Introduction to cooperative learning

This article is a non-technical introduction to the subject. For the main encyclopedia article, see Cooperative learning.

Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning.

Cooperative learning may be contrasted with competitive and individualistic learning. The key difference between these teaching approaches is the way students' learning goals are structured. The goal structure specifies the ways in which students will interact with each other and the teacher during the instructional session. Within cooperative situations, individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to themselves and beneficial to all other group members. In competitive learning students work against each other to achieve an academic goal such as a grade of "A" that only one or a few students can attain. Finally, in individualistic learning students work by themselves to accomplish learning goals unrelated to those of the other students.

In cooperative and individualistic learning, student efforts are evaluated on a criteria-referenced basis while in competitive learning teachers grade in a norm-referenced basis.

History and theoretical roots

In the mid-1960s, cooperative learning was relatively unknown and largely ignored by educators. Elementary, secondary, and university teaching was dominated by competitive and individualistic learning. Cultural resistance to cooperative learning was based on social Darwinism, with its premise that students must be taught to survive in a "dog-eat-dog" world, and the myth of "rugged individualism" underlying the use of individualistic learning. While competition dominated educational thought, it was being challenged by individualistic learning largely based on B. F. Skinner's work on programmed learning and behavioral modification. Educational practices and thought, however, have changed. Cooperative learning is now an accepted and highly recommended instructional procedure at all levels of education.

Most of the original theories of cooperative learning have their roots on social interdependence and Lewinian field theory. Theorizing on social interdependence began in the early 1900s, when one of the founders of the Gestalt School of Psychology, Kurt Koffka, proposed that groups were dynamic wholes in which the interdependence among members could vary. One of his colleagues, Kurt Lewin refined Koffka's notions in the 1920s and 1930s while stating that (a) the essence of a group is the interdependence among members (created by common goals) which results in the group being a "dynamic whole" so that a change in the state of any member or subgroup changes the state of any other member or subgroup, and (b) an intrinsic state of tension within group members motivates movement toward the accomplishment of the desired common goals. For interdependence to exist, there must be more than one person or entity involved, and the persons or entities must have impact on each other in that a change in the state of one causes a change in the state of the others. From the work of Lewin's students and colleagues, such as Ovisankian, Lissner, Mahler, and Lewis, it may be concluded that it is the drive for goal accomplishment that motivates cooperative and competitive behavior.

In the late 1940s, one of Lewin's graduate students, Morton Deutsch, extended Lewin's reasoning about social interdependence and formulated a theory of cooperation and competition. Deutsch conceptualized three types of social interdependence–positive, negative, and none. Deutsch's basic premise was that the type of interdependence structured in a situation determines how individuals interact with each other which, in turn, largely determines outcomes. Positive interdependence tends to result in promotive interaction, negative interdependence tends to result in oppositional or contrient interaction, and no interdependence results in an absence of interaction.

Types

According to Johnson and Johnson, there are three types of cooperative learning: formal, informal and cooperative base groups.

Formal

Formal cooperative learning consists of students working together, for one class period to several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and assignments. Johnson, Johnson & Holubec describe the teachers' role in formal cooperative learning groups. It includes (a) making preinstructional decisions about tasks, objectives, group size and composition, roles, materials and room assignment (b) explaining the task and cooperative structure to the students (c) monitoring students' learning and intervening to provide assistance in completing the task or using group skills effectively and (d) assessing students' learning and helping students process how well their groups functioned.

Informal

Informal cooperative learning consists of having students work together to achieve a joint learning goal in temporary groups that last from a few minutes to one class period. The students take part in focused discussions before and after the lesson and interspersing pair discussions throughout the lesson.

Informal cooperative learning ensures students are actively involved in understanding what is being presented. It is also useful to set a mood conducive to learning, help set expectations, provide closure to an instructional session and precue the next session. Moreover, during the informal cooperative learning techniques, teachers have time to move around the class listening to what students are saying. This can give instructors insight into how well students understand the material, as well as being behavior that increases the individual accountability of each student participating in the discussions.

Two important aspects of using informal cooperative learning groups are to (a) make the task and the instructions explicit and precise and (b) require the groups to produce a specific product (such as a written answer). According to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec the informal cooperative learning procedure is organized in the following way:

1. Introductory focused discussion: Teachers assign students to pairs or triads and explain the task of answering the questions in a five-minute period with the goal of reaching consensus (to promote positive goal interdepence). The discussion task is aimed at promoting advance organizing of what the students know about the topic to be presented and establishing expectations about what the lecture will cover.
2. Intermittent focused discussions: Teachers divide the lecture into 10 to 15 minute segments (length of time a motivated adult can concentrate on information being presented). After each segment, students are asked to turn to the person next to them and work cooperatively in answering a question that requires students to cognitively process the information. Each student first formulates his or her own answer before sharing and listening to the other members' ideas. Finally, the pair integrates the two answers, synthesizing them into a single and superior answer.
3. Closure focused discussion: Students participate in a five-minute closing discussion task summarizing what they have learned from the lecture and integrating the information into existing conceptual frameworks. The task may also point students toward what the homework will cover or what will be presented in the next class session.

