Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is an approach to organizing classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. It differs from group work, and it has been described as "structuring positive interdependence." Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.). Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful cooperative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involve higher order thinking tasks. Five essential elements are identified for the successful incorporation of cooperative learning in the classroom.

Read more about Cooperative Learning:  History, Types, Elements, Cooperative Learning Techniques, Research Supporting Cooperative Learning, Limitations

Famous quotes containing the words cooperative and/or learning:

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    Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word “parent” has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a noun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about “being a parent,” we now find ourselves talking about learning how “to parent.” . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.
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