COOPERATIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES AS A FORM OF GROUP WORK IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The interest to cooperative learning in our country hasn’t been very strong until recently. It is a form of a group work but it has more opportunities for the educational process. David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, and Mary Beth Stanne believe that the widespread use of cooperative learning is because of multiple factors. Three of the most important are that cooperative learning is clearly based on theory, validated by research, and operationalized into clear procedures educators can use. First, cooperative learning is based solidly on a variety of theories in anthropology (Mead, 1936) , sociology (Coleman, 1961), economics (Von Mises, 1949), political science (Smith, 1759), psychology, and other social sciences. In psychology, where cooperation has received the most intense study, cooperative learning has its roots in social interdependence (Deutsch, 1949, 1962; Johnson & Johnson, 1989), cognitive-developmental (Johnson & Johnson, 1979; Piaget, 1950; Vygotsky, 1978), and behavioral learning theories (Bandura, 1977; Skinner, 1968). It is rare that an instructional procedure is central to such a wide range of social science theories.