How do you balance the cognitive and social aspects of cooperative learning?

1 Define clear objectives and roles

One of the key elements of cooperative learning is having clear and specific objectives for the group work, both in terms of the content and the process. Align your objectives with the curriculum standards and communicate them clearly to your students. Also, assign different responsibilities to each group member, such as leader, recorder, checker, or facilitator. These roles should help your students to organize their work, share ideas, monitor progress, and provide feedback to each other. Rotate these roles periodically to give each student a chance to experience different aspects of cooperative learning.

2 Choose relevant and engaging tasks

The type and level of tasks that you assign to your cooperative learning groups can also influence the balance between cognitive and social aspects. Select tasks that are relevant to your students' prior knowledge and goals, as well as to the real-world situations and problems. Additionally, choose engaging, challenging, and open-ended tasks that require higher-order thinking skills and creativity and that have multiple approaches. These tasks can stimulate cognitive engagement, while also bolstering social interaction among the group members. Some examples of such tasks are case studies, experiments, debates, or games.

3 Provide structure and support

To ensure that your cooperative learning groups are functioning effectively, provide them with adequate structure and support. You should establish consistent rules and norms for group work, from how to communicate and collaborate to how to resolve conflicts and evaluate performance. Provide your students with prompts, questions, or rubrics to help them complete the task at hand, as well as monitor their own learning. Additionally, monitor and intervene when necessary during group work. However, you want to avoid over-directing or dominating the group work, as this can undermine your students' autonomy responsibility of their learning.

4 Incorporate individual and group accountability

One of the challenges of cooperative learning is ensuring that all students are actively involved and contributing to the group work — and that they're not soley relying on others. This is where individual and group accountability come in. Individual accountability means that each student is responsible for their own learning and performance, and that they can demonstrate mastery of the content and skills. Group accountability means that the group as a whole is responsible for achieving the common goal and producing a shared outcome. You can incorporate both methods by using various tools, including individual tests or assignments, group grades, peer assessments, or self-assessments.

5 Promote positive interdependence and social skills

The essence of cooperative learning is to create a sense of positive interdependence among the group members, which means that they depend on each other for success. Positive interdependence can foster mutual support and trust among the group members. It can also enhance their social skills. Promote positive interdependence and social skills by using different strategies, like goal interdependence, resource interdependence, or reward interdependence. Additionally, you can explicitly teach and model the social skills that are needed for effective cooperative learning. Make sure to provide opportunities for reflection on the group work.

6 Here’s what else to consider

Hier können Sie uns Beispiele, Geschichten oder Erkenntnisse mitteilen, die nicht in einen der vorherigen Abschnitte passen. Was möchten Sie noch hinzufügen?