Cooperative learning is an educational approach which aims to organize classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. There is much more to cooperative learning than merely arranging students into groups, and it has been described as "structuring positive interdependence." Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively can capitalize on one another's resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another's ideas, monitoring one another's work, etc.). Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful cooperative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involve higher-order thinking tasks. Cooperative learning has also been linked to increased levels of student satisfaction.

Five essential elements are identified for the successful incorporation of cooperative learning in the classroom:

  • positive interdependence
  • individual and group accountability
  • promotive interaction (face to face)
  • teaching the students the required interpersonal and small group skills
  • group processing.

According to Johnson and Johnson's meta-analysis, students in cooperative learning settings compared to those in individualistic or competitive learning settings, achieve more, reason better, gain higher self-esteem, like classmates and the learning tasks more and have more perceived social support.

History

Prior to World War II, social theorists such as Allport, Watson, Shaw, and Mead began establishing cooperative learning theory after finding that group work was more effective and efficient in quantity, quality, and overall productivity when compared to working alone. However, it wasn't until 1937 when researchers May and Doob found that people who cooperate and work together to achieve shared goals were more successful in attaining outcomes, than those who strived independently to complete the same goals. Furthermore, they found that independent achievers had a greater likelihood of displaying competitive behaviors.

Philosophers and psychologists in the 1930s and 1940s such as John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, and Morton Deutsh also influenced the cooperative learning theory practiced today. Dewey believed it was important that students develop knowledge and social skills that could be used outside of the classroom, and in the democratic society. This theory portrayed students as active recipients of knowledge by discussing information and answers in groups, engaging in the learning process together rather than being passive receivers of information (e.g., teacher talking, students listening).

Lewin's contributions to cooperative learning were based on the ideas of establishing relationships between group members in order to successfully carry out and achieve the learning goal. Deutsh's contribution to cooperative learning was positive social interdependence, the idea that the student is responsible for contributing to group knowledge. Students who showed to be more competitive lacked in their interaction and trust with others, as well as in their emotional involvement with other students.

In 1994 Johnson and Johnson published the five elements (positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, social skills, and processing) essential for effective group learning, achievement, and higher-order social, personal and cognitive skills (e.g., problem solving, reasoning, decision-making, planning, organizing, and reflecting).

Theoretical base

Social interdependence theory: Social interdependence exists when the outcomes of individuals are affected by their own and others' actions.

Morton Deutsch extended Lewin's notions by examining how the tension systems of different people may be interrelated. He conceptualized two types of social interdependence—positive and negative. Positive interdependence exists when there is a positive correlation among individuals' goal attainments; individuals perceive that they can attain their goal if and only if the other individuals with whom they are cooperatively linked attain their goals. Positive interdependence results in promotive interaction. Negative interdependence exists when there is a negative correlation among individuals' goal achievements; individual perceive that they can obtain their goals if and only if the other individuals with whom they are competitively like fail to obtain their goals. Negative interdependence results in oppositional or content interaction. No interdependence exists when there is no correlation among individuals' goal achievements; individuals perceive that the achievement of their goals is unrelated to the goal achievement of others. The basic premise of social interdependence theory is that how participants' goals are structured determines the ways they interact and the interaction pattern determine the outcomes of the situation.

Types

Formal cooperative learning is structured, facilitated, and monitored by the educator over time and is used to achieve group goals in task work (e.g. completing a unit). Any course material or assignment can be adapted to this type of learning, and groups can vary from 2-6 people with discussions lasting from a few minutes up to an entire period. Types of formal cooperative learning strategies include:

  1. The jigsaw technique
  2. Assignments that involve group problem-solving and decision making
  3. Laboratory or experiment assignments
  4. Peer review work (e.g. editing writing assignments).

Having experience and developing skill with this type of learning often facilitates informal and base learning. Jigsaw activities are wonderful because the student assumes the role of the teacher on a given topic and is in charge of teaching the topic to a classmate. The idea is that if students can teach something, they have already learned the material.

Informal cooperative learning incorporates group learning with passive teaching by drawing attention to material through small groups throughout the lesson or by discussion at the end of a lesson, and typically involves groups of two (e.g. turn-to-your-partner discussions). These groups are often temporary and can change from lesson to lesson (very much unlike formal learning where 2 students may be lab partners throughout the entire semester contributing to one another's knowledge of science).

Discussions typically have four components that include formulating a response to questions asked by the educator, sharing responses to the questions asked with a partner, listening to a partner's responses to the same question, and creating a new well-developed answer. This type of learning enables the student to process, consolidate, and retain more information. The first element is positive interdependence. Students must fully participate and put forth effort within their group, and each group member has a task, role or responsibility, therefore must believe that they are responsible for their learning and that of their group. The second element is face-to-face promotive interaction. Members must promote each other's success, and students explain to one another what they have or are learning and assist one another with understanding and completion of assignments. The third element is individual and group accountability. Each student must demonstrate mastery of the content being studied and each student is accountable for their learning and work, therefore eliminating social loafing. The fourth element is social skills, which must be taught in order for successful cooperative learning to occur. The skills include effective communication and interpersonal and group skills. For example, leadership, decision-making, trust-building, friendship-development, communication, and conflict-management skills. The fifth element is group processing. Group processing occurs when group members reflect on which member actions were helpful and make decisions about which actions to continue or change. The purpose of group processing is to clarify and improve the effectiveness with which members carry out the processes necessary to achieve the group's goals.

