In this paper, the following key questions will be examined. What is distinctive about cooperative learning, which makes it different from just groupwork? What has research found about the effectiveness of cooperative learning in promoting thinking? What conditions in cooperative learning help promote thinking? What theoretical perspectives…

This bulletin is one of a series that tells how teachers, pupils, parents, and other citizens have worked together to improve the quality of education for the children of their communities. "How Children Use the Community for Learning" describes the work of a city school of 450 pupils with no regular supervision, the Garfield School of…

Labor unions and academic institutions are joining forces to reach the large population of working adults who have been left out of the mainstream of higher education. Some educational methods are described and ways to finance continuing programs are suggested. (Author/MLW)

Traditionally, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants have been trained separately. In l977, the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of California, Davis, and the Primary Care Associate Program at Stanford University merged clinical curricula. The cooperative program is described and its first year evaluated. (Author/JMD)

Provides a series of guidelines for overcoming resistance and problems with cooperative projects in an introductory sociology course. These include coordinating common interests and common free time between team members, requiring allocation of various roles (presider, scribe, coordinator), and ongoing monitoring of the research teams. (MJP)

Describes an activity that integrates biology and physics concepts by experimenting with the seed dispersal of common milkweed or similar wind-dispersed seeds. Student teams collect seeds and measure several parameters, review principles of trajectory motion, perform experiments, and graph data. Students examine the ideas of…

Addresses the problem of students coming to tutorials not having done the assigned readings. Reviews three approaches to promote student reading and addresses why they failed. Reviews recent research on student motivation and cooperative learning and suggests ways to promote reading and interdependent learning. (MJP)

A study of the attitudes toward cooperative learning of academically gifted students and their cohorts, with data obtained from 28 sixth- through eighth-grade classes, supported the finding that overall attitudes of gifted students toward school subjects were most positive in classes where cooperative learning was used sparingly, in contrast to…

Common faculty concerns about implementing student-centered learning are discussed, and useful techniques for addressing them are offered. Issues include budgeting in-class activity time, losing control of the class, uncompleted assignments, student understanding of open-ended problems, student dislike or abuse of group work, and helping at-risk…

Describes how a Canadian teacher and her second and third graders developed a Web page using minimal technology. Discusses individual and collaborative writing projects, simple and cheap web file storage, HTML coding, hardware, hypertext links, multimedia projects, Internet connections, funding, student goals, motivation, audience response, and…

Accelerated schools strive to bring at-risk students into the educational mainstream and perform at grade level through acceleration rather than remediation. Describes four steps to initiate the accelerated process and how a Texas middle school involved all members of the school community in implementing the first two steps, taking stock and…

Notes that children ignored or rebuffed by their peers may be denied access to learning opportunities involving peer interaction. Describes how the sociometric dynamics in one classroom affected three children. Suggests implementations to minimize negative impact of peer rejection including identifying sociometric patterns, and then utilizing…

A sixth-grade social studies teacher examined how to give her students more autonomy. By teaching them how to function in cooperative learning environments, the teacher noticed significant improvements in student-teacher interaction, a lessening of disciplinary problems, and a strengthening of individual student leadership. (Author/SM)

If universities were serious about enhancing student learning, they would explore other ways of organizing work, including reorganization of the curriculum into learning communities that enable learning to span the disciplines, creating classrooms that promote collaborative learning experiences, and using forms of assessment that encourage shared…

Introduces a simple student-centered activity that can effectively complement a traditional lecture by encouraging group discussion and reflection. Students orally review the lecture in groups and submit summaries to the lecturer that are ultimately compiled into a course review. Discusses the benefits of this practice and students' responses.…