Educating student social - emotional aspect: assessing factors of cooperative learning effectiveness

Abstract

This research study attempts to investigate the teaching method of cooperative learning, under the scope of holistic education. The two notions are connected to each other, as cooperative learning is a part of social – emotional learning. Meanwhile, social – emotional learning is part of holistic education. The abovementioned notions are presented and analyzed in depth in the second chapter of the research study. The Literature Review focuses on providing the reader with the scientific background of their content, as well as proves how they are interconnected. More specifically, this research project focuses on factors that impact cooperative learning effectiveness. These factors are related to the formation of the cooperative groups, and the implementation of cooperative learning. In particular, the investigative factors are: the size of the group, the level of student ability, gender, age, nationality, personality, social skills, as well as the assignment of roles to group members, the duration of the cooperative learning interventions, the use of extrinsic rewards by the educators, the form of instruction they implement, the teaching of social skills, the classroom environment they set and their evaluation methods. Additionally, the research study attempts to explore how the educational grade level – Middle School and High School – and course categories – Languages, Mathematics, Sciences, Arts & Social Studies, Physical Education – impact cooperative learning effectiveness. The three research goals are presented and thoroughly analyzed in the third chapter of the study (Methods). For the investigation of the research goals, student grade point averages have been used. The investigative educational setting is an international school, which adopts the holistic education paradigm, and its educators implement cooperative learning. The research is considered as a case study. For this reason, the suggestions made in the last chapter, are based on the literature review and the data analysis, which are presented in the chapter of Analysis. Furthermore, the researcher includes the limitations of the case study and suggests that any findings should be investigated in other educational settings too in order to be validated. The research methodology is quantitative and specifically descriptive statistics have been used. The case study strives to explore good practices that their implementation will contribute to the promotion of effective cooperative learning, in terms of facilitating high student academic achievement. The implementation of cooperative learning is an example of educating the students holistically. Cooperative learning not only leads to the cultivation of social – emotional skills, such as cooperation and conflict resolution, nut also is accompanied by high academic performance. This teaching methods result in the creation of future democratic, active and responsive citizens, which can co-exist harmonically and peacefully thanks to their developed social emotional attributes. Therefore, effective cooperative learning is considered as a pillar towards the attainment of this purpose.