Cooperative Learning

Today's learning experiences differ greatly for our students when compared to the past.  Today's work environments require employees to not only utilize critical thinking skills and innovation, but to work as a team.  This means that our students need to be self-directed and demonstrate social skills that are appropriate for the workplace, such as recognizing when to speak, to value others' ideas, and to conduct their learning in a professional, respectable manner.

Social skills such as these are being taught in eMINTS classrooms right along with content information.  The eMINTS Instructional Model consists of four areas:

1. High quality lesson design
2. Inquiry based learning
3. Classroom Community
4. Powered by Technology

For these four aspects to gel together into one, enriching learning experience for all students, cooperative learning must take place.  Cooperative learning is not just group work.  When utilized appropriately, cooperative learning demonstrates positive interdependence, individual accountability, and group processing to work towards one end goal.  Students need to accept the idea that one student's success is not a classroom success. Instead, a classroom success is shared by all.  Reflection after cooperative group activities is key to ensure students recognize the bonds and connections that each student contributes to the whole group.

As any facilitator in any classroom knows, setting up cooperative learning is not any small task.  Before utilizing cooperative learning in a classroom setting, teachers might need to teach collaborative skills such as leadership, trust-building, decision-making, and communication. All this effort is worth it, though, as research shows that students learning in a cooperative environment outperform others learning in a traditional environment. 

As eMINTS teachers, cooperative learning is used within a variety of strategies.  Some of these strategies include using jigsaws, paired sharings, and numbered heads together.  Integration of cooperative learning in the core curriculum can encourage student engagement and also allow for students to take leadership roles.  On her website, Laura Candler lists many cooperative learning structures and provides several resources for teachers interested in using cooperative learning.

Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec have found that cooperative learning, when compared to individual and competitive learning, results in greater effort to achieve by all students and more positive relationships between classmates.  In a classroom designed around constructivist teaching practices, teachers begin to realize how much socialization occurs in the learning process.  This socialization is not necessarily "off task."  Students are typically discussing ideas, defending hypotheses, and collaborating about alternative solutions.  Cooperative structures are critical in these environments to ensure students contribute appropriately and value others' ideas.

Using cooperative learning strategies is perhaps the first step in developing a generation ready for today's workplace.  It creates the structure needed for equality and engagement.  For more resources on cooperative learning strategies to implement in classrooms, visit eMINTS eThemes:
General resources
Secondary resources