five elements of cooperative learning as mentioned above - Positive interdependence, Group formation, Individual accountability, Social skills, and Group processing.
3. The Principles of the Cooperative Learning
In cooperative learning the teacher and students should have known and understood some principles in cooperative learning, they are:
a. Students are encouraged to think of ‘positive interdependence’ which means
that the students are not thinking competitively and individualistically, but rather cooperatively and in terms of the group.
b. In cooperative learning, students often stay together in the same groups for a
period of time so they can learn how to work better together. The teacher usually assigns students to the groups so that the groups are mixed-males and females,
different ethnic group, different proficiency levels, etc. This allows students to learn from each other and also gives them practice in how to get along with
people different from themselves.
c. The efforts of an individual help not only the individual to be rewarded, but also
others in the class. d.
Social skills such as acknowledging another’s contribution, asking others to contribute, and keeping the conversation calm need to be explicitly taught.
e. Language acquisition is facilitated by students interacting in the target language.
f. Although students work together, each student is individually accountable.
g. Responsibility and accountability for each other’s learning is shared.
h. Each group member should be encouraged to feel responsible for participating
and for learning. Leadership is ‘distributed.’ i.
Teachers not only teach language; they teach cooperation as well. Of course, since social skills involve the use of language, cooperative learning teaches
language for both academic and social purposes.
25
Based on the principles of cooperative learning above, the writer resumes that when students have not been taught how to work with others, teachers should not expect
to be able to put them together in groups and ask them work together effectively but teachers should consider skills of students. Teachers have to understand that students
need to be taught interpersonal and small group learning skills in order to students can adapt with other students.
25
. Diane Larsen Freeman, Technique and Principles in Language Teaching, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 167-168
4. The Types of the Cooperative Learning
