Using small learning groups in graduate education is a way to prepare learners to meet the challenges they face as professionals and to enrich and facilitate adult learning in ways that cannot be accomplished as well by members working alone. This technique also helps graduate students develop the skills needed to work productively as group…

Two secondary students with severe disabilities and 28 high school sophomores enrolled in a life sciences class participated in this study. The two students with disabilities also participated in a special education classroom with a community-based instructional program. A cooperative learning intervention was implemented using Johnson and…

In a public hearing to decide which plan of reading instruction should be emphasized in a school district, six university professors with expertise in reading took turns presenting their philosophies and plans of reading instruction. Professor A was a strong advocate of a thorough program of phonics instruction for primary grades pupils in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of cooperative learning and type of reward on performance and continuing motivation. Subjects used either a cooperative or individual learning strategy while receiving information, examples, practice, and feedback from an instructional television lesson. Subjects (126 undergraduate education…

This bulletin provides a context for and an overview of cooperative learning addressing concerns and answering questions teachers, supervisors, and parents may have about this group approach to teaching and learning in the social studies. The intention was to help social studies educators construct a sound conceptual foundation for cooperative…

As teaching assistants, graduate students are often thrown into the deep waters of their first courses with little or no direction, instruction, or support. Teacher training programs offer little help in achieving a sense of professional teaching or classroom methodology. The Mentor program of Radford University's English Department provides an…

This Digest discusses approaches to group learning in the language classroom, presenting some principles that are common to any group learning approach, whether it be cooperative learning, student team learning, group investigation, or collaborative learning. The Digest also discusses the Collaborative Learning Model (Reid et al., 1989) which…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary examination of the efficacy of two teaching methodologies: traditional lecture versus cooperative learning. A sample of 50 students was taken from a mid-size, southern, metropolitan university. The subjects were divided into 2 groups: 27 who learned course material via the traditional lecture…

This report describes a program for increasing the level of motivation in art which currently interferes with the understanding and appreciation of art as it relates to career choices, and the quality and quantity of artistic products. Targeted population consists of high school students in a predominantly white, middle class community in rural…

A study investigated whether there was a positive relationship between collaborative learning techniques and the improvement of writing skills of college freshmen over a single semester. Two English Composition II classes of approximately 20 student each were randomly selected for the study. Over the course of one semester, one class received…

This book is about the relationship between cooperation and social responsibility and children's self-esteem. This book shows teachers how to teach children skills that aid cooperation and social responsibility. Chapter 1 examines the problems with competitive and individualistic teaching strategies. Cooperation is explored in greater detail in…

This guide focuses on the use of computers and cooperative learning techniques in classrooms that include students with disabilities. The guide outlines the characteristics of cooperative learning such as goal interdependence, individual accountability, and heterogeneous groups, emphasizing the value of each group member. Several cooperative…

Small-group cooperative learning was integrated into a physics class to alter the traditional lecture/laboratory format of the course and to provide support for students' feelings of helplessness and isolation in studying physics. At weekly meetings, groups of 4-6 students met to solve physics homework problems assigned during the traditional…

The polarity of gender is perhaps the most important shaping force in the nineties in the growth and change of education and educational theory. Many critics have argued that there is a masculine bias at the heart of most academic disciplines and methodologies. Feminist approaches, conversely, are viewed as intuitive, expressive, and unscientific.…

Two studies evaluated the use of the Student Team Reading (STR) and Student Team Writing (STW) program in urban middle schools. The first study investigated the use of STR in 20 experimental sixth-grade classes in three schools matched with 39 classes in three control schools. The second study investigated the use of STR and STW in sixth, seventh,…