How Does Cooperative Learning Build Community While Promoting
Student Achievement?
Join the Conversation—Goals for Cooperative Learning
In classrooms using cooperative learning teams, I believe students will learn to do the following:
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Work cooperatively in small groups.
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Work as part of a broader classroom community.
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Work cooperatively with students from other racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds,
and across differences created by gender, class, interest, and academic achievement level.
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Give leadership to and accept leadership from others.
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Respect the abilities and contributions of others.
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Understand the roles of cooperation, compromise, and consensus in democratic decision
making.
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Participate in group and class activities with greater confidence in their individual
abilities.
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Explain their ideas orally and in writing more effectively.
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Score higher on class and standardized tests.
Questions to Consider:
1. Based on your experience as a student and your knowledge about the way that you and
other people learn, how do you evaluate cooperative learning as a teaching strategy?
2. Many claims are made about the importance of cooperative learning. Which of these
objectives would you consider most important in your classrooms? Why?
I used cooperative learning teams in large high school classes with more than thirty students,
and I consistently found four major benefits. First, there is significant improvement in the
willingness of students to write and the quality of their writing. Working in cooperative learning
teams, students are able to stimulate and support each other and to edit each other’s work.
Second, participation in discussions in their cooperative learning teams gave students an
opportunity to test their ideas before presenting them to the full class and in front of me. It
enabled students who generally did not participate in class discussions to participate more freely,
either presenting their own ideas or representing their teams. As a result, class discussions were
enriched by the addition of diverse viewpoints. Third, class attendance and punctuality in
handing in assignments improved because students were able to make demands on their team
members and follow up on each other. People having difficulty were less likely to get lost in the
shuffle. Fourth, all of these benefits contributed to, and were accelerated by, the growth of a
positive, academically directed classroom community.
Before you experiment with cooperative learning in your classroom, I recommend reading
additional resource material and participating in workshops sponsored by school districts, unionsponsored teacher centers, or local colleges. You should also talk with your colleagues. Teachers
may already be using cooperative learning in your school and someone might want to work with
you. Teachers can also cooperate, and it is easier to experiment with something new when you
have a support group.
Once you are committed to using cooperative learning in your classroom, the first step is
defining your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to focus on content or skills
learning? Do you want to concentrate on group process and developing democratic values? Do
you want to address intergroup tensions in your class? It makes sense to involve students in
discussions about cooperative learning goals and the process from the start. Listening to their
ideas can be helpful, and it gives them a sense of ownership and responsibility from the
beginning.
How you organize teams depends on your goals. In general, a teacher has to make two basic
decisions: Will students be permitted to choose their groups or will they be assigned to groups?
Will groups be homogenous (students are more alike) or heterogeneous (students are more
different)? If students choose their own cooperative learning groups, the groups will most likely
be based on friendships or shared interests.
Advantages of student choice are: (a) group members will more likely have prior experience
working together; (b) group members will share more interests in common; (c) there may be
fewer intragroup conflicts for the teacher, the group, and the class to deal with; and (d) students
may have a greater sense of identification with the process if they feel that they selected their
own groups.
Disadvantages of student choice are: (a) groups will more likely be segregated by race,
ethnicity, gender, class, or academic achievement levels; (b) friendship bonds can be socially
constraining as students try to learn and experiment; (c) some students will feel left out because
they do not have a group of friends in the class; (d) teams based on friendship groups may tend
to compete with each other in destructive ways; and (e) students will not have the opportunity to
work with a new and diverse team of people where they all start out on an equal footing.
Students should discuss the advantages and disadvantages of choosing their own cooperative
learning teams, and of heterogeneous versus homogenous groupings. After discussion, a teacher
has the option of allowing the class to make a decision or making the decision for the class.
Often after a discussion of the goals of cooperative learning, a class will reach consensus that it
wants teams to be heterogeneous, and that the fairest way is for the teacher to set them up. There
is also no reason that groups cannot be organized one way for some activities and a different way
for others.
Some parents and educators have questioned whether heterogeneous cooperative learning
teams penalize “high-achieving” students. Studies conducted by cooperative learning specialists
from the University of Minnesota show that high achievers working in heterogeneous
cooperative learning teams do at least as well on standardized academic tests as high achievers
who work in competitive individualized settings. “Low-level achievers” and “middle-level
achievers” who are involved in heterogeneous cooperative learning teams almost always do
better on these types of tests. Meanwhile, all groups of students benefit from the important social
skills they develop by working in cooperative learning teams.
Cooperative learning teams are not just a group of students who are given an assignment and
left alone to complete it. In our society, young people, as well as adults, need to learn how to
work cooperatively. For cooperative learning teams to work successfully, teachers and students
must have clear group process goals. There must be a clear structure for democratic group
decision making, and there must be a sense of shared group responsibility for the team. In
Circles of Learning (1993), David Johnson, Roger Johnson, Edythe Johnson Holubec, and
Patricia Roy suggest that the following should be built into the cooperative learning process:
1. Teams need to depend on all of their team members to achieve the team’s goals; students
have to work together.
2. Team members must be held collectively and individually accountable for learning by
group members; everyone is responsible for the group.
3. Responsibilities are divided up so that all team members have the opportunity to play
both leadership and supporting roles.
4. Teams are concerned with learning and maintaining cooperative group relations.
5. Team members need to learn how to run meetings, make decisions, organize projects,
divide responsibilities, and evaluate progress. Teachers cannot assume that students
already have social and organizational group work skills.
6. Teams must evaluate themselves and be evaluated as teams by teachers, on both group
process and the completed team product.
Responsibilities can be divided up among students and then rotated on a regular schedule or
when a team finishes a project. Team members will need to learn how to perform all of these
important assignments. Sometimes a student will assume more than one of these responsibilities.
When team responsibilities are divided up, possible tasks include the following:
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Chairperson/facilitator—the person responsible for leading team meetings.
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Recorder—the person who keeps a record of what is said at meetings and team decisions.
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Reflector—a person assigned to listen carefully during discussions so they can be
summarized at the end of meetings.
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Reporter—a person who reports on the team’s problems and progress when the class
meets as a whole.
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Liaison—a person who meets with representatives of other teams to share ideas.
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Organizer—a person who makes sure that work is completed on schedule and is ready to
be presented or submitted.
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Mediator—a person who attempts to resolve internal conflicts between team members.
While students are working, teachers are busy as ex officio members of each cooperative
learning team: You may (a) stick your head in a team meeting, listen for a while, say and do
nothing, and then move on to another team; (b) ask a team a question or give it direction, helping
a team solve an especially difficult academic problem; or (c) have questions about how a team is
working together. A team may need a teacher to mediate a problem, the entire class to get
involved, or only to hear the suggestion that they reflect on what they are doing so they can work
it out by themselves.
Some teachers have expressed concern with grading policies for students working in
cooperative learning teams. Just as organization of the teams can change depending on the
activity, so can grading systems. For some activities, students may only receive a group grade.
For others, they may be evaluated based on both individual and group performance.