“Cooperative learning is not so much learning to cooperate as it is cooperating to learn” (Wong & Wong, 1998).
Cooperative learning is a technique in which learners work together in order to achieve a common goal (Killen, 2003) (See animation below). Debate is a great example of this teaching strategy and I was able to observe it my fourth week of the practicum. It is a great learning approach with many benefits but also it has some challenges.
The great advantage of cooperative learning is that it promotes motivation, social and communication skills among students. I really enjoyed seeing students seriously involved in the preparation for the debate. The debate is a great tool that not only helps students to take ownership of their ideas but also it can influence and change their opinion or develop a different perspective. This I could clearly observe on the actual day of the debate where a controversial topic, “Animals should be used for scientific experiments” was presented by the affirmative team. The team presented such strong arguments that it changed students’ perception and majority of the class voted in favour of the affirmative team.
One major limitation of cooperative learning is the fact that some of the individuals may not participate and contribute to the group work equally. Some year 5 students I observed allowed others to do the work for them. In order to overcome those difficulties the teacher made all the students equally participate in a group work. Each member of a team had an assigned role and had to present the argument. Therefore all students were responsible for achievement of the group and wining the debate.
The thing I like the most about cooperative learning is that it teaches students how to cooperate and builds students self-esteem. Those are life long skills that students can use it in real life situations such as work place.
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| Year 5 final result of a cooperative group work project. |
References:
Killen R. (2003) Effective Teaching Strategies: Lesson from Research and
Killen R. (2003) Effective Teaching Strategies: Lesson from Research and
practice 3rd ed, Thomson Social Science Press.
Wong, H. K., Wong, R. T. (1998) How to be an effective teacher: The first
days of school. Mountain View, CA: Harry K. Wong Publications,
Inc.
Animation website: http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt
/index.php?title=Cooperative_Learning
