Week 5

Cooperation is a life skill;  most jobs and/or social relationships involve cooperating with other individuals to accomplish goals.  Cooperative learning provides opportunities for students to participate in groups as a means of enhancing learning.  The ideas presented in this week’s  reading support implications previously presented for constructivism.   Specifically, cooperative learning allows students to participate in discussions where multiple representations of reality are presented.  Students gain from one another’s efforts, but also share a common fate based on the efforts of group members.  Participants in cooperative learning know that one’s performance is mutually caused by oneself and one’s team members.  They feel proud and jointly celebrate when a group member is recognized for accomplishment.   
    Society requires its members to exhibit cooperative behavior.  It stands to reason that students need practice working cooperatively with others, then, to be successful later in school and in life.  Cooperative learning correlates with the principles of social learning in many ways.  As students work together in small groups, they must develop a positive interdependence if they are to successfully solve the problems presented to them.  No one member of the group will possess all of the information, skills, or resources necessary for reaching the desired learning outcome. In addition to positive interdependence, students must engage in positive interaction-probably face-to-face to facilitate the development of commitment to each other as well as to their mutual goals.  A third element of cooperative learning is individual and group accountability.  Students must be accountable for contributing their share to the group learning process as well as to working jointly with group members to “produce” an end product.  As a component of this process, students must learn to interact appropriately to share ideas.  Social skills such as leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management empower students to manage both teamwork and taskwork  successfully.  Students also learn to present their findings appropriately as part of cooperative learning.  
     Although cooperative learning cannot be used to address every curriculum area, I think it has a valid position among the strategies to be used in support of Problem-Based Learning,  character development, and service learning.  Cooperative learning supports implications of constructivism for instructional design.  It supports theories related to social learning.