Social Skills through Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning
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Introduction
Cooperative learning has been used effectively to enhance physical education in schools across the world. This has led to numerous studies in the field of cooperative teaching and its role in enhancing physical education and the development of social helping behavior. Physical education has for a long time been regarded as a core goal in the promotion of a holistic student through development of a student’s personality and social- ethical goals. Physical education refers to education in movement, through movement, and about movement. Social education on the other hand, aims to teach social cooperation and ability to understand one’s self and one another among other social cooperation aspects. The main goal of social education is to produce social or pro-social behaviors such as altruism, empathy among others. Pro- social education is formed by creating a condition of responsibility not just for one’s physical self, feelings, attitudes, opinion and values but also for the needs and feelings of others. It takes part in activities that require interactions between individuals mostly in physical activities and sports.
The main ideal of pro- social behavior is the desire by the participants to be socially accepted and liked by his/ her peers. The three articles reviewed in this paper discusses, presents and elaborates on the facts and issues in the field of cooperative learning as an enhancer of social skills. The purpose of the paper is to analyze how cooperative study helps to develop holistic personalities through development of social students. The paper will analyze the following papers; the use of cooperative learning as a social enhancer in physical education, developing understanding and social skills through cooperative learning and social skilling through cooperative learning (Huseâ&Postlethwaite, 1985).
Paradigms and designs
Research paradigms refers to the ways in which scientific research or information is organized so that the fundamental, abstract and relationships can be understood clearly. However, punch (2009) argues that research should not be driven by the paradigms. The idea of paradigm directs attention to science as having recognized patterns of commitments, questions, methods, and procedures that underlie and give direction to scientific work. We can distinguish the underlying assumptions of a paradigm by viewing its discourse as having different layers of abstractions. The layers exist simultaneously and are superimposed upon one another. The concept of paradigm provides a way to consider the divergence in vision, custom, and tradition. It enables us to consider science as having different sets of assumptions, commitments, procedures and theories of social affairs. A paradigm determines the criteria according to which one selects and defines problems for inquiry and how one approaches them theoretically and methodologically. Paradigms determine scientific approaches and procedures which stand out as exemplary to the new generation of scientists – as long as they do not oppose them. The paradigm determines how a problem is formulated and methodologically handled. According to the traditional positivist conception, problems related to, for example, to classroom behavior should be investigated primarily in terms of the individual actor, either the pupils, who might be neurotic, or the teacher who might be ill prepared for this her job. The other conception is to formulate the problem in terms of the larger setting, that of the school, or rather that of the society at large. By means of such mechanisms as testing, observation and the like, one does not try to find out why the pupil or the teacher deviates from the normal. Rather an attempt is made to study the particular individual as a goal directed human being with particular and unique motives.
One can distinguish between two main paradigms in educational research planning and with different basis of knowledge. On one hand there is functional- structural, objective – rational, goal-directed, manipulative, hierarchical, and technocratic approach. On the other hand, there is the interpretivist, humanistic, consensual, subjective, and collegial one. The first approach is derived from classical positivism. The second one, more popular now, partly derived from the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, particularly from Habermas‘s theory of communicative action. The first approach is ―linear and consists of a straight forward rational action toward preconceived problem. The second approach leaves room for reinterpretation and reshaping of the problem during the process of dialogue prior to action and even during action.
The articles under review are positivist and interpretivist. This can be identified through the aims of the research and the methodology of the research. For instance, Singa, & Rist (2010) approached the research in an interpretive way by analyzing the effect of cooperative education on helps to develop student’s social skills. The study was an experiment conducted for a period of 9 months for two hours every week administered to four groups of 11 year old girls. In the first two groups the cooperative method of teaching which incorporates physical education was administered (Henley, 2004).
The students did physical exercises in pairs. One of the pair did the task, while the other observed and helped in physical and psychological ways with the aim of integrating learning among the students as most as possible. One of the pair performed the task while the other pair observed the first one. The Partners were interchanged every three weeks. in the second group the girls were allowed to choose their partners for each lesson while the third group worked individually (Crum, 1991). The control group was never given any instruction or information from the researcher (Research Consumer Guide, 2004). The methodology involved alternating the roles of the performer and the observer. The observing pair was tasked with advising, demonstrating, guiding, monitoring, helping, correcting among other things. Further, the ability to exhibit pro- social behavior scientifically measured using a condensed version of Severy’s (1975) questionnaire which included the helping situations, the perceived helping skills and the reasons for not helping. The teacher dependence, the care for fellow students and the amount of friends in class were measured using an instrument constructed based on the theories of social behavior. The instrument consisted of dichotomic items due to the young age of the subjects of the study- eleven years old (Staub, 1978).
Loudes Ferrer investigated the development of social skills and development and the pedagogical content knowledge in teacher candidate and the development. The paper also studied the development of the conceptual understanding and social skills in elementary school students taught by teacher candidates with cooperative learning orientations. The paradigm of this study was also interpretive. The research compared the pedagogical content gained by the students who are enjoined in the collaboration with the teachers compared with the one’s working individually.
A similar checklist was used to rate the elementary students participating as they undertook science concepts in the lessons taught and assessed by a test. The study modeled the research into two problems, that is, the development of social and pedagogical content knowledge in teacher candidates working collaboratively and the development of conceptual understanding and social skills in elementary schools students taught by teacher with a cooperative learning orientation. In this research four schools were involved. Four lessons of matter and energy were taught using cooperative learning strategies (Kahila, 1993). The teacher candidates were given a one month orientation on cooperative learning in the science method course. They were also allowed to choose the cooperative method strategy that they deemed appropriate for the development of conceptual understanding and social skills development in the students.
Don and Joanna explored the development of social skills as a measure of correcting misbehavior in schools. The study explored how cooperative learning would enhance student’s social behavior by reducing incidents of misbehavior. This study first recognized the fact that cooperative learning is a model that seeks to maximize students learning. The study based its findings on the interpretation of the studies by other researchers.During the study a program incorporating social skilling and cooperative learning activitieswasintroduced for a period of six weeks.The activities were drawn from A ParttoPlay by Graves and Graves, Different Kids,Same Classroom by McGrath and Noble, and FriendlyKids, Friendly Classrooms(Louis et al, 2007).
The materials incorporated were appropriate to each of the age group and incorporated all the relevant skill areas.The activities were easy to use, being well-presented in a systematic and methodical way.This program was followed by a four-week follow-upphase, implementing the features of the cooperative learning program into thenormal class routine. Given the restricted time scale, it was decided to focus on the performance of six students, in terms of their task-oriented and social cooperation with studentsbeyond their immediate friendship circle. In addition, the teacher observed thesocial interaction of the class as ...