Cooperative Learning Prepared for Your Application

Cooperative learning is being established gradually in classrooms. Rare is the school that has not already begun, at least, to know its structures and use it as a work dynamic. But cooperative learning, like the approach of multiple intelligences, is not a methodology, it is a way of thinking, feeling and doing in education, which must still break with a traditional unidirectional teaching scheme, where diversity among students is not understanding as an enriching element.

The concept of " learning from" and "through" interaction with others is not new, like almost everything in pedagogy. Although it appears in the sections of "educational innovation", its origin dates back to the French humanist movement of the sixteenth century.

Treated by pedagogues like Pestalozzi , with its "mutual teaching", it traces the beginnings of scientific psychology at the end of the 19th century, goes through the functionalism of John Dewey , collects the contributions of Jean Piaget and his "sociocognitive" conflict, and also the historical-cultural theory of Lev Vygotsky and its concept of ZDP (area of ​​potential development), to finish completing with the contributions of Social Psychology of the mid-twentieth century, which will determine the current conception of cooperative learning, contrasting it with competitive learning and individualistic learning .

Because Right Now?

Why after this journey of centuries and with a justified epistemological justification is now more evident the need to use this type of learning in the classroom?

According to Pere Pujolas, we apply a cooperative structure in the classroom for three fundamental reasons:

• An intention diversity.
• Development of values.
• Development of basic skills and multiple intelligences.

Our educational system establishes a series of basic competencies that all students should acquire throughout their schooling. Competency-based education has its origin in the UNESCO Delors Report (1996), where the four basic pillars of integral education were defined :

• to learn to do
• learn to learn
• To learn to live together
• learn to be

These four challenges or pillars of what 21st-century education should be done not reflect the reality of a changing world, where globalization, diversity, multiculturalism, connectivity, and interaction with others are its most characteristic features.

Therefore, it is no longer just a matter of epistemological justification, from the pedagogy or psychology, which are fixed in the construction of knowledge by the child attending to their sociocognitive development, but it is also a question of morality, citizenship, politics, and economy.

The human being is a social animal, and today more than ever in the history of humanity, people live connected to others. "Learning with" and "from" cooperation is a basic requirement to develop and evolve in 21st-century society.

For What?

Cristobal Suarez writer of UK Write my essay identifies three essential dimensions in which cooperative learning benefits the learning process:

• I increase academic performance, compared to individualistic and competitive procedures (achievement)

• Major of positive interpersonal relationships (social integration)

• F TRENGTHENING to intrapersonal level (personal development)

According to David and Roger Johnson (1989), compared to students working in competitive and individualistic situations, those who work cooperatively show the following characteristics:

• B uscan gets more information from the other.
• Cometen fewer errors of perception in the understanding of other people's positions
• Communicate the information more accurately
• They rely more on the value of their ideas.

They make the best use of the information they receive from others.

But these proven benefits are not achieved by the simple fact of grouping a group of students to work together. The positive interaction between them depends on the structuring carried out by the teacher and on how he manages the work of the team. That is the difference between collaborative learning and cooperative learning: in the latter, the pedagogical action is always proposed from the teaching, where the one who teaches establishes the structure of work.

How Do I Do IT?

For this the teacher needs training. Because working with "cooperative" is very beneficial, but it is not easy, you have to be realistic. It is necessary to contemplate it as a work approach in which it is believed, and that is mastered, not as an anecdotal activity or even perceived as disturbing, that has to be used at specific moments to justify that we are "innovators".

Cooperative learning requires three tasks or essential functions of the teacher:

organization: as an activity designer

orientation: as the facilitator of the interaction

valuation: as a process evaluator

If you want to know if you are a teacher motivated to work with cooperative learning structures, answer YES or NO to the following statements:

I prefer that my students listen to me, observe and note that they talk to each other and solve problems.

I feel more comfortable being the one who prepares, manages and controls the classes.

Students are motivated mainly by competing with others in obtaining good results.

Students are better regulated according to their own individual responsibilities and are more affected by punishment or individual reward.

I prefer that they consider me the only source of authority and knowledge in the classroom.

Evaluation is something that I can only do as a teacher

If you have answered mostly "YES", you are a teacher who prefers another type of learning for your students: either individualist or competitive.

Do not worry, you are not the only one ... Most of us are children of the system that educated us: individualistic, competitive, unidirectional, centralized in the contents ..., and it is difficult to free ourselves from all those schemes. But it is not impossible, and yes it is necessary, rethink where we are and what we want for our students. Because what our parents wanted for us, these are not going to help ...

If you have answered mostly "NO", your students are very lucky that you prefer them to learn together so that they are able to achieve many things.

"I do what you cannot, and you do what I cannot. Together we can do great things. "

Eddie is an Email-marketer and a content strategist at UK Essay Help.