Promote Cooperative Learning11

Cooperative learning is a valuable tool since students learn both from a teacher and from each other. Cooperative learning actively involves students in the learning process and encourages them to communicate mathematically. A teacher who promotes mathematical reasoning and problem solving also tends to create a classroom that is a supportive and collegial community of learners.

When a teacher poses challenging problems to a class, students benefit from working in small groups to explore and discuss ideas and then reporting their findings to the class. It is also effective to put students into groups, in which they compare and contrast the ways they approached problems and arrived at a solution. These strategies support the sharing of diverse kinds of thinking, place value on listening to and learning from others, and help students to develop ways to solve future problems. Cooperative learning also prepares students to work as a team, which is something that many employers will expect from them later, as employees.12

For examples of how to promote cooperative learning, see the lesson plans Geoboard Squares and Investigating Nets and Polyhedra.

For research in the area of cooperative learning, see: David Johnson and Roger Johnson, "The Internal Dynamics of Cooperative Learning Groups," in Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to Learn, ed. R. Slavin et al. (New York: Plenum, 1985), pp. 103-22; Robert Slavin, "Cooperative Learning and Student Achievement," in School and Classroom Organization, ed. R. Slavin et al. (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989), pp. 129-56.
U.S. Department of Labor, The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), What Work Requires of Schools: A SCANS Report for America 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 1991). Available online at http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/whatwork/whatwork.html.