Co-operative learning can improve students' pro-social skills

24 September, 2012

Many educators, supported by research evidences now firmly believe that cooperative learning (CL) is capable of enhancing students' interest in learning, compensate for their learning diversity, and improve their pro-social skills.

RESEARCH FINDINGS indicate that in effective CL processes teachers have to combine students’ goal preferences and the appropriate learning context enabling them to cooperate effectively as well as to the desirability of teachers guiding students’ CL processes.

In nutshell, cooperative learning is a method of promoting learning through student cooperation rather than competition by effectively making students to work in small groups in a classroom. In CL, it is desirable that the teacher and students understand processes and skills involved in this teaching strategy for its success in the classroom.

“Certain skills need to be learned before implementing cooperative learning; these include the pro-social skills of listening, taking turns, asking questions, offering suggestions, speaking positively about others and helping others. Assessment of these skills combined with levels of academic learning linked with continuous improvement has been found to be the most effective use of cooperation in learning, especially at the school education level,” says the Jaipur-based educator Lalit Kishore who has implemented group learning in rural bridge schools.

With modern technology invading the schools, we must ward off social isolation among students by promoting cooperation as a value for classroom organization to develop pro-social skills among them. The CL strategies allow the use of the other students as learning resources and are helpful to develop more positive, accepting and supportive relationships with peers as a community of learners.

Since there is insufficient knowledge in CL among teachers these days, the school-based training approach with a support system involving a mentor seems more appropriate for curriculum adaptation and implementation as pilot first.