Among the last advantages of cooperative learning in the classroom is the increase in competition that every student experiences as s/he collaborates with other students/teammates in the process of accomplishing a particular task or activity. There is one caveat, however, in stating this observation about cooperative learning: increased competence is induced only in learning processes wherein information used by students are similar or identical with each other (Buchs, 2004:310-1). An increase in the competitive nature of learning using the cooperative learning technique stimulates students' greater desire to perform better, and to outdo other students in accomplishing the task at hand.
While there are advantages to cooperative learning as a teaching and learning tool, there are also disadvantages that can become impediments or hindrances to the students' further learning and the teacher's role as a moderator or to serve as the students' guide to learning.
Among the enumerated disadvantages to cooperative learning as a teaching technique is that it promotes "role-playing" among students within a team or group (Bandiera, 2006:132). This "role-playing" happens when students are assigned roles or functions that when accomplishing a task or activity. For example, one student may be assigned to do the actual activity, while another is asked to record the findings, a third student analyzes these findings, while another student evaluates and prepares the report for the team. This cooperative learning example demonstrates how one student becomes skilled in one particular activity in the said learning process, making him/her unskilled in some other part of the task or activity. Because of the specific roles students are assigned to accomplish in cooperative learning, they are not able to develop themselves in other areas wherein they have the chance to compete or be skilled at.
Apart from having defined roles in the cooperative learning task, this technique also induces students to focus only on one subject matter where cooperative learning is encouraged, oftentimes neglecting other subjects where cooperative learning is not practiced or encouraged (133).
As a converse to the finding that cooperative learning induces competitiveness among students, there is also a downside to the...
That is, cooperative learning can be an impediment to learning when information is not identical or similar with each other, since students now compete over a task that has different content or information. This finding is elucidated by Buchs (2004), who stated that:
competence threat (namely the evaluation of relative competences and protection of own competence) can inhibit the effectiveness of a cooperative environment. In contrast, working on complementary information seems to enhance cooperation.
In contrast to cooperative learning using identical information, cooperative learning using different information is detrimental because the measures are not equally ascertained. Thus, cooperative learning is only advantageous to student learning as long as all variables are held equal and constant.
It is also a contention that cooperative learning does not really improve student learning, since it is possible that there are also other variables at work that may have contributed to students' successful and improved learning. Similarly, there are also other intervening variables that may have affected studies on the cooperative learning technique, wherein it was found that this technique does not promote student learning (Laatsch, 2005:157). These conflicting findings among extant literature on cooperative learning suggests that as a new technique in teaching, it has still a long way to go in making a significant improvement, if there are any, to student's learning development and efficiency.
Bibliography
Bandiera, M. (2006). "Active/cooperative learning in schools." Journal of Biological Education, Vol. 40, Issue 3.
Buchs, C. (2004). "Resource interdependence, student interactions, and performance in cooperative learning." Educational Psychology, Vol. 24, Issue 3.
Coke, P. (2005). "Practicing what we preach: an argument for cooperative learning opportunities for elementary and secondary educators." Education, Vol. 126, Issue 2.
Laatsch, L. (2005). "Cooperative learning effects on teamwork attitudes in clinical laboratory science students." Clinical Laboratory Science, Vol. 18, Issue 3.
Lin, E. (2006). "Cooperative learning in the science classroom." Science Teacher, Vol. 73, Issue 5.
