tion. This is evident in sports, in beauty pageants, and in media awards like the Oscars or Emmys. Unfortunately, this obsession does not encourage the development of good citizens. Because society consists of diverse groups of individuals, citizens must be willing to join with others to effect change through a collaborative process. As Dewey (1972) put it, the good citizen must be a group participant, "he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs" (p. 84). In other words, the good citizen cares about his or her society and its future. Likewise, the good student must care about his or her school and its future. The only school climate that fosters such caring is one that encourages cooperation.
Cooperative learning creates situations in which success in tasks or activities is determined by a joint or cooperative effort toward some goal in which there is a common interest. The reward is not attainable by working alone or against one another. Emphasis is placed upon the process and not the outcome.
A cooperative learning environment promotes social interaction between students. Much research has been done recently on the spontaneous method of social helping called "scaffolding." Through demonstration and modeling, students are taught the skills to solve simple problems and progress to solving complex problems using multiple skills. The teacher acts as a facilitator or coach, providing guidance that gradually becomes less intrusive until the student accomplishes tasks on his or her own, and integrates the skills learned. Students are active in this model because collaboration facilitates scaffolding. Following the scaffolding model, "schools can reverse their old counterproductive patterns of isolation and silence, tapping the power of social interaction to prom...