Keywords: cooperative learning, inefficiency, strategy
order
Due to historical reasons, for a long time, our school education has emphasized the indoctrination and acceptance of students, and students' learning is basically passive listening, reciting and practicing, which seriously restricts their growth. The teacher's task is to impart knowledge to the students, and the students write down the knowledge taught by the teacher and reproduce it in the exam. In classroom teaching, students are always in a passive learning state.
Since the implementation of the new curriculum, group cooperative learning, as a way to change students' learning style, has penetrated into classroom teaching. Because cooperative learning is one of the three major learning methods advocated by the new curriculum. Cooperative learning has the following advantages: it transforms the competition between individuals into the competition among groups, which is helpful to cultivate students' cooperative spirit and consciousness; It is helpful to teach students in accordance with their aptitude and make up for the shortage that a teacher can't face many different students, so as to truly realize the goal of developing every student. Therefore, with the development of curriculum reform, almost all subjects and all classrooms adopt group discussion and cooperative learning.
However, in the process of implementation, there are also some problems, such as too many classes, group discussion is very difficult, and group cooperative learning is a mere formality; Teachers lack correct guidance. As soon as the teacher said that the discussion began, the group began to discuss, and the teacher could not walk among the students to understand their situation. Students are noisy in class, and classroom teaching is difficult to evaluate. This series of problems has a certain impact on the implementation of the new curriculum, which not only restricts the realization of the new curriculum reform goals, but also affects the new curriculum evaluation. Therefore, I hope to put forward my own views and suggestions on cooperative learning in primary schools through my simple understanding of this topic, my observation of cooperative learning in primary schools in the practice base and interviews with local teachers, hoping to have certain practical significance for the implementation of the new curriculum.
Connotation and characteristics of cooperative learning
Cooperative learning is a teaching theory and strategy system that rose in the United States in the early 1970s and made substantial progress from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The meaning of "cooperative learning" is relatively broad and complex. Regarding the definition of "cooperative learning" in academic circles at home and abroad, there are the following representative definitions:
1 Professor Slaven of Johns Hopkins University believes that cooperative learning refers to a classroom teaching technique in which students learn in groups and are rewarded or recognized according to the results of their groups. [ 1]
The Johnson brothers believe that the so-called cooperative learning is to use groups in teaching, so that students can work together to maximize the learning effect of themselves and others. [2]
Gasky's view on cooperative learning is that, in essence, cooperative learning is a form of teaching, which requires students to engage in learning activities together in some heterogeneous cooperative groups composed of 2-6 people and jointly complete the learning tasks assigned by teachers. In each group, students usually engage in various learning activities that need and interact. [3]
Canadian Wen Ze believes that cooperative learning is a teaching method, in which teachers are randomly or systematically assigned to different groups or groups to complete assigned tasks. [4]
Wang Tan, a Chinese scholar, put forward the concept of cooperative learning on the basis of synthesizing domestic and foreign research results and combining with China's reality. He believes that heterogeneous learning group is the basic form, which systematically uses the interaction between dynamic teaching factors to promote students' learning, and group achievement is the evaluation standard for jointly achieving teaching goals. [5]
To sum up, we find that these scholars have basically the same understanding of the nature of cooperative learning. In other words, cooperative learning has the following remarkable characteristics:
(1) Learning is a teaching activity with group activities as the main body.
(2) Learning is a cooperative activity between peers.
(3) Learning is a goal-oriented activity.
(4) Cooperation is based on the performance of the group.
(5) Cooperative learning is actually a control behavior.
Cooperative learning, as an effective teaching organization, has formed many schools since its rise in the 1970s, so it has also formed many cooperative learning models. At present, there are four main modes of cooperative learning: student group learning mode, common learning mode, group investigation mode and cooperative method mode.
Inefficiency of cooperative learning in the second primary school classroom
Cooperative learning, as a symbolic teaching organization mode to implement the new curriculum standards, has been widely used in all classes of primary schools, and its achievements can not be ignored. In the investigation and interview, when asked whether the application of cooperative learning in the classroom is helpful to teachers' teaching and students' learning, a teacher Li strongly praised the gratifying changes that cooperative learning has brought to the primary school classroom: the enthusiasm of primary school students to actively participate in learning has increased, the classroom atmosphere has obviously warmed up, teachers' teaching has become easier, and students' learning has become easier. It is an excellent teaching method that benefits teachers and students. Most teachers highly value cooperative learning as a teaching method.
