cooperative learning situation:
. . . when an individual behaves in such a way as to increase his chances of goal attainment, he increases the chances that the other members with whom he is linked will also achieve their goals . . . The psychological consequences of such a state of affairs are: (l) suitability-the actions of members in a cooperative relationship are interchangeable. . .
(2) positive cathexis-if the actions of one member move the individuals toward their goal, his actions . . . will be favorably evaluated...and (3) inducibility-if the actions of a person in a cooperative relationship move the others toward their goal, the others will be receptive to his attempts to induce them to engage in behavior that will facilitate his actions. (p. 215)
While cooperation may facilitate learning, the fact of the matter is that most schools frequently rely on competitive methods (e.g. grades, test scores, etc.) as learning strategies and students do learn through these methods. Therefore, a point that needs to be addressed by the cooperative learning model is the role of competition as a learning strategy. Would cooperative learning theorists ban competitive methods from the classroom and if so, on what grounds?
With respect to the foregoing, Slavin (1987) reports that cooperative learning theorists do not desire to rid the schools of competitive learning strategies; however, instead of having individuals compete against one another or teams compete against other teams, they would advocate that teams compete against their previous achievement records. This use of competition, according to Slavin, should not be to motivate students to "beat" other students but rather to motivate them to attain learning goals while at the same time motivating them to care about how other students on their team are doing---in effect, to want for their team members that which they want for themselves, namely goal attainment.
Slavin fur...