When giving initial workshops and talks on cooperative learning, following my presentation, frequently I hear questions or objections. When this happens, I wish I had answered the questions first, for I suspect that the questioner has listened to the whole presentation through the filter of their objections.

In an attempt to clear the air and hopefully allow a more open evaluation of what is contained in this book, I will begin by listing the most frequently asked questions and objections regarding cooperative learning, together with my responses.

There are two important points to be made: (1) The world is not just competitive and in some important respects is becoming less so; (2) I do not advocate exclusive use of cooperative learning methods, but rather a healthy balance of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic classroom structures to prepare students for the full range of social situations.

With regard to the first point, it is hard to imagine a job today which does not involve some cooperative interaction with others. The most frequent reason for individuals to be fired from their first job is not lack of job related skills, but rather lack of interpersonal skills. Given the reality of the job-world, it is incumbent on schools to provide cooperative, interdependent experiences in order to provide students with the interpersonal skills they will need for positive participation in economic life. That is not happening.

 

 When I used to ask my undergraduate students each quarter, how many of them had ever worked together with other students on a learning team or on part of a learning project, approximately 85% indicated they had never been part of a learning team in the classroom. Clearly the social structure of schools is out of step with the reality of the workplace. And without change, the schools will be further and further out of step because our economy is shifting toward high-technology and information-related jobs in which cooperative interpersonal skills increasingly are at a premium.

With regard to the second point, it would be just as unhealthy for schools to teach exclusively with cooperative methods as with competitive individualistic methods. In 1968 I began a research program examining how children in different cultures behaved in situations in which they could cooperate or compete. The experimental situations usually involved a game board on which children played for rewards. One striking result of that research program was the consistent finding that by the second grade children in urban settings persist in competition even when that strategy is not adaptive for obtaining desired rewards. This non-adaptive competition appears strongly after a few years of conventional, competitively structured schooling. Many of the competitive children are blind to the cooperative solution. They say things like "This game is too hard," or "No one can get any toys." Meanwhile their younger brothers and sisters find the game very simple and obtain almost all of the available rewards. (Kagan and Madsen, 1971)

Competitive cultural values and school practices do not prepare students to see and select an adaptive cooperative strategy. We found that students who experienced cooperative classroom structures (even for limited times in one subject area) more often choose adaptive cooperative strategies. (Kagan and Associates, 1985)

If our future generations are to behave rationally across the full range of social situations, our classrooms must include cooperative, interdependent learning situations along with competitive and individualistic learning situations. Because we face an increasingly complex, changing, and unpredictable future social and economic world, we must prepare our students to be flexible so they can recognize and adapt to cooperative, competitive, and individualistic social interaction situations. It would be as foolish to prepare individuals to be only cooperative as it would be to prepare them to be only competitive. We need flexible and rational individuals, who have experienced the full range of social situations and who are prepared to work and interact productively in them all.

This question surprises me coming from teachers. As teachers, we know that in the process of teaching others we continually learn more about the topics we teach. As we tutor, even simple questions from the tutee make us look at our subject matter freshly. As we try to determine the easiest way to convey understanding or overcome a learning block, we ourselves gain a deeper understanding of our topic. But then, somehow, we deny that deeper understanding to our students. We do not let them teach. When we look at our students, we forget our own experience which shows us how much teaching is itself a great teacher.

The research on this point is clear. Studies of cross-age peer tutoring reveals tutors make substantial academic gains — they learn almost as much as their tutees. There is no evidence that time spent tutoring others is a detriment to learning. The opposite is true.

Unfortunately, we have come to believe that learning is best promoted by being taught. In fact, learning is best promoted by being motivated to learn and being in a situation which allows learning to occur. It turns out that tutoring is such a situation, providing both the motivation and opportunity to learn.

The high achievers profit in cooperative learning in other ways. Leadership skills, self-esteem gains, conflict resolution skills, and role-taking abilities are part of the “new curriculum” inherent in cooperative learning. Ask the parents of the high achiever, “What do you most want your child to do when he/she leaves school?” They will respond by naming a position which involves leadership. Then ask, “If your student doesn’t have the opportunity to work with others, where will he or she obtain the necessary leadership skills?”

If the institution of cooperative learning is not accompanied with an effective classroom management system, serious problems are likely to occur. One of the most important, but most neglected, topics in cooperative learning is classroom management. Teachers have lost control of their classrooms because they could not manage the energy which is released by teaming students and allowing them to interact.

