Cooperative Learning: Theory and Research

(Hardback)

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This collection of theoretical and empirical research addresses the most recent advances in cooperative learning and its applications, implications, and effects on teachers and students at both the elementary and secondary levels. The central concern of the contributors is how a set of particular instruction methods affects people in classrooms and what this form of instruction contributes or fails to contribute to them. In their attempt to illuminate some of the major effects of cooperative learning methods, the contributors discuss a number of theoretical and practical issues not covered elsewhere, including the effects of cooperative learning on teachers, on high school science studies, on student motivation, and on the acquisition of group process and learning skills. Educational psychologists and researchers as well as teachers in training will find Cooperative Learning an illuminating source of information about a model of teaching that, the contributors argue, produces a wide range of positive effects on both the teacher and student populations. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate a wider applicability and more socially and psychologically important impacts of cooperative learning than have been documented before. Among the topics addressed are cooperative learning and achievement, treating status problems in the cooperative classroom, cooperative learning models, teachers' verbal behavior in cooperative and whole-class instruction, and the effects of cooperative learning on ethnic relations. The contributors are united in their belief that cooperative learning promises to provide a viable alternative to the predominantly verbal-presentation type of teaching that is still the norm in most Western classrooms. The research reported here will help establish a central role for cooperative learning methods in the training and practice of classroom instruction as we enter the 1990s.

Reviews

Editor Sharan successfully combines a unique blend of perspectives from education theorists and research analysts alike to make this volume on cooperative learning (CL) one of the very best to date. Eaasyists, including such CL advocates as Robert Slavin, David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Sharan, bring a practitioner's perspective to the analysis of findings support within CL as a model of teaching worthy of incorporation with all other standard, time-honored instructional methods. One of the most endearing aspects of this volume is the text of running comments of students actually working in various CL group settings (Chapter 5). The volume closes with Sharan calling for an increase in CL throughout the curriculum as a means of "retiring" whole-class instruction to a fraction of its current dominance. This is a valuable source for any educational library and it would also be an excellent text for graduate and undergraduate elementary, middle school and high school methods courses.-Choice
"Editor Sharan successfully combines a unique blend of perspectives from education theorists and research analysts alike to make this volume on cooperative learning (CL) one of the very best to date. Eaasyists, including such CL advocates as Robert Slavin, David Johnson, Roger Johnson, and Sharan, bring a practitioner's perspective to the analysis of findings support within CL as a model of teaching worthy of incorporation with all other standard, time-honored instructional methods. One of the most endearing aspects of this volume is the text of running comments of students actually working in various CL group settings (Chapter 5). The volume closes with Sharan calling for an increase in CL throughout the curriculum as a means of "retiring" whole-class instruction to a fraction of its current dominance. This is a valuable source for any educational library and it would also be an excellent text for graduate and undergraduate elementary, middle school and high school methods courses."-Choice

Author Bio

SHLOMO SHARAN is Professor of Educational Psychology at Tel Aviv University and the author of numerous books and articles on cooperative learning, including some of the seminal early works in the field.