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Cooperative Learning refers to a teaching method devised and promoted in the 1990s. Its premise is that, because people need the kinds of interpersonal skills to be successful on teams in the work world, teachers need to devise a classroom where this kind of work is done. The promoters of this methodology view it as the method and support the idea that all classrooms should work this way always. Most promoters of methods think this way.

Cooperative learning is not just group work. It is a specific teaching-learning technique. [Sample] The following are characteristics of cooperative learning which are not necessarily true of situations where students are just thrown into a group and given a task:

• Students are dependent on each other in positive ways
• There is a lot of face-to-face interaction;
• Each individual is personally accountable for the lesson goals (i.e., graded individually) but also responsible to achieve the group's goals;
• There is frequent use of relevant interpersonal and small-group skills (Here is a rubric I use to measure this.);
• The group frequently looks at how well its doing and makes changes to work together more efficiently;

Among the things cooperative learning is not:

• Cooperative learning situations give stronger students the opportunity to assist weaker students, but not the responsibility to do so. (Some practitioners would disagree with me here) I am the trained practitioner responsible for providing learning opportunities.
• Cooperative learning situations may include a group grade, but each individual is personally accountable for the learning goals. It should not be possible to receive a passing mark unless one provides the teacher evidence that s/he actually knows. Put another way: no student should receive a good mark solely based on the particular partner(s) they have.
• Cooperative learning is not a completely random, undirected association of people with a general purpose to solve on their own.

Since I took my Master's degree at a time when this kind of thing was popular, almost all of my course work involved cooperative learning. I was never a big fan of the method, I'll be honest, but I have come to see it as a tool that works under the right circumstances and that makes a nice change of pace for me and my students. In the 2006-2007 school year, one of my seventh grade classes is doing their course in this way for much of the time.

In my view, the method is a nice change of pace and equally good compared to other methods I use in my classroom. Being very individualistic myself by nature, I have respect for the student who would rather work alone on some task - especially tasks of particular interest to him or her. Cooperative learning as a tool is something from which me and my students can benefit from time to time. As a teacher, I wish to maintain my own skills at designing such lessons.

Among the disadvantages of this method are the following:

• It takes many hours to train students how to work together in effective teams, time we coud be learning history more quickly.
• Until students are good at learning this way, I have to reteach things sometimes.
• Teacher preparation time is increased and I just don't always have the time.
• Team work sessions are noisy and a large room is needed. As I wander the room addressing team needs, I don't see everything (sometimes I video tape the lessons).
• Students who have severe difficulties with academic work or problems paying attention or severe behavioral problems cannot work in this situation (again, some teachers might disagree with me).