The importance of cooperative learning in children
Nowadays, there is a strong emphasis on the need to be the best, to stand out among the others. However, sometimes these messages make people forget solidarity because children forget cooperate with their peers and focus their efforts on succeeding in their goals.
At this point the cooperative learning It is a good way to give back to the children these values of cooperation and understanding. Especially in a world as multicultural and heterogeneous as it is today. Training children in these capacities will make them in the future become good citizens and valuable members of the society in which they are integrated.
What is cooperative learning
As explained José Emilio Linares Garriga, technical adviser to the Ministry of Education and Murcia, cooperative learning is the teaching of democratic values and understanding to children. It is a skill that is very necessary transmit to the little ones so that they learn to work in a group and not only individually.
In this sense, this professional points out that the education system must be a generator of socialization factors and "not only must it incorporate resume the learning of social relationship skills. "It has to make the student understand the need to work in a team and that everyone in this group has importance, not only the individual.
In this way the author defines cooperative learning as "systematized instructional strategies that present two general characteristics: the division of the class group into small heterogeneous groups that are representative of the general population of the classroom and the creation of systems of positive interdependence through specific task and reward structures. "
How to promote cooperative learning
Linares Garriga also offers a series of tools with which these values can be transmitted at school. Although they can also be transmitted from home, especially when it comes to understanding the importance of Sibling bond:
- Frequent use of group work that requires the cooperation of members of a group.
- As the ability to work in teams grows, its components can be expanded.
- Alteration of group members so that all students know how to cooperate regardless of the person.
- Ensure that everyone participates, not that only a few work and others take the credit. Each member must assimilate an important task and fulfill it. At home for example one of the brothers can pick up the dishes and another fold the tablecloth and sweep.
- When group work is done, everyone should form a pineapple and not work isolated from the rest of the group.
- Remember that they are not competing with the other groups, but that they are collaborating to achieve a goal that individually they can not.
Damián Montero
