CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING – NEED OF THE HOUR

This article presents an overview of co-operative learning, an instructional technique developed to enhance academic achievement through social and inter-personal skill development. Co-operative learning plays a paramount role in education, as it is one of the most widespread and fruitful areas of research and theory. Over the past several decades, it has attracted growing interest due to the vast amount of research conducted in education context as well as in social and clinical settings. The central tenet of co-operative learning is that through interaction and dialogue with others around a topic of study, achievement of students increases, attitude towards learning improves, students learn and retain more information than through other more intra-personal, instructional methodologies (i.e. teacher directed/lecture style formats). Research points to all of these positive effects, improved inter-group, inter-ethnic, gender co-operation as well as increased self-esteem and confidence for student population.