Cooperative Activities in the Classroom

Abstract

Cooperation is an important part of group life. Its benefits range from the autotelic quality of working along with others on a shared task to its perceived function as the cornerstone of modern democracy. In the classroom, cooperation is both a skill necessary for the accomplishment of learning activities and a general norm to be learned. However, the average classroom in the United States (and probably elsewhere) exposes students to instructional activities and evaluation systems that foster their dependence on the teacher, restrict productive interactions among students, and enhance divisive status distinctions among peers. Despite the concern of some educators, teacherdirected and whole-class activities persist in schools. The cooperative learning methods movement has been an attempt to rectify this situation. During the last 15 years, several important cooperative learning techniques have been developed and tested, and hundreds of accompanying studies have sought to document the value of one or another cooperative learning approach over instruction. In general, the research has successfully demonstrated that student achievement is at least as high, and often higher, in cooperative learning activities as in traditional classrooms. At the same time, cooperative learning methods seem to promote positive interpersonal relations, motivation to learn, and self-esteem among students. Recent meta-analyses suggest that the benefits of cooperative learning activities hold for students at all age levels, for all subject areas, and for a wide range of tasks, such as those involving rote-decoding, retention, and memory skills, as well as problem-solving ability (Johnson, Johnson, & Maruyama, 1983; Johnson, Maruyama, Johnson, Nelson, & Skon, 1981; Slavin, 1983).