Cooperative_Learning

COOPERATIVE LEARNING [pic][pic] Increasingly present multiculturalism of contemporary societies places the educational institutions in the necessity of developing strategies and mechanisms for integration of students of various racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The task is not easy and has not been fully implemented in any education system. Superficial and quite often only apparent integration on the basis of common buildings, spaces and classes is frequently associated with separated from each other and even conflicted groups established beyond the classroom by pupils of different races, religion, ethnicities or mother tongues. The segregation and separation of those subsystems is caused by the ethnic stereotypes and prejudices functioning in the given community, defence mechanism displayed by socially depreciated groups and/or the functioning of pupils’ identity structures, particularly of ethnic or racial ones. The ethnic and racial identities are specific forms of social identity resulting from cognitive and emotional identification of the individual with distinctive national, ethnic and racial categories. The sense of belonging to those groups shapes the self-image and self-esteem of the individual, controls his/her social behaviour such as: conformism and group solidarity, decisions made in the context of social dilemmas, tendency to favour in-group members and discriminate or disfavour out-group members. (Tajfel, 1974, Turner, 1987). Cooperative Learning Structures and Techniques | | | |Three-step Interview |Send-A-Problem | |Roundtable |Value Line | |Focused Listing |Uncommon Commonalities | |Structured Problem-solving |Team Expectations | |Paired Annotations |Double Entry Journal | |Structured Learning Team Group Roles |Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning | RESEARCH FINDINGS INTO ITS EFFECTIVENESS Cooperative Learning and Social Interdependence Cooperative Learning and Social Interdependence Introduction Cooperative learning process is defined as a set of alternative instructional systems to the traditional ones , where students work together in mixed groups of multiple members , often more than 4 and in the process earn recognition and acknowledgment due to their performance in the group (Slavin , 1983 . Different methods in cooperative learning can have different approach, processes and intended outcomes (Lucking and Manning , 1991 ) Years of research into methods of learning, instructional education and structural courses suggest that learning style has an important role in deciding the outcome of education and training so that students develop an understanding of benefits of working in group, the unanimity of the purpose of the group and the importance of helping and supporting each other in learning (Sharan and Shaulov , 1990 . Ashman and Gillies (1996 )state that children in cooperative groups learns to be consistently more cooperative , participative and responsible towards group needs by showing language and behavioral traits that is inclusive and encourages interdependent understanding. Today cooperative learning has been recognized as the standard instructional method to promote learning and achievements across every curriculum. The method has found wide applications in making useful learning interventions in collaborative writing, problem solving in mathematics, comprehension in reading and conceptual understanding in science (Ashman and Gillies, 2000 ) thereby making it one of essential component in modern education and training system. Value of Team Based Learning The value of team based learning has gained popularity at every level of education during past couple of decades . Cooperative learning is also founded on team based learning approach using small groups that gives new level of educational significance to both teaching and learning (Fink , 2002 . Fink further states that team based learning approach results in following four kinds of beneficial transformations 1. It transforms small groups into cohesive teams 2. It transforms techniques into strategy 3. It helps to transform the quality of student learning 4. It also helps teachers to transform the joy of teaching. Team based learning promises to achieve these objectives through its two distinctive features. The first feature is unusual capability, in terms of motivation and objective that a team as over the group . The second feature is the relative power of a teaching strategy, compared to teaching technique (Fink, 2002 .Four Essential Principles for Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning approaches display advantages over traditional learning methods with important changes in 1 . Focus of their instructional objective 2. Nature of the events that impart the learning 3. Role of both instructor and the student (Michaelsen, 2002 .In the traditional learning processes, the first objective of most of the classes, according to Michaelsen (2002 , is to make the students familiar with course concepts . However, the first objective of cooperative learning process is to ensure that students get hands on opportunity to practice using course concepts. This implies that activities of class are primarily devoted for teamwork on focused team assignments. Cooperative learning provides the opportunity for students to learn academic skills and care about the feelings and needs of others in their groups. It requires that students assume responsibility for themselves and for the success of the group. Cooperative learning, to be successful, requires that students learn to respect the contributions that others bring to the learning environment” (Vincent 1999, p. 73). Shortly said, Research has shown that cooperative learning techniques: • promote student learning and academic achievement • increase student retention • enhance student satisfaction with their learning experience • help students develop skills in oral communication • develop students' social skills • promote student self-esteem • help to promote positive race relations THE PLACE OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM In Relative Evaluation System (RES), the success of a student is appraised with a relational way with the success rates of other students in the class (Keskin and Ertan, 2001). In RES, the potential which the student has individually is not important. The important thing is the place which student takes with regard to other students in the class. According to Johanson (1993), an important consideration in the sole use of relative standards for some is the competitive nature of this approach to grading. The students in Relative Evaluation are in competition with one another for a limited number of grades for each one of the lesson (CTL, 2001). Also, Johnson et al. (1998) state that the relative evaluation approach brings along a dangerous competition for their academic lives. According to Gaikwad (1996), an extensive and inappropriate overuse of competitive and individualistic