35.7 Applying the Basics of Cooperation

Educators fool themselves if they think well-meaning directives to "work together," "cooperate," and "be a tearW' will be enough to create cooperative efforts among students. There is a discipline to creating cooperation. The "basics" of structuring cooperation are not a series of elements that characterize good groups. They are a regimen that, if followed rigorously, will produce the conditions for effective cooperation. Cooperative learning groups are rare because educators (and students) seek shortcuts to quality groupwork and assume that "traditional classroom groups will do." Like persons who wish to lose weight without dieting, they seek easy alternatives to the disciplined application of the basics of effective groups, which are positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual and group accountability, appropriate use of social skills, and group processing.

35.7.1 Positive Interdependence: We Instead of Me

All for one and one for all.-Alexandre Dumas

In a football game, the quarterback who throws the pass and the receiver who catches the pass are positively interdependent. The success of one depends on the success of the other, It takes two to complete a pass. One player cannot succeed without the other. Both have to perform competently if their mutual success is to be assured. If one fails, they both fail.

The discipline of using cooperative groups begins 'with structuring positive interdependence (see Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 1992b, 1992c). The heart of cooperation is positive interdependence. Group members must believe that they sink or swim together and know that they cannot succeed unless all other members of their group succeed. It is positive interdependence that requires group members to work together to accomplish something beyond individual success. Positive interdependence creates the realization that members have two responsibilities: to learn the assigned material and to ensure that all members of their group learn the assigned material. When positive interdependence exists in a group, all group members realize they (a) share a common fate where they all gain or lose on the basis of the overall performance of group members, (b) are strivingfor mutual benefit so that all members of the group will gain, (c) have a long-term time perspective so that long-term joint productivity is perceived to be. of greater value than short-term personal advantage, and (d) have a shared identity based on group membership (besides being a separate individual, one is a member of a team). When positive interdependence is clearly understood, it highlights that (a) each group member's efforts are required and indispensable for group success (i.e., ther ' e can be no "free riders"), and (b) each group member has a unique contribution to make to the joint effort because of his or her resources and/or role and task responsibilities (i.e., there can be no social loafing).

To structure positive interdependence, the teacherfirst assigns the group a clear, measurable task (members have to know what they are supposed to do) and, second, explains the positive goal interdependence (mutual goals) so that members believe that they can attain their goals if and only if their groupinates attain their goals. Positive goal interdependence ensures that the group is united around a common goal, a concrete reason for being, such as "learn the assigned material and make sure that all members of your group learn the assigned material. " Third, the teacher supplements positive goal interdependence with other types of positive interdependence, such as joint rewards, divided resources, complementary roles, and a team identity. The more types of interdependence used in a group, the greater the impact on outcomes.

The authors have conducted a series of studies investigating the nature of positive interdependence and the relative power of the different types of positive interdependence (Frank, 1984; Hwong, Caswell, Johnson & Johnson, 1993; Johnson, Johnson, Stanne & Garibaldi, 1990; Johnson, Johnson, Ortiz & Stanne, 1991; Lew, Mesch, Johnson & Johnson, 1986a, 1986b; Mesch, Johnson & Johnson, 1988; Mