Cooperative Learning Principles

For next week's microteaching, you are are encouraged to incorporate cooperative learning principles. What are those?

Much school is individualistic ("my success is independent of your success or failure") or competitive ("my success comes at your expense"). A truly cooperative structure means we all "sink or swim together."

This is hard to achieve, especially in a competitive society. But we make it harder for ourselves when we assign students to do group work without clear functional roles, to perform tasks that are not "group worthy."

Consider, then, these principles, and see if you can integrate them into your teaching next week. Consider the Jigsaw teaching strategy as a paradigm of what cooperative learning might look like.

Cooperative Learning Principles

1. Positive interdependence: shared goal, rewards, resources, functional roles in group

2. Individual accountability: responsibility for own and group's learning

3. Promote face-to-face interaction: shared decisions about materials, monitoring and outcomes; reflection on the process

4. Collaborative skills: decision-making, trust, communication, conflict-management

5. Group processing: reflection on goal-achievement, fostering group working relations