Although cooperative learning has been widely used in the current primary school classroom teaching and achieved certain results, it is still in a spontaneous state in most primary school classrooms, and teachers' understanding of cooperative learning is not deep, and most teachers' operations are still at the experience level. Through investigation and interview, the author found that some teachers mentioned the inefficiency of cooperative learning in primary schools: cooperative learning is a mere formality, students' cooperative learning is inefficient, teachers don't know how to master the degree of cooperative learning, students have objections to teachers' evaluation of their academic performance, and so on. Perhaps this is related to cooperative learning as a teaching method that is still in the research stage. Based on investigation, interview and analysis of relevant materials, it is considered that the problems existing in the application of cooperative learning mainly include the following aspects:
(A) focus on the superficial form of group activities
In primary school classroom teaching, cooperative learning, which is a mere formality, happens from time to time. In the teaching class, some teachers blindly carry out group cooperative learning in order to pursue the diversification of classroom teaching methods. Group cooperative learning in class is not designed in the teaching design before class, but carried out on a whim in the teaching process. In the process of investigation and observation, the author found such an example: in the first new Chinese lesson of grade five, in just 40 minutes, the group cooperative learning method was adopted five times, and 1 time was used when asking the general idea of the article and paragraph. Group cooperative learning is widely used in this link. After the students discuss the main idea of the article, the children have a certain understanding of the article, and they can segment the article and summarize the main idea independently. Excessive use of cooperative learning will not only obliterate the thinking nature of primary school students, but also waste a lot of classroom time.
Secondly, because cooperative learning is a special way of learning, the classroom group cooperative learning without pre-teaching design and preparation has little effect. Students have not mastered the knowledge they should have mastered, and teachers have not completed their teaching tasks. Another formal form of cooperative learning is the traditional classroom teaching plus group discussion, which is mainly manifested in the lack of time. In classroom teaching, the teacher asks one or several questions, announces the start of cooperative learning without giving students a moment's thought, and stops in less than two or three minutes. Moreover, the active personality of primary school students will make the teacher unable to calm down for a long time when he asks to stop discussing, which is also a manifestation of insufficient class time. Over time, students can't get enough time to discuss, which will dampen their enthusiasm to participate in cooperative learning, and the lack of teaching time in the classroom will eventually lead to the unsatisfactory effect of cooperative learning.
(B) students lack cooperation skills
Primary school students' cognitive ability is still relatively shallow, lacking the necessary interpersonal communication and group cooperation skills, and they don't know what role they should play in this cooperative learning. This is the point that teachers often mention when they ask about the inefficiency in the interview. Many teachers report that some students are more active. As soon as the teacher gave the order, they began to discuss the problem, spoke actively, and scrambled to express themselves. There was no orderly speech in the group. On the other hand, some students are not good at words and have hitchhiking. When students in the same group express their opinions, they don't listen carefully and prepare to speak, but avoid doing their own things or playing with other members of the same group. So as soon as the teacher asks a question, let the students discuss it immediately, and there will be a scene of heated discussion in the classroom immediately. But this is only a superficial "fake excitement", but in fact it is "alive and kicking". Cooperative learning is not implemented in every student's classroom role, so its effectiveness is greatly reduced.
(c) unbalanced participation of members.
One of the basic concepts of cooperative learning is to enable each student to successfully show himself, get the joy of success and make himself develop to the greatest extent. However, all the interviewed teachers mentioned the negative phenomenon that cooperative learning in primary school classroom will cause unbalanced participation of members. Because in the real classroom, gifted students have more opportunities to participate in the process of group cooperative learning, become the most active members of the group, and occupy the initiative of group cooperative learning. In this case, the opportunities for students to participate are unequal, and the top students are in a dominant position in the group, taking the main responsibility and controlling the activities of the cooperative learning group, so that their potential can be brought into play and their personality can be publicized; Students with learning difficulties are always half a step behind top students because of their weak foundation, lack of participation and initiative, and their agility is slightly inferior. They virtually lost the opportunity to think, speak and express, and were in a subordinate or neglected position. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, and teachers also mentioned the following reasons: the pressure of class is great, and students with difficulties are afraid to speak too much for fear of affecting the teaching effect or delaying time; Teachers only pay attention to the ideas of each group and don't care about the learning situation of individual members, thinking that good students can represent their groups; Teachers' guidance and supervision of the group is not enough, the division of labor among group members is not clear, and so on.
