Cooperative Learning: The General Conclusions Of Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning is a process in which students come together to work in generally small groups. The general idea behind cooperative learning, according to psychology applied to teaching is,

That by working in small, heterogeneous groups (of four or five students total) and by helping one another master the various aspects of a particular task, students will be more motivated to learn, will learn more than if they had to work independently, and will forge stronger interpersonal relationships than they would by working alone (Snowman, McCown, & Biehler, 2009).

Put in less technical terms, this basically means that by working together, students will be able to accomplish greater goals and achieve higher grades than they would by simply working alone. Cooperative learning

Some concerns raised include the fact that so many teachers that are using cooperative learning are not effectively applying it because of a lack of training found within so many school districts. If more effective training was applied through all school districts in the United States, the full, more positive effect of cooperative learning would become more evident.

What Does this Reveal About Educational Policies? The simple fact that such an effective policy and method was chosen to be implemented into most school systems shows great promise. It appears that the educational polices selected to be implemented into school systems are mostly effective and are chosen very carefully if cooperative learning is an example to follow.

What Can Be Done for Improvement? The most effective way to improve policies and methods as well as the knowledge of teachers and principals, is to apply effective training to all teaching faculty within a school system. These training sessions will allow polices and methods such as cooperative learning to become truly effective and significantly increase their success rates within all groups of students in all