It has become second nature to most teachers to exert energy keeping students quiet with their attention only on the teacher or text. Teachers forget that they are demanding that students not do what they most want to do — interact with their peers. It is no wonder that teachers in a traditional classroom end up so exhausted. They are bucking the basic nature of the student. Students want to question, discuss, argue, and share. The great strength of cooperative learning is that it channels this natural intelligence toward positive academic and social outcomes. In the process, however, great energy is released among students and the effective cooperative learning teacher must know how to channel that energy in positive directions — know how to manage a classroom of teams. One of the most important contributions of this book is the section on classroom management.

No. There is a confusion in the minds of some educators. Somehow, for them cooperative learning is associated with soft, undisciplined, humanistic approaches to the classroom. In fact, the cooperative learning methods encompass the entire range of classroom objectives. Some of the methods are tightly structured and have clearly defined learning objectives which are assessed frequently by individual quizzes and exams. Direct instruction often is an important component of a cooperative learning lesson. Research reveals that students spend more time on academic tasks in cooperative classrooms than they do in traditional classrooms. When students know that their performance depends on their teammates, they make sure their teammates stay on task.

In general, during cooperative learning, the teacher delegates authority to groups while holding them accountable for their learning or product. This means less direct instruction and a new role for the teacher as a consultant to groups. If a teacher attempts direct instruction while groups are in operation, it can interfere with students talking, working together, and learning. Depending on the cooperative learning method, however, the teacher’s role can be quite different. Some methods include direct instruction, systematic observation and feedback of group process, careful assignment of students to teams, social skill instruction and creative lesson design.

 

 Some approaches demand that the teacher master a number of structures and skills, and become creative within a variety of lesson designs; other approaches rely on one method only, and the teacher has little input into the content or structure of the learning experience.

No. In fact, if teachers try to make students work together, the students probably won't. In a well-managed cooperative classroom, there is never a power play. Teachers assign students to teams and provide team recognition for desired academic and social behaviors. The power of teambuilding, classbuilding, and positive group dynamics draws initially hostile and reluctant students into full participation.

No. The behavioral engineering in formal cooperative learning methods is based on a respect for individual differences in abilities and values. For example, in Jigsaw each student has a unique contribution to the group; in Co-op Co-op each student has a mini-topic for which he/she alone is responsible. Many cooperative learning techniques are structured so that the contributions from each member must be respected or the group cannot reach its objectives.

No. Again, the design of formal cooperative learning methods ensures that each student must contribute if the group is to reach its goal. In this way, the formal cooperative learning methods differ from informal, collaborative groups which often do not ensure that the contribution of each member is necessary for success. Cooperative learning methods are structured so that no individual can coast on the efforts of his/her teammates. Learning is individually assessed and students are individually accountable for their own learning gains.

Some cooperative learning methods are oriented toward mastery of basic skills and information; others are oriented toward completion of complex group projects, often with an emphasis on higher level thinking skills. Depending on the values and objectives of the teacher, cooperative learning is used in very different ways.

Even the same methods can be used with very different objectives. For example, because of the division of labor in the design, Jigsaw can be used as a very efficient way of covering a great deal of content in a short period of time. On the other hand, Jigsaw can be used within a process approach in which the goal is to promote higher level thought, without concern that a fixed amount of content be covered. In that case, each student may be assigned a point of view and discussion and thought are the outcomes.

 

 

Some educators abhor memorization and practice, but find value in the interactive aspects of cooperative learning; others find in cooperative learning efficient practice methods to ensure memory of basic facts, and skills. Cooperative learning offers methods to reach the whole range of educational objectives more efficiently than traditional methods.

Cooperative learning will take a different form in each classroom, depending on the values and beliefs of each teacher. This book is designed to provide resources from which teachers can draw. Like an artist, the good teacher draws from the available resources and creates his or her own unique masterpiece.

This question will be answered in practice very differently by each teacher. Some experienced teachers use cooperative groups most of the time and others use them one day a week in one subject only. In general, teachers training with me end up using cooperative learning more than any other approach, but this usually comes about gradually. My own research showed that very impressive academic and social gains can be obtained if cooperative learning is used only briefly. One recommendation I do make: Try cooperative learning in a very limited way at first. After you have mastered the art of managing a classroom of teams and feel competent in one structure, you may well begin to include other techniques — eventually finding the amount and style of grouping which best fits your own style. I recommend you ease into cooperative learning; the excitement, involvement, and gains of your students will lead you to try more.

Some argue that points, tokens, certificates, and even praise are reward systems which foster extrinsic motivation and erode intrinsic motivation. Others feel they are useful methods of recognizing desired behavior and communicating in a clear way a teacher's appreciation of certain behaviors and the extent to which students are making progress toward their goals.

