Approach in Cooperative Learning
Although the basic principles of cooperative learning do not change, there are several variations of the model. There are four approaches to cooperative learning (Arends, 2001). Here, each approach will be briefly outlined.
Student Teams Achievement Division (STAD)
STAD was developed by Robert Slavin and his friends at John Hopkin University and is the simplest cooperative learning approach. Teachers who use STAD, also refer to student group learning, present new academic information to students every week using verbal or text presentations. Students in a certain class are divided into groups of 4-5 people, each group must be heterogeneous, consisting of men and women, coming from various ethnic groups, having high, medium, and low abilities.
Team members use activity sheets or other learning tools to complete the lesson material and then help one another understand the lesson material through tutorials, quizzes, and each other and conduct discussions. Individually every week or every two weeks students are given a quiz. The quiz was scored, and each individual was given a developmental score. This developmental score is not based on the student's absolute score, but based on how far the score exceeds the previous average score.
Every week on a short assessment sheet or in other ways, it is announced which teams with the highest scores, students who achieve high development scores, or students who achieve perfect scores on the quizzes. Sometimes the whole team that reaches certain criteria is included in the sheet
Group Investigation
Group investigation is perhaps the most complex and most difficult model of cooperative learning to apply. This model was first developed by Thelan. In contrast to STAD and jigsaw, students are involved in planning both the topics studied and how their investigation goes. This approach requires more complex norms and class structures than a more teacher-centered approach.
In applying this group investigation the teacher divides the class into groups with 5 or 6 heterogeneous students. In some cases, groups can be formed by considering the familiarity of friendship or similar interests in certain topics. Next students choose the topic to be investigated, conducting an in-depth investigation of the chosen topic. Next prepare and present the report to the whole class.
Structural Approach
This approach was developed by Spencer Kagen and his colleagues. Although it has many similarities with other approaches, this approach emphasizes the use of certain structures that are designed to influence student interaction patterns.
The task structure developed by Kagen is intended as an alternative to traditional classroom structures, such as recitation, where the teacher asks questions to the whole class and students give answers after raising their hands and being appointed. The structure developed by Kagen requires students to work with each other in small groups and is more characterized by cooperative appreciation, rather than individual appreciation.
There are structures that are developed to increase the acquisition of academic content, and there are structures designed to teach social skills or group skills. Two well-known structures are think-pair-share and numbered-head-together, which can be used by teachers to teach academic content or to check students' understanding of certain contents. While active listening and time tokens, are two examples of structures developed to teach social skills.
Jigsaw
Jigsaw was first developed and trialed by Elliot Aronson and friends at the University of Texas, and later adapted by Slavin and friends at John Hopkins University (Arends, 2001). To see clearly the comparison between the four cooperative learning approaches or more commonly referred to as the type of cooperative learning.