(D) Lack of effective guidance for students
It turns out that teachers play the roles of instructors, participants, collaborators and promoters in the process of students' cooperative learning, which has been unanimously recognized by the interviewed teachers. They designed and applied the link of group cooperative learning in class, but in the process of real implementation, some teachers did not really implement these roles. After arranging the discussion questions and methods for the students and announcing the start of the discussion, they look at the remaining teaching links of the lesson plan on the podium or observe the students' discussion on the stage, just like a "bystander" who does not really participate in the students' discussion and study. Some primary school students think that cooperative learning is still a novel and fun way of learning, so they may not correct their learning attitude in the process of cooperative learning, but enjoy the time and space for free discussion, and will not really learn what they need in the process of cooperative learning. Another reason is that teachers are not involved in students' cooperation. When students are in the wrong direction or encounter problems in cooperative learning, they can't get the correct guidance from teachers, which leads to the interruption or failure of cooperative learning.
(e) The panel presentations were not representative.
Group cooperative learning mode aims to put forward the learning viewpoint belonging to the group on the basis of collective discussion and analysis, so the cooperative group has the role of spokesperson. The speaker should analyze the opinions of the members of the comprehensive group, and then express the ideas belonging to their group to the whole class and teachers. The cooperative learning in primary schools has its fixed defects at this point, because the members who participate in the discussion are all primary school students, and their thinking has not yet reached the point where they can process, analyze and synthesize things; Another is that the xenophobic and arrogant thoughts of primary school students also exist well. Therefore, when the group representatives speak, the speakers are more of their own opinions, unwilling to speak or unable to synthesize the members' ideological achievements, and the display of cooperative learning achievements has become a "one-man show" for the speakers. This makes teachers unable to get first-hand information when evaluating the group's achievements, which is not conducive to teachers' fair evaluation and teachers' understanding of students' real knowledge.
(6) Teacher evaluation is not in place.
For a long time, exams and scores have always been the most important things for teachers and students. How to teach them well so that students can understand them and get the best results has always been the goal of teachers' unremitting efforts. Under the influence of this habitual thinking, it is easy for teachers to focus on the achievement of students' knowledge and skills when organizing cooperative learning, rather than the emotional and psychological changes of students in the process of cooperation. In group cooperative learning, teachers pay attention to the exchange of opinions among members of group cooperative learning and encourage the development of students' innovative thinking. However, in the end, teachers always use the only correct answer they think to evaluate the different conclusions drawn by group cooperative learning. In evaluation, teachers can't get rid of the traditional classroom evaluation model, ignoring the evaluation link, ignoring the process evaluation, favoring the result evaluation of cooperative learning, and the evaluation standard is single.
An analysis of the reasons for the inefficiency of classroom cooperative learning in three primary schools
The problems existing in cooperative learning in classroom teaching are the result of comprehensive effects in many aspects. Therefore, when we analyze the causes of these problems, we can't put all the reasons on teachers. So in the interview, I replied, "What do you think is the reason for the inefficiency of cooperative learning in class?" At that time, many teachers gave many reasons analysis. For example, there are inherent negative factors in the cooperative learning teaching method in primary schools, such as poor cooperative skills and communication skills of primary school students, weak collective consciousness, and so on; Teachers' ability to organize cooperative learning is limited, and school support is not strong. On the basis of comprehensive analysis of the factors affecting cooperative learning, I think the reasons for the problems in the implementation of cooperative learning can be attributed to three aspects: teachers, students and schools.
