Benefits of Cooperative Learning

Having students work in groups is nothing new to American classrooms, but it has found a new name and structure in the past decade: cooperative learning.

Cooperative learning has several benefits.

In addition to learning subject matter and completing a task for a grade, students gain social skills that just can’t be learned through individual work.

They learn, for example, how to tolerate and work with peers who are different from them in sex, ethnicity, income and ability levels.

They must also learn how to share materials and ideas, solve problems and disagree civilly.

Such skills will make them more successful in the workplace and in other kinds of interpersonal relationships.

But cooperative learning means more than just throwing a bunch of children together with a work sheet to fill out.

In fact, teachers generally use a set of specific and proven guidelines to make this strategy work.

First, the assignment has to be appropriate for group work. Memorizing vocabulary words, solving math problems and brainstorming ideas for an essay are among the hundreds of suitable tasks.

A cooperative learning task can be brief or long term--part of a class period for a work sheet, for example, or a whole week for a research project.

Group size is also crucial. Theoretically, groups can have as few as three members, or as many as 12. This depends on such things as the age and maturity of the students, their familiarity with cooperative learning, and the type of assignment.

In most cases, though, I have found that groups larger than six seem to invite chaos.

Selecting the group members is the most important factor. Each group should be heterogeneous--a mix of ethnic groups, sexes, ability levels and degrees of assertiveness.

I also like to put together children who I think could become friends but who would not otherwise approach each other because of superficial differences.

Cooperative learning does bring some problems, but they’re generally easy to solve.

As in any group, there will be problems caused by conflicting personalities. Some children may want to be in charge or do all the work themselves. Others may be shy or uninterested in the task.

There are some ways to help children cooperate and share the work fairly.

One method is to limit the resources needed to complete the assignment: one dictionary, map, pencil or textbook per group. Spreading the resources, so that each student has only a piece of the assignment, also helps.

For example, each child may have only some of the math facts to solve a set of problems, or be responsible for one section of a report.

Making the group members dependent on each other for a decent grade is also effective. The teacher may test each member, then average the scores, record only the lowest score or choose one randomly for credit. That usually motivates each member to do his or her best.

Another way to ensure participation is to assign each student a different role, such as monitoring the time spent on each question, recording answers in writing, presenting the answers to the class or offering encouragement (“cheerleading”).

The teacher’s main role during cooperative learning activities is to stay out of the children’s way. That can be difficult; teachers are used to answering students’ questions and refereeing conflicts.

That tends to make children dependent, though. So, during cooperative learning tasks, the teacher visits each group to observe without interfering, except to briefly praise the students’ efforts. When a problem does arise, the teacher helps students reach their own solutions through negotiations.

Although using cooperative learning means new responsibilities for students and more work for teachers, it also means learning the skills of tolerance, patience and accountability that are needed for life both in and out of the classroom.