Ынтымақтастық оқу: Ұжымдық жұмыс арқылы білім беру

Educational approach which arranges students into cooperative groups

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 is another process of cooperative learning. 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.

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. blockquote|text=The fear that some members of the group will act as passengers or social loafers and derive a benefit (generally a good grade) from the group activity undermines the effectiveness of the group. Some students hoard their intellectual capital to make sure that no one unjustly benefits from it. Ironically, some of the students most indignant about "slackers" or "freeloaders" make immediate assumptions about their peers and insist from the outset that they will have to take care of everything in order to maintain control. There are many ways for a concern about equity to warp the function of a group. Therefore, to make groups more effective, the most important thing an instructor can do to defuse student resistance to cooperative learning  is to focus attention on the issue of "fairness." Students often will assess their group positively in hopes that they will in return be assessed the same way. This often leads to inaccurate assessments of the group. "For most instructors, one of the greatest pedagogical challenges for a group communication course is to help students realize that the benefits of cooperative learning outweigh the costs involved".

Another aspect of cooperative learning that leads to group members developing group hate is that "groups are unable to achieve sufficient cohesion because they fail to manage conflict effectively". The students are not usually in a group long enough to develop good group cohesion and establish effective ways to resolve conflict. The problem is that most students have had a negative experience in groups and consequently are apprehensive to get into such a situation again. "One answer to this dilemma is to demonstrate how groups trump individuals in terms of problem solving". It is almost uncommon not to have some cooperative learning elements within a college class. However, it is not uncommon to hear students expressing negative opinions regarding cooperative learning. Feichtner and Davis stated that this is because "entirely too many students are leaving the classroom experiencing only the frustrations of cooperative learning and not the numerous benefits possible through team based effort". One of the main flaws with previous research is that the research is almost always done from the perspective of the instructor, giving a flawed view as the instructors are not the ones who are participating in the cooperative learning. blockquote|From the (often blind) viewpoint of instructors, we had always viewed cooperative learning as an added advantage for the students – an opportunity to receive additional support while working closely with their peers. We had never really considered what a disastrous experience some frustrated students must endure, or why some students reported only positive experiences from classes utilizing group learning techniques. There have also been many studies claiming cooperative learning is more effective than competitive learning and individualistic efforts. But studies also show that competition and individualistic efforts can be constructive and should be encouraged when they are appropriately structured. The conditions for constructive competition are that winning is relatively unimportant, all participants have a reasonable chance to win and there are clear and specific rules, procedures, and criteria for winning. The conditions for constructive individualistic efforts are: for cooperation to be too costly, difficult or cumbersome because of the unavailability of skilled potential co operators or the unavailability of the resources need for cooperation to take place; for the goal to be perceived as important, relevant, and worthwhile; for the participants to expect that they will be successful in achieving their goals; for the directions for completing the tasks to be clear and specific, so participants can proceed and evaluate their work without further clarification; and for accomplishments to be used subsequently in a cooperative effort.