This paper presents a review and critique of three articles examining cooperative learning (instructional strategies used by educators to foster learning through peer cooperation and communication). In particular, the articles examined were all empirical explorations of the relationships between cooperative learning and student achievement.
Cooperative Learning and Student Achievement
In a study of cooperative learning, Johnson, Johnson and Stanne (1985) examined for the effects of cooperative learning strategies on the daily academic achievement, the problem-solving abilities, and the factual recognition skills (map reading) of a sample of eighth grade students (N=71). Two conditions were compared in the study: (1) a cooperative learning condition which used cooperative learning methods such as grouping and discussion of presented material; and (2) a competitive condition.
The authors stated that their comparative analyses of the two learning conditions revealed that students in the cooperative learning condition showed significantly more achievement in all tested areas than did students in the competitive learning conditions. It was also found that when girls were compared with boys no differences were found for the cooperative learning condition; however, in the competitive condition, girls were adversely affected.
While this study evidences the ability of cooperative learning to foster student achievement, it attempts to also generalize the findings observed for its competitive condition to the standard classroom instructional strategies. This comparison seems somewhat unfounded. While there are elements of competition in the standard classroom instructional methods, it seems reasonable to argue that these competitive elements are insufficient to justify the statement that standard classroom instructional procedures are basically competitive.
Given the foregoing, it can be noted that while the study informs...