(A) the teacher's reasons
As an important factor affecting the effect of cooperative learning, teachers play an important role in cooperative learning. Therefore, in the interview, teachers also put forward their own unfavorable factors that lead to the inefficiency of classroom cooperative learning. The reasons for teachers' cooperative learning can be summarized as follows:
1 Teachers themselves lack a correct understanding of cooperative learning.
Although the new curriculum reform has been implemented for many years, our teachers' educational concept has not fundamentally changed. They are still sticking to some traditional teaching concepts and methods. Therefore, for cooperative learning, the symbolic teaching method of the new curriculum reform, they are more formally implemented, and have not yet explored their own classroom group cooperative learning teaching methods. When some teachers were asked about the reasons for the low efficiency of cooperative learning in interviews, they all thought that their mastery of cooperative learning was not in place and some links were difficult to handle. Taken together, there are probably the following reasons:
First of all, the one-sided and superficial understanding of cooperative learning. Some teachers think that cooperative learning is to organize students to study in groups during the teaching process, but they don't really understand the essence of cooperative learning from theory and practice. Some teachers simply don't know under what circumstances they can organize group cooperative learning, and they don't know exactly what teaching content can be cooperative learning. Their cooperative learning and teaching in the classroom may be just a grandiose behavior of the new curriculum.
Secondly, there is too much emphasis on cooperative learning in curriculum implementation. Our traditional teaching method is that teachers impart knowledge and students receive knowledge under the stage. The new curriculum reform advocates that today's classroom should be student-oriented, and the teacher is just a guide. Therefore, in order to adapt to the new concept of new curriculum standards, some teachers completely abandoned the original traditional education methods and deliberately used group cooperative learning in the classroom. I believe this teaching method is truly student-oriented and embodies the spirit of the new curriculum standard. However, the standard to measure the effectiveness of learning methods is not which learning method is more popular, but whether students have really developed.
Finally, blind application of cooperative learning. In the current primary school classroom teaching, some teachers think that cooperative learning is a new teaching method advocated by the new curriculum standard, so new teaching methods should be actively adopted in the teaching process. So we can see cooperative learning in many classes, no matter what subjects or contents. But objectively speaking, everything has its scope of application, and not all subjects and teaching contents can be solved through cooperative learning. For example, some very simple knowledge is not necessary for cooperative learning, which will only waste classroom time and discourage students from cooperative learning to some extent.
2 teachers lack the ability and skills to organize cooperative learning
This is also an important reason why teachers think cooperative learning is inefficient. Because cooperative learning puts forward higher requirements for teachers' classroom control ability and skills. In traditional classroom teaching, teachers only need to give lectures on the podium, and the students in the audience can see at a glance, which is easy to control the classroom. However, when using group cooperative learning, the classroom situation that teachers have to deal with is much more complicated and difficult. When asking students to cooperate, teachers should be good at stimulating students' enthusiasm for cooperation, especially primary school students. Pupils need to be coaxed. As long as the students' enthusiasm is mobilized, the course will be at least half successful. When observing students' cooperation, teachers should give timely guidance when students need help most, because primary school students' cooperation skills still need to be cultivated slowly; This is very important when the group is asked to pause or end. Because primary school students are active and have poor self-control, teachers are required to take effective measures to control cooperative groups and pull students' thoughts back in time. However, some teachers themselves lack classroom teaching techniques to carry out cooperative learning, which makes it impossible to carry out cooperative learning smoothly and deeply.
3 teachers' own role positioning is improper
In classroom group cooperative learning, teachers should be instructors, participants, collaborators and promoters. But some teachers have not really defined their roles. Originally, cooperative learning advocated brainstorming and fully respected students' thinking creation and classroom status. However, because teachers are influenced by the quality of teaching or the pressure of entering a higher school, students' thinking will naturally be guided to the standard answer. The thinking of primary school students is the most active and creative, which obliterates the nature of primary school students to some extent. The other is that the teacher ordered the discussion to start, and the students started cooperative learning, but the teacher didn't really participate in cooperative learning. He seems to have become a bystander, neither visiting classes, nor giving classes to students, nor participating in students' discussion and cooperation. Teachers' roles as instructors, participants, collaborators and promoters in cooperative learning have been neglected.