instructional methods in schools probably is the cause of many difficulties students encounter outside of school. Cooperative learning is the making use of small groups for instructional aim with the goal of students studying together with the aim of increasing the studies of their own and other students in their groups to a maximum level (Johnson and Johnson, 1994). So, a system as RES which depends basically on the competition of students can bring forth objectionable results in the respect of cooperative learning. Although competition develops the desire for struggling in students, it kills their desire for working cooperatively with together. However, the rising value in our currenteducation understanding is the student-centered education approach, and cooperative learning has a considerable place in this approach. According to Boud et al. (1999), various form of peer, collaborative or cooperative learning, particularly small group activities, are increasingly used within university courses to assist students meet a variety of learning outcomes. Felder and Brent (1996) state that student-centered instruction is a broad teaching approach that includes substituting active learning for lectures, holding students responsible for their learning, and using self-paced and/or cooperative learning. Researchers and practitioners are searching for ways to promote student learning in and out of the classroom. One approach is to provide students with active and cooperative learning opportunities (Yaeger et al. 1999). Cooperative learning constitutes an important level of active learning in which students are encouraged to think, decide throughout the learning process and are responsible for their own learning. So, active learning strategies such as the problem based learning, project based learning and inquiry based learning which increases output in science education need for cooperative activities (Barrows, 1986; Domin, 1999; Frank et al., 2003). Researches indicate that the use of cooperative learning has the potential to lead to an improvement in students’ attitudes towards science (Lazarowitz et al.1994; Baz, 2001; Puacharearn and Fisher, 2004). One of the goals of science education is to prepare a scientifically literate citizen who can solve the daily problems about science like pollution, global warming, overpopulation and recycling. Cooperative learning is an especially effective method used in solvingthese problems since it encourages people to explain different respects of views (Nesbit and Rogers, 1997). Thanks to cooperative learning, students have been taken an important step to attain the abilities like sharing their opinions, being respectful to other ideas and analyzing them and in the result of that reaching to beneficial synthesis, systemizing the data and make a decision. Apart to this, RES involves a big advantage thanks to the equality it brought at the applications to graduate exams and in benefiting of scholarship resources (Keskin ve Ertan, 2001). Each one of the factors like university environment, social surroundings, class environment, the lecturer of the lesson, the questions asked in the exams can effect the grades that students take in the exams. The same student can have a different mark in a different learning environment and in a different lecturer's lesson, and even he can take different marks from the same lecturer's different lesson. The grades given at the final of teaching activities can be effective on students' later education, their gaining scholarship, and even in their having a job. Consequently, the differing occurred in evaluation will prevent to display an equitable attitude in education. Because, a grade of a student in RES is based on his or her relative position in the class, it provides a big facility in the application of teaching activities by removing these difference mentioned above and subjecting students to an evaluation that they can compare themselves with each other. One of the most important reasons which make relative evaluation system as the most preferred evaluation system is that it makes easier to make a comparison among students in proportion to other systems. In cooperative class environment, the learning goals that wanted of students can be reached only if studied with a cooperative method. For this reason, students work in small groups and by helping each other. The work of each student continues until each student of the group reaches the expected learning goals. Consequently, students look their friend's success at reaching the goals as their own success. They do not abstain from sharing the information and skills they have with other members of the group. According to Marzano (1992), the meaningful use of knowledge through decision making, investigation, inquiry, problem solving and invention are probably done more effectively by a cooperative group than by one person. Much of the scientific discovery has been done by scientist group of people rather than one person. When scientific publications are perused quickly, it will come into light that majority of the scientific research has been done by scientist groups (Johnson and Johnson, 1991). The point that to be reached by science education must be to provide an active learning process in which students are accustomed to behave like a scientist and being student at the center. Students' constructing a cooperative learning environment by studying in groups give a possibility to a student centered teaching structure that modern education system requiring. Certainly individual activities and activities based on competition have an important place in education. But schools’ evaluation policies that founded on competition and individuality based learning and not giving possibility to the usage of cooperative learning is wrong. According to Gaikwad (1996), such practices do not adequately prepare students for the kinds of cooperative efforts that will be expected of them in their future work and house lives. Cooperation is a life skill; nearly every job or social relationship involves cooperating with another individual to accomplish a shared goal (Flowers and Ritz, 1994). Consequently cooperative learning has a disclaiming role for individual outside the educational institutions, too. In cooperation, students working in groups can reach the goal of “learn to learn” which is wanted in active learning on behalf of this method. And they traverse an important distance in the way of solving the problematic situations which they will encounter along their life. According to Miller and Peterson (2003), cooperative learning strategies appear to promise positive effects for students, both with and without disabilities, as reflected in increased academic achievement and improved social attitudes and behavior. The general principle behind cooperative learning is that the students work together as a team to accomplish a common goal, namely that each student learns something of value from the cooperative learning activity.