Cooperative base groups

Cooperative base groups are long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with stable membership. Typically, cooperative base groups are heterogeneous in membership (especially in terms of achievement motivation and task orientation), meet regularly (for example, daily or biweekly), and last for the duration of the class (a semester or year), or, preferably, for several years.

The agenda of the base group can include academic support tasks (such as editing each other's essays), personal support tasks (such as getting to know each other and helping each other solve nonacademic problems), routine tasks (such as taking attendance), and assessment tasks (such as checking each other's understanding of the answers to test questions when the test is first taken individually and then retaken in the base group).

Members' primary responsibilities are to (a) ensure all members are making good academic progress (i.e., positive goal interdependence) (b) hold each other accountable for striving to learn (i.e., individual accountability), and (c) provide each other with support, encouragement, and assistance in completing assignments (i.e., promotive interaction).

Permanent cooperative base groups provide the arena in which caring and committed partnerships can be created that provide the social support needed to improve attendance, personalize the educational experience, increase achievement, and improve the quality of school life.

Integrated use of all three types

These three types of cooperative learning may be used together. A typical class session may begin with a base group meeting, which is followed by a short lecture in which informal cooperative learning is used. The lecture may then be followed by a formal cooperative learning lesson. Near the end of the class session, another short lecture may be delivered with the use of informal cooperative learning. The class may end with a base group meeting.

Using the group meetings can help the students evaluate what they learned and help them with class building. Using small groups for class building will make the class stronger as a whole and give the classes a stronger understanding of the topics.

Basic elements of cooperation

Not all groups are cooperative. Johnson and Johnson describe the five elements that need to be present for a group to be cooperative:

• Positive interdependence exists when group members perceive that they are linked with each other in such a way that one cannot succeed unless everyone succeeds. Group members realize, therefore, that each person's efforts benefit not only him- or herself, but all other group members as well. Positive interdependence creates a commitment to other people's success as well as one's own and is the basis of cooperative learning.
• Individual and group accountability: The group has to be clear about its goals and be able to measure (a) its progress in achieving them and (b) the individual efforts of each of its members. The group must be accountable for achieving its goals and each member must be accountable for contributing his or her share of the work.
• Promotive interaction (preferably face-to-face): Promotive interaction occurs when members share resources and help, support, encourage, and praise each other's efforts to learn. Promotive interaction includes activities and interpersonal dynamics that can only occur when students promote each other's learning, i.e., orally explaining how to solve problems, discussing concepts, and teaching one's knowledge to classmates.
• Interpersonal and small group skills: In cooperative learning groups students are required to learn academic subject matter (taskwork) and also to learn the interpersonal and small group skills required to function as part of a group (teamwork). Group members must know how to provide effective leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills. Teachers have to teach teamwork skills just as purposefully and precisely as teachers do academic skills.
• Group processing: Group processing exists when group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships. Groups need to describe what member actions are helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change.

Research

David Johnson and colleagues wrote:

The study of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts is commonly recognized as one of the oldest fields of research in social psychology. In the late 1800s Triplett (1898) in the United States, Turner (1889, cited in Trippett, 1898) in England, and Mayer (1903) in Germany conducted a series of studies on the factors associated with competitive performance. Since then over 750 studies have been conducted on the relative merits of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts and the conditions under which each is appropriate.

The research has focused on numerous outcomes, which may be subsumed within the broad and interrelated categories of effort to achieve quality of relationships and psychological health.

Effort to achieve

Cooperation promotes considerably greater effort to achieve than does competitive or individualistic efforts. In a meta-analysis by David Johnson and Roger Johnson, effort to achieve includes such variables as achievement (effect-sizes = 0.67 and 0.64 compared to competitive and individualistic efforts), long-term retention, time on-task (effect-sizes = 0.76,and 1.17), use of higher-level reasoning strategies (effect-sizes =0.93 and 0.97), generation of new ideas and solutions, transfer of what is learned within one situation to another, intrinsic motivation, achievement motivation, continuing motivation to learn, and positive attitudes toward learning and school.

Quality of relationships

Cooperation generally promotes greater interpersonal attraction among individuals (effect sizes = 0.67 and 0.60 compared to competitive and individualistic efforts respectively) and greater social support (effect-sizes = 0.62 and 0.70).

Psychological health

Johnson and Johnson define psychological health as the ability (cognitive capacities, motivational orientations, and social skills) to build, maintain, and appropriately modify interdependent relationships with others to succeed in achieving goals. People who are unable to do so often (a) become depressed, anxious, frustrated, and lonely, (b) tend to feel afraid, inadequate, helpless, hopeless, and isolated, and (c) rigidly cling to unproductive and ineffective ways of coping with adversity.

Several scientific studies have shown a strong relationship between cooperativeness and psychological health, a mixed picture was found with competitiveness and psychological health, and a strong relationship was found between an individualistic orientation and psychological pathology.

Finally, there is evidence that cooperation promotes more frequent use of higher level reasoning strategies than do competitive (effect size = 0.93) or individualistic (effect size = 0.97) efforts. Similarly, cooperation tends to promote more accurate perspective taking than do competitive (effect size = 0.61) or individualistic (effect size = 0.44) efforts. Thus, the more cooperative learning experiences students are involved in, the more mature their cognitive and moral decision making and the more they will tend to take other people's perspectives in account when making decisions.

References

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