INCREASING  MOTIVATION THROUGH  COOPERATIVE

LEARNING

A great strength of cooperative learning is that it provides teachers with many opportunities to instruct children in the social, emotional or moral domains at a time when such instruction is immediately relevant. At the same time, one of the goals of using co-operative learning is to facilitate children’s development by giving them opportunities to solve problems on their own. For example, struggling to solve an interpersonal-problem in a co-operative learning activity can provide young children with the opportunity to learn why rules are necessary and later, with teacher guidance, help them to decide for  themselves what they need to do to get along better with one another (DeVries and Zan 1994).

Through observation and trial and error, teachers can develop their understanding of when and how to provide support to a group and when to let the group In the affective area, co-operative learning influences the development of positive attitudes towards peers, including children from diverse cultural and social backgrounds, and children with diverse learning needs (Putnam et al. 1996). It has also helped to foster the development of positive attitudes towards learning, a willingness to engage with other children, and to work together to promote each other’s learning. In so doing, children have learned how to deal with conflict, consider the perspective of others, negotiate how to proceed with tasks, and share ideas and resources (Johnson et al. 1997; McManus and Gettinger 1996). In fact, it has been argued that co-operative learning experiences are crucial to preventing and alleviating many of the social problems related to children, adolescents and young adults (Johnson et al. 2000).

 Co-operative learning was designed and implemented to develop social strategies and acceptable social attitudes in students, and to improve social relations within and between groups. In addition, there is a large cluster of  co-operative learning models aimed at cognitive development. Sometimes co-operative learning is directed at both the social and the cognitive side of human development.

The Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning

1 Positive Interdependence

Given the different ways in which positive and negative interdependence may be structured, Johnson & Johnson (1989, 2005) divided them into three categories: outcome, means, and boundary . First, when persons are in a cooperative or competitive situation, they are oriented toward a desired outcome, that is, a goal or reward. Second, the means through which the mutual outcomes are to be accomplished specify the actions required on the part of group members. Third, the boundaries existing among individuals and groups can define who is interdependent with whom.

2 Individual Accountability and Personal  Responsibility

Feeling of responsibility increase a person’s motivation to perform well. Responsibility forces are increased when there is group and individual accountability. Group accountability exists when the overall performance of the group is assessed and the results are given back to all group members to compare against a standard of performance. Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual member is assessed, the results given back to the individual and the group to compare against a standard of performance, and the member is held responsible by group-mates for contributing his or her fair share to the group’s success. Archer-Kath et al. (1994) found that by increasing individual accountability perceived interdependence among group members may also be increased. The lack of individual accountability may reduce feelings of personal responsibility.

3 Promotive Interaction

Promotive interaction occurs as individuals encourage and facilitate each other’s efforts to accomplish the group’s goals. Promotive interaction is characterized by individuals  :

1. Providing each other with efficient and effective help and assistance

2. Exchanging needed resources such as information and materials and processing information more efficiently and effectively

3  Providing each other with feedback in order to improve the subsequent performance of their assigned tasks and responsibilities

4. Challenging each other’s conclusions and reasoning in order to promote higher quality decision making and greater insight into the problems being considered

5. Advocating the exertion of effort to achieve mutual goals

6. Influencing each other’s efforts to achieve the group’s goals

7. Acting in trusting and trust-worthy ways

  8. Being motivated to strive for mutual benefit

9. Having a moderate level of arousal characterized by low anxiety and stress

10.Taking the perspectives of others more accurately than individuals engaged in competitive or individualistic efforts.

4 Appropriate Use of Social Skills

To coordinate efforts to achieve mutual goals participants must:

(a) get to know and trust each other;

(b) communicate accurately and unambiguously;

(c) accept and support each other; and

(d) resolve conflicts constructively 

5 Group Processing

Group processing may be defined as reflecting on a group session to describe what member actions were helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what actions to continue or change. A Purpose of group processing is to clarify and improve the effectiveness of the members in contributing to the joint efforts to achieve the group’s goals. The results indicate that the high-, medium-, and low achieving participants in the cooperation with group processing condition achieved higher on daily achievement, post-instructional achievement, and retention measures than did the participants in the other two conditions. Participants in the without group processing condition, furthermore, achieved higher on all three measures than did the participants in the individualistic condition.        

Students’ motivation to enquire, reason, learn and apply is increased when educators ensure that classrooms and schools are dominated by cooperative rather than competitive or individualistic learning. Co-operative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning . Any assignment in any curriculum for any age student can be done co-operatively. There are three types of co-operative learning: formal, informal and co-operative base groups. Formal co-operative learning consists of students working together, for one class period to several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and assignments. In formal co-operative learning groups teachers:

1 Make a number of pre-instructional decisions. Teachers specify the objectives for the lesson (both academic and social skills) and decide on the size of groups, the method of assigning students to groups, the roles students will be assigned, the materials needed to conduct the lesson, and the way the room will be arranged.

2 Explain the task and the positive interdependence. A teacher clearly defines the assignment, teaches the required concepts and strategies, specifies the positive interdependence and individual accountability, gives the criteria for success, and explains the expected social skills to be used.

3 Monitor students’ learning and intervene within the groups to provide task assistance or to increase students’ interpersonal and group skills.

4 Assess students’ learning and helping students process how well their groups functioned. Students’ learning is carefully assessed. Members of the learning groups then discuss how effectively they worked together and how they can improve in the future.

Informal co-operative learning consists motivation is reflected in the effort individuals commit purposely to strive to achieve goals they perceive as being meaningful and worthwhile. Motivation is aimed at achieving goals, it is fuelled by emotions, and it has social origins. Motivation, therefore, may be seen as occurring within the context of social interdependence. Social interdependence theory posits that individuals’ goals may be positively interdependent, negatively interdependent, or independent. The interdependence among goals determines the interaction pattern among the individuals involved, and the interaction patterns in turn determine the outcomes of the situation; that is, the degree to which the goals are achieved. The motivational system promoted within co-operative situations includes the value and meaning of the goals being promoted through striving for mutual benefit, seeing the ability to achieve the goal being based on joint efficacy, intrinsic motivation, high epistemic curiosity and continuing interest in achievement, high commitment to achieve, and high persistence.

From the discourse above, in my opinion that Cooperative Learning can create student motivation in teaching and learning process. Involvement actively student can create self-confident, individual accountability, good interaction and relation among other students in heterogenous grouping, have sense of belonging, have a good caring among student. Moreover within cooperative learning has many methods which can be applied in teaching and learning process so it can develop students’ motivation not only intrinsic but also extrinsic motivation.  We can also see, in educational curriculum 2013 use thematic learning which involve student center actively in teaching and learning process. Teacher also have  role to guide, facilitate, manage in the classroom activities. In order that can create the teaching and learning process run well and also deal with goal of educational curriculum 2013. We, as a teacher should have many role to create students motivation in teaching and learning process especially in the classroom activities. Create enjoy, effective, creative, active teaching and learning process in order student can study well and enjoy.

Sources :

Robyn Gillies, Adrian Ashman-Cooperative Learning_ The Social and Intellectual Outcomes of Learning in Groups (2003)

Robyn M. Gillies, Adrian Ashman, Jan Terwel-The Teacher_s Role in Implementing Cooperative Learning in the Classroom (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series) (2007)

That’s all.. I hope this article benefits for you as the reader also especially for teacher .

Be a good teacher which deal with four teacher competences.

Thank you….. ;) ;)