Society requires its members to exhibit cooperative behavior. Success on a job often
depends on one's ability to work well with others. By fostering social skills,
cooperative learning aims to fill this social need. Furthermore, cooperative learning
techniques have numerous benefits to both the teacher and the learner.
Benefits to the Learner
Johnson, Johnson & Smith (1991) synthesized over 375 studies on the effect of cooperative,
competitive and individualistic efforts on student achievement and productivity. They found
that students in cooperative learning settings performed better than students in either
competitive or individualistic settings. They also noted that cooperative learning "resulted
in more higher-level reasoning, more frequent generation of new ideas and solutions
(i.e., process gain), and greater transfer of what is learned within one situation to another
(i.e., group to individual transfer) than did competitive or individualistic learning"
(p. 2:12).
Based on experimentation, Hamm and Adams (1992) drew the following conclusions about the benefits
of cooperative learning to the student:
i. Cooperative learning improves academic performance among high- and low- achieving students.
ii. Minority students have made consistently favorable achievement in cooperative classes.
iii. Disadvantaged students significantly benefit from collaborative learning techniques.
iv. Working in mixed-ability groups doesn't stifle individual initiative.
v. Cooperative learning has positive effects on students' self-esteem, social relations, attitudes toward mainstreamed students, and race relations.
vi. By teaching others, all of the students actually come to understand the material better.
vii. Children's cooperative behavior skills were shown to transfer to interaction with peers who weren't members of the same learning teams. It also
transferred to their behavior in social situations not structured by the teacher. (Hamm & Adams, 1992, p. 8)
Benefits to the Teacher
Cooperative learning can also benefit the teacher. Hamm and Adams (1992) noted that teachers who began using collaborative leaning "became more cooperative in their own professional interactions and more willing to collaborate with their peers" (p. 8).Teachers who use cooperative learning may feel that their time is spent more effectively.
Dividing the class into groups means the teacher has five, six or seven groups instead of 25 to 35 individuals to make good contact with each day. In addition there are 25 to 35 aides in the classroom. Pupils monitor each other while creating a spirit of cooperation and helpfulness. (Hamm & Adams, 1992, p. 15)
In addition, teachers who try cooperative learning techniques often adopt a fresh, new attitude toward their jobs. It can be exciting for a teacher when a group has the freedom to generate their own ideas and to make their own decisions. Some teachers who experiment with cooperative learning techniques are pleasantly surprised at how well their students perform in collaborative group settings. While cooperative learning requires a lot from the teacher, the teacher may begin to feel that teaching and classroom management become easier.
Cooperative learning can help teachers spend less time being policemen as students learn that they are capable of validating their own values and ideas. Teachers are freer to move about, work with small groups and interact in a more personal manner with students.
Cooperative group learning can also be arranged so there is less paperwork for the teacher. [Evaluating] six or eight group papers is less [work for the teacher] than 24 or 32 individual ones. (Hamm & Adams, 1992, pp. 15-16).As a result of employing cooperative learning techniques, the teacher might feel less stress. Although the teacher is still responsible for the learning in the classroom, some of the authority is delegated to the students. Even if a teacher uses cooperative learning on only a few occasions, it might give a welcomed relief (to both the teacher and the students) from the traditional instructional format.
