Staff Development on Cooperative Learning Strategies: Concerns and Solutions

8 During the past decade, the American educational system has been greatly criticized for its inability to educate all students while simultaneously meeting the needs of the individual (Evans, Corsini, & Gazda, 1990). In an effort to address this concern, educators continually seek new teaching/learning strategies which will involve all students in the learning process. One strategy that has received much attention is learning. Cooperative learning is a teaching methodology involving group learning through a group reward system. Through various methods such as counting off, common traits, or random selection, students are grouped into small teams for discussion, team study, instruction, and learning. Key elements of learning are face-to-face interaction by all students, heterogeneous grouping, structured goal interdependence, individual accountability, and emphasis on social skills (Johnson & Johnson, 1989a). According to Manning and Lucking (1991), cooperative learning methods received considerable attention because of their potential to serve as an alternative to the traditional