Cooperative learning organizes classroom work so students pursue academic goals together while developing social skills. It is more than placing students in groups: the activity must make their success meaningfully connected.
In cooperative learning, students work collectively toward shared academic goals. They can use one another's knowledge and skills by asking questions, evaluating ideas, monitoring work, and explaining concepts. The teacher's role shifts from primarily delivering information to facilitating learning.
All flashcards
What is cooperative learning?
An educational approach in which students work together toward shared academic goals while developing social learning and supporting one another's contributions.
What is positive interdependence?
A relationship in which members understand that their goal achievement is connected: each can succeed when the others with whom they cooperate succeed too.
What did John Dewey contribute to cooperative learning?
Dewey emphasized active learning through discussion and the development of knowledge and social skills that students can use in life beyond the classroom.
How did Kurt Lewin describe a group?
As a dynamic whole whose members are interdependent through common goals, so that a change in one member or subgroup can affect others.
How do positive and negative interdependence differ?
Positive interdependence links members' success and tends to promote supportive interaction. Negative interdependence makes members perceive that they succeed only when others fail, encouraging opposition or competition.
Quiz questions
What distinguishes a base group from a temporary cooperative group?Answer: It is a stable peer group that meets regularly over an extended period.
What does group processing involve in cooperative learning?Answer: Reflecting on which group actions helped and deciding what to improve.
In the original Jigsaw structure, what do students do after learning their assigned topics in expert groups?Answer: Return to their home groups and teach their topics to classmates.
Which set of strategies is practiced in reciprocal teaching?Answer: Clarifying, questioning, predicting, and summarizing.
What is a sound way to interpret evidence about a specific cooperative-learning structure?Answer: Evidence for cooperative learning overall does not establish that every structure is equally effective.