**6. Return to active learning**

More positive and committed relationships develop in cooperative than in competitive or individualistic situations [10, 13, 19]. This is true when individuals are homogeneous. It is also true when individuals differ in ethnic membership, intellectual ability, handicapping conditions, culture, social class, and gender. Cooperative learning tends to be essential for classes with diverse students from different ethnic groups and handicapping conditions [10]. The more positive relationships that result from cooperative learning tends to reduce absenteeism and turnover, increase member commitment to academic goals, increase feelings of personal responsibility to the group and school, increase willingness to take on difficult tasks, increase motivation to achieve and persistence in working toward goal achievement, increase morale, increase readiness to endure pain and frustration on behalf of the group, increase readiness to defend the group against external criticism or attack, increase readiness to listen to and be influenced by classmates, increase commitment to each other's academic success, and increases academic productivity. Cooperating on a task, compared to competing or working individualistically,

Working cooperatively with peers, and valuing cooperation, results in greater psychological health and higher self-esteem than does competing with peers or working independently [10, 13]. Personal ego-strength, self-confidence, independence, and autonomy are all promoted by being involved in cooperative efforts with caring people, who are committed to each other's success and well-being. When individuals work together to complete assignments, through their interaction they master needed social skills and competencies, promote each other's success (gaining self-worth), and form both academic and personal relation-

When schools are dominated by cooperative efforts, students' psychological adjustment and health tend to increase. The more students cooperate with each other, the higher tends to be their self-esteem, productivity, acceptance and support of classmates, and autonomy and independence. Working cooperatively with peers is not a luxury. It is an absolute necessity

Five basic elements for designing cooperative learning lessons have been derived from Social Interdependence theory and Structure-Process-Outcome theory and the research on social interdependence. The five basic elements that are required in any cooperative learning lesson are: positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills,

Positive interdependence is the heart of cooperative efforts. Students must perceive that (a) they are linked with groupmates in a way so that they cannot succeed unless their groupmates do (and vice versa) and (b) groupmates' work benefits them and their work benefits their groupmates [10]. Positive interdependence among students must be structured into the lesson for it to be cooperative. While every lesson must contain positive goal interdependence, positive interdependence may also be structured through mutual rewards, distributed resources, complementary roles, a mutual identity, and other methods of structuring positive interdependence.

also results in more task-oriented and personal social support.

ships (creating the basis for healthy social development).

**5. Basic elements of cooperative learning lessons**

and group processing.

66 Active Learning - Beyond the Future

for students' healthy development and ability to function independently.

Characteristics of active learning are that students engage in dialogs, interact with classmates in small groups, generate new ideas and cognitive structures within the groups, and coordinate with groupmates as to the direction and speed of the work. Active learning typically requires a learning partner or a small group in which the information being learned is analyzed, synthesizes, evaluated during discussions. In a discussion, students construct new cognitive structures or access their existing ones to subsume the new information and experiences.

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It is clear from the research that having students compete with each other will result in students opposing each other's learning, thereby reducing their motivation and achievement. It is also clear that having students work alone without interacting with classmates will have students being indifferent to each other's learning, also reducing their motivation and learning. What does increase motivation and achievement is cooperative learning. In cooperative learning lessons, students are assigned to small groups (usually two, three, or four members) and given an assignment to complete (such as solving a problem or mastering a set of procedures). Working cooperatively with classmates to solve a problem is far more effective than competing with classmates or working by oneself to solve the problem. It is the cooperative structure that promotes students to engage cognitively and emotionally with other students, the task assigned, and the materials or resources used to complete the task. Doing so allows students to construct, discover, and transform their own knowledge.

Students are engaged in a learning task when they exert effort to complete the task successfully, focus on the task, are curious about the task and its content, persist in completing the task, and use higher-level cognitive strategies in completing the task. Students engaged in cooperative learning activities tend to engage in more on-task behavior (and therefore are more engaged, behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally) than do students participating in competitive or individualistic learning activities [10].

Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning. Cooperative learning is based on two theories: Structure-Process-Outcome theory and Social Interdependence theory. There are four types of cooperative learning: formal cooperative learning, informal cooperative learning, cooperative base groups, and constructive controversy. To be cooperative, five basic elements need to be structured into the learning situation: positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills, and group processing. Cooperative learning, compared with competitive or individualistic learning, tends to result in students exerting more effort to learn, building more positive relationships with classmates, and improving their psychological health.

Cooperative learning is one of the foremost active learning procedures. It is also the foundation on which many of the active learning procedures are based.
