have a group goal and individual accountability. The group goal is the reason for the group members to collaborate; it motivates the students to work together and creates the interdependence necessary for a well-functioning group. Some examples of group goals include a written report, a product for a project, or an average test score for the group. The individual accountability is the reason for each group member to learn, and it is critical for the positive academic benefits found in cooperative learning research. The individual accountability ensures that each member of the group does his or her share of the work. Well-structured cooperative learning differs greatly from traditional group learning in large part because group work did not necessarily include individual accountability. For example, it is possible for one person in the group to write the whole report or to do most of the problems in the group activity. This kind of group work is less likely to lead to the kind of positive social and academic effects found in the research on cooperative learning.