In order for student achievement to improve considerably, two characteristics must be present. Firstly, when designing cooperative learning tasks and reward structures, individual responsibility and accountability must be identified. Individuals must know exactly what their responsibilities are and that they are accountable to the group in order to reach their goal. Secondly, all group members must be involved in order for the group to complete the task. In order for this to occur each member must have a task that they are responsible for which cannot be completed by any other group member.

Techniques

There are a great number of cooperative learning techniques available. Some cooperative learning techniques utilize student pairing, while others utilize small groups of four or five students. Hundreds of techniques have been created into structures to use in any content area. Among the easy to implement structures are think-pair-share, think-pair-write, variations of Round Robin, and the reciprocal teaching technique. A well known cooperative learning technique is the Jigsaw, Jigsaw II and Reverse Jigsaw. Educators should think of critical thinking, creative thinking and empathetic thinking activities to give students in pairs and work together.

Think-pair-share

Originally developed by Frank T. Lyman (1981), think-pair-share allows students to contemplate a posed question or problem silently. The student may write down thoughts or simply just brainstorm in his or her head. When prompted, the student pairs up with a peer and discusses his or her ideas and then listens to the ideas of his or her partner. Following pair dialogue, the teacher solicits responses from the whole group. It differs from the original Jigsaw during the teaching portion of the activity. In the Reverse Jigsaw technique, students in the expert groups teach the whole class rather than return to their home groups to teach the content.

Inside-outside circle

The inside-outside circle is a cooperative learning strategy in which students form two concentric circles and take turns on rotation to face new partners to answer or discuss the teacher's questions. This method can be used to gather a variety of information, generate new ideas and solve problems.

Reciprocal teaching

Brown and Paliscar (1982) developed reciprocal teaching, which — as currently practiced — pertains to the form of guided, cooperative learning that features a collaborative learning setting between learning leaders and listeners; expert scaffolding by an adult teacher; and direct instruction, modeling, and practice in the use of simple strategies that facilitate a dialogue structure.

In a model that allows for student pairs to participate in a dialogue about text, partners take turns reading and asking questions of each other, receiving immediate feedback. This approach enables students to use important metacognitive techniques such as clarifying, questioning, predicting, and summarizing. It embraces the idea that students can effectively learn from each other. There are empirical studies that show the efficacy of reciprocal teaching even in subjects such as mathematics. For instance, it was found that children who were taught using this strategy showed higher levels of accuracy in mathematical computations in comparison with those who were not. The same success has been obtained in the cases of students learning in diverse situations such as those with learning disabilities and those who are at risk of academic failure, among others. These studies also cover learners from elementary to college levels.

The Williams

Students collaborate to answer a big question that is the learning objective. Each group has differentiated questions that increase in cognitive demands to allow students to progress and meet the learning objective.

Student-teams-achievement divisions

Students are placed in small groups (or teams). The class in its entirety is presented with a lesson and the students are subsequently tested. Individuals are graded on the team's performance. Although the tests are taken individually, students are encouraged to work together to improve the overall performance of the group.

Rally table

Rally table is another cooperative learning strategy. In this process, the class or the students are divided into groups. This is done to encourage group learning, team building and cooperative learning. It is the written version of Robin Table. TGT is an effective tool to teach mathematics as it motivates and helps students acquire skills and mastery with the help of their peer and through healthy competition. Cooperative learning requires students to engage in group activities that increase learning and adds other important dimensions. Cooperative learning is an active pedagogy that fosters higher academic achievement.

Benefits and applicability of cooperative learning are that students demonstrate academic achievement, the methods are usually equally effective for all ability levels, and it is effective for all ethnic groups.

In business, cooperative learning can be seen as a characteristic of innovative businesses. The five-stage division on cooperative learning creates a useful method of analyzing learning in innovative businesses, and innovation connected to cooperative learning seems to make the creation of innovations possible. To eliminate such concerns, confidential evaluation processes and individual performance evaluation may help to increase evaluation strength. When students develop group hate their individual performance in the group suffers and in turn the group as a whole suffers. There are many factors that lead students to experience these feelings of group hate. The more crucial elements include past bad experiences, group fatigue due to overuse of cooperative learning and whether they prefer to work alone.

When students are given a choice between group based or individual work, they often evaluate several factors. The three most common factors are how likely they are to get a good grade, the difficulty of the task, and the amount of effort involved. Students will choose to do the work individually more often that not, because they feel that they can do a better job individually than as a group.

It is difficult to definitively identify which factors lead to a student forming group hate, as each group and individual is unique. However, there are several common concerns that lead to students developing group hate.

  • Concerns about the teachers' role
  • Concerns about the students' role
  • Concerns about fairness and use of resources.

Concerns about the teachers' role usually stem from lack of communication from the teacher as to what exactly is expected of the group. It is difficult for a teacher to find the right balance between being overbearing, and not providing sufficient structure and oversight.  While an experienced teacher may be able to strike the balance every time, most teachers tend to lean one way or the other which can cause confusion with the students. This is only amplified when the students are put into groups and asked to complete a project with insufficient instructions. The way a teacher chooses to structure a project can influence how a student perceives the project overall.  Whether or not a student likes a teaching style or not can influence if they develop group hate.

The next concern that leads students to developing group hate is that students get sick of working with the same group members over and over again.  Cooperative learning  is becoming so common that students are beginning to develop group hate simply because they are doing too many group projects. Students express opinions such as, "so many group projects with the same people", and, "we are all up in each others business".

Loafing

Loafing is defined as "students who don't take responsibility for their own role, even if it is the smallest role in the group." Students expect that group based learning will be fair for everyone within the group. In order for cooperative learning  to be fair the work load must be shared equally within the group. Many students fear that this will not take place.  This leads to the students developing group hate.