(B) Students' reasons
There are many inefficient phenomena in primary school classroom cooperation, which is also inseparable from students' own special conditions. Some interviewed teachers mentioned that students themselves are an important reason for the inefficiency of cooperative learning in primary schools. Because primary school students are young, it takes a long time to cultivate the communication ability, summary ability and expression ability needed for cooperative learning. What's more, primary school students are difficult to control in class and have poor self-control. What's more, there is individualism among students, which makes cooperative learning fail to play its due role. To sum up, the views of the interviewed teachers mainly include the following points:
1 Differences among students themselves
In cooperative learning, students' differences are not only the main basis of cooperative learning in groups, but also exist objectively.
This is an important factor that affects the effect of cooperative learning. There must be different members in a cooperative group, some of whom are cheerful and quick-thinking, so they take the initiative in group discussions and have more opportunities for performance; However, some team members are introverted, may think slowly and don't like to express their wishes, so they are slightly inferior in group cooperative learning. Due to the special situation of primary school students' age, this situation is particularly serious in cooperative learning classes. Group cooperative learning itself advocates full participation, and achieves the goal of mastering knowledge through mutual cooperation and complementarity. It is precisely because of the differences among group members that group cooperative learning has not achieved the expected results in the process of implementation.
2. Students lack the attitude, skills and skills of cooperative learning.
Pupils are still young and lack the necessary interpersonal communication and group cooperation skills in cooperative learning. Their personal family environment is also a factor that affects classroom cooperative group learning. Most primary school students are only children, so it may be difficult to find a suitable role in the cooperative group. Moreover, the teacher has not given every student a suitable role, so many students define their roles according to their own personality or ability. Finally, the situation appeared: the teacher raised a discussion question, and the whole class immediately became active, and all the groups discussed it enthusiastically. Some groups have two or three people competing to speak at the same time. You say yours, I say mine, and no one listens to anyone; Some groups always have only one or two people to speak, while others just sit absently and say nothing; Some groups refused each other and no one spoke; Some groups take this opportunity to chat, joke or do other things.
3 students lack reflective inertia and reflective ability
Because of the particularity of primary school students' age, it is impossible to improve its effectiveness in cooperative learning. Because the group members of cooperative learning in class are generally in the front and back seats, it can be said that the group members are relatively stable. However, primary school students will not think about and summarize their group cooperative learning. Perhaps they are more concerned about what role they play in this cooperative learning, and will not seriously think about how to improve the efficiency of their group cooperative learning. So the lack of improvement in group cooperative learning is also related to the students themselves.
(3) School reasons
The influence of schools also determines the inefficiency of cooperative learning in primary schools. In the interview, a teacher clearly pointed out these two points:
The first is the reason of the school's own conditions. Because cooperative learning is a new teaching method, teachers still lack due knowledge and skills in this respect, which requires teachers to participate in training and learning. However, some schools have limited conditions and cannot provide timely and effective teaching and training for teachers. Or the training provided to teachers is not professional and advanced enough. This will lead to the imbalance between teachers' teaching needs and actual acquisition, and eventually lead to the disconnection of teaching.
Secondly, under the pressure of entrance examination, the school has always focused on students' academic performance. This has formed an educational situation that attaches importance to knowledge and ignores intellectual factors. Classroom cooperative learning aims to cultivate students' independent thinking ability, communication and cooperation ability with others and other intellectual abilities. Therefore, there are some deviations in the school's understanding of the teaching methods of classroom cooperative learning. I don't make it clear. As long as students' academic performance goes up and the enrollment rate increases, I don't support or oppose it. Therefore, when teachers use the teaching method of cooperative learning, most of them grope their way forward, and there is no teaching atmosphere of cooperative learning in schools.
Fourthly, the countermeasures to improve cooperative learning in primary schools.
Cooperative learning is a brand-new teaching strategy and method. From the goal of learning, this is an interactive learning, which is organized by investigating some problems with unclear structure in real life and seeking solutions. Its purpose is to cultivate students' interest and ability in autonomous learning, including the ability to cooperate with others, make independent decisions, collect information and solve problems, so as to make students' personality develop soundly. During the interview, when asked how to improve cooperative learning in primary schools, the interviewed teachers were very excited, and many teachers put forward their own views. Such as changing teaching concept, optimizing grouping, skill training, improving teaching environment and so on. By interviewing teachers, we really gained a lot of valuable experience. Therefore, cooperative learning, as a reform of traditional teaching mode, will change the roles of teachers and students, which will also bring new requirements to teachers and students, schools and society.