- Interviews of the
four teachers who conducted the experimental classes in this study highlighted
the fact that on their own initiative the teachers would not have used
cooperative learning in their classrooms, even though they had participated
in training workshops and seminars. They tended to view C-L as an imposition
on their already overburdened schedule. The availability of a pre-planned
syllabus spelling out the academic materials to be used was one of the
elements that made implementation possible, as was the support of the
research staff.
Cooperative Learning and Student Motivation to Learn
Students in an 11th and a 12 th grade in a
school in Midwestern United States (31 females, 31 males) participated
in a one-semester experiment to assess the effects of Team Assisted
Instruction (TAI) on their motivation to study advanced algebra (Nichols
& Miller, 1994). 30 students (half boys, half girls) in another
class, taught by the same teacher as the experimental classes, served
as a control group.
Specifically, the investigators wished to learn if students in the C-L
classes: 1. were more goal oriented toward the study of algebra than
their peers in the traditional classes; 2. if the students exposed to
TAI expressed more positive self-efficacy regarding their ability to
learn advanced algebra; 3. if the students displayed greater intrinsic
valuing of algebra. After 18 weeks of the study, students in the TAI
classes had significantly higher sense of efficacy and higher intrinsic
motivation. They also had significantly higher achievement scores.
A colleague and I studied the effects of the Group Investigation method
on student motivation (Sharan & Shaulov, 1990). Our study was concerned
with students' genuine interest in subject matter. It also focused on
the extent to which motivation to learn mediated between several independent
variables and students' academic achievement. Students in this study
were in 17 6th grade classes in 4 Israeli elementary schools
in three subjects: arithmetic, Bible, and Hebrew (language and literature).
Ten classes served as the experimental group, 7 classes as the control
group, encompassing a total of 49 teachers; 28 taught with the Group
Investigation method and 21 with direct whole-class instruction.
Motivation to learn was assessed by students' willingness to stay on
task and to continue their work instead of going out to recess. Observers
recorded students' behavior twice during the year in each of the 3 classes.
Two additional measures of student motivation were: teachers' assessment
of students' effort in preparing homework, and teachers' assessment
of students' participation in classroom discussions. The original publication
provides more details about the measures as well as about the implementation
of this study.
Results demonstrate, inter alia, that the Group Investigation
method positively enhances students' motivation to learn, their achievement
and social relations, more so than whole-class instruction. In the latter
case, over the course of the year, students failed to display any change
at all in their motivation to learn. Motivation to learn also accounted
for a substantial portion of the variance in students' achievement scores.
Cooperative Learning, Reading, and Writing
Hundreds of the recent publications on C-L are concerned with learning
to read and write. They present and describe countless cooperative strategies
for teaching reading and writing under a wide variety of circumstances
and with many different kinds of tasks and goals. Here we will refer
to only one or two of the more outstanding publications in this field.
  |
