attendance and punctuality in handing in assignments improved because students were
able to make demands on their team members and follow up on each other. People having
difficulty were less likely to get lost in the shuffle. Fourth, all of these benefits contributed
to, and were accelerated by, the growth of a positive, academically directed, classroom
community.
Before you experiment with cooperative learning in your classroom, I recommend read-
ing additional resource material, participating in workshops sponsored by school districts,
union-sponsored teacher centers, or local colleges. You should also talk with your col-
leagues. Teachers may already be using cooperative learning in your school and someone
might want to work with you. Teachers can also cooperate, and it is easier to experiment
with something new when you have a support group.
Once you are committed to using cooperative learning in your classroom, the first step is
defining your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to focus on content or skills
learning? Do you want to concentrate on group process and developing democratic values?
Do you want to address intergroup tensions in your class? It makes sense to involve stu-
dents in discussions about cooperative learning goals and the process from the start. Lis-
tening to their ideas can be helpful, and it gives them a sense of ownership and responsibil-
ity from the beginning.
How you organize teams depends on your goals. In general, a teacher has to make two ba-
sic decisions: Will students be permitted to choose their groups or will they be assigned to
groups? Will groups be homogenous (students are more alike) or heterogeneous (students
are more different)? If students choose their own cooperative learning groups, the groups
will most likely be based on friendships or shared interests.
Advantages of student choice are: (a) group members will more likely have prior experi-
ence working together; (b) group members will share more interests in common; (c) there
may be fewer intragroup conflicts for the teacher, the group, and the class to deal with; and
(d) students may have a greater sense of identification with the process if they feel that they
selected their own groups. Disadvantages of student choice are: (a) groups will more likely
be segregated by race, ethnicity, gender, class, or academic achievement levels; (b) friend-
ship bonds can be socially constraining as students try to learn and experiment; (c) some
students will feel left out because they do not have a group of friends in the class; (d) teams
based on friendship groups may tend to compete with each other in destructive ways; and
(e) students will not have the opportunity to work with a new and diverse team of people
where they all start out on an equal footing.
Students should discuss the advantages and disadvantages of choosing their own cooper-
ative learning teams, and of heterogeneous versus homogenous groupings. After discussion,
a teacher has the option of allowing the class to make a decision or making the decision for
the class. Often after a discussion of the goals of cooperative learning, a class will reach con-
sensus that it wants teams to be heterogeneous, and that the fairest way is for the teacher to
set them up. There is also no reason that groups cannot be organized one way for some ac-
tivities and a different way for others.
Some parents and educators have questioned whether heterogeneous cooperative learn-
ing teams penalize “high-achieving” students. Studies conducted by cooperative learning
specialists from the University of Minnesota show that high achievers working in heteroge-
neous cooperative learning teams do at least as well on standardized academic tests as high
achievers who work in competitive individualized settings. “Low-level achievers” and “mid-
dle-level achievers” who are involved in heterogeneous cooperative learning teams almost
always do better on these types of tests. Meanwhile, all groups of students benefit from the
important social skills they develop by working in cooperative learning teams.
162 CHAPTER 6