As teachers become more versed in a range of cooperative learning structures, they come to trust the rewards intrinsic in cooperative learning. Over time, they find themselves using fewer and fewer extrinsic rewards. Whenever possible I like to design the learning task so that it is intrinsically rewarding.

 

 On the other hand, when using practice structures, such as with Pairs Check and the Flashcard Game, I emphasize liberal use of peer praise. In observing thousands of students using these methods, I know inclusion of peer praise makes learning fun and game-like. If these methods eroded intrinsic motivation, why is it that students now request Pairs Check, and ask to take their Color-Coded-Co-op Cards out to recess, to continue playing?

Tokens, special recognition systems, and structured peer praise do not necessarily weaken intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators can increase motivation... As teachers, we should design learning tasks which are as intrinsically interesting. But adding points, praisers, and games is not the problem. The problem occurs where we try to motivate students through points and praise without focusing on creating the most meaningful learning experience.

The personal values and beliefs of each teacher, the nature of the task, and the needs of the students will dictate the extent to which some form of extrinsic motivators are included.

Improvement scoring is giving students points based on how much they improve, not just based on how well they do compared to a standard or compared to each other. Although it is not a defining characteristic of cooperative learning, it is a method of scoring very compatible with cooperative learning, which can tremendously facilitate learning. If I assign one high, two middle, and one low achieving student to each team and use traditional scoring methods, the students will soon learn that no matter how hard they work with the low achiever he or she always brings in the low score. Soon students ask for a new teammate! Traditional scoring is a disaster for the self-esteem of the low-achieving student. If however, improvement scoring is used so that students bring points back to the team based on how much they have improved over their usual level of performance, then each student has the potential of bringing maximum points to the team. When improvement scoring is used teammates are pleased to work with those who need help the most.

The type and amount of cooperative learning a teacher adopts is, in part, a function of what he or she sees as the goal of teaching. Some teachers have as a goal making students cooperative. Others want to make students more competitive. Personally, I do not identify with either goal. I would like students to become flexible, so they cooperate, compete, or go it on their own depending on the situation. I would be pleased if we provided for our students as wide a range of learning experiences as possible, so that they are better prepared to adapt to and modify their social and physical environment.

Thus, it would be as bad to provide only cooperative learning experiences as it would be to provide only competitive or individualistic learning experiences.

 

 

 Ideally, as teachers we would provide as broad a range of learning experiences to our students as possible, including a variety of structured and unstructured cooperative learning experiences, as well as a balance of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning experiences. Our students would be then prepared to function well across the whole range of life's settings. Following that model, ideally, during the time allotted to cooperative learning, there would also be a range of learning experiences, encompassing both the structural and process approaches, cooperative and collaborative models, mastery, as well as thinking skill and concept development.

One of the highest goals of education is to provide students with experiences which will allow them to structure their own future social and physical environments in positive ways, including their own continuing education. I have no problem with the occasional use of highly structured learning experiences, including point systems, tokens, and "drill and practice" methods, but I would have a problem if these methods became the only type of learning experience for our students. If teachers structured things so that there always was an extrinsic reward for learning, they would rob students of experiences in settings in which students' interests and needs provide the sole basis of learning. Similarly, if as teachers, we provide only situations in which it is adaptive to cooperate, we rob students of important learning experiences. Ultimately, students need to learn how to structure and restructure their own social environment and learning experiences. That kind of learning occurs as a function of experiencing a very wide range of classroom learning structures.

As educators, we presently face a task very different from that of previous generations of educators. We must prepare our students for a world we can only dimly imagine. The world is changing so fast that half of the students who enter school this year will have their first job in a job category not yet created. They will have many types of employment over their lifetime. We no longer have the luxury of preparing students with a set body of information which they will apply for a lifetime. The information base is changing so fast that many of the facts, and even conceptual systems, we now teach will be outdated before students graduate, and certainly over the years of their employment. Given this situation, we need to emphasize thinking skills as well as content, and we must prepare our students to act adaptively in a very broad range of social situations.

 

 

 

 

Kagan, S. & Madsen, M. C. Cooperation and competition of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Anglo-American children of two ages under four instructional sets. Developmental Psychology, 1971, 5, 32-39.

Kagan, S., Zahn, G. L., Widaman, K., Schwarzwald, J., & Tyrrell, G. Classroom Structural Bias: Impact of Cooperative and Competitive Classroom Structures on Cooperative and Competitive Individuals and Groups. In R. Slavin, S. Sharan, S. Kagan, R. Hertz-Lazarowitz, C. Webb & R. Schmuck (Eds.) Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn. New York: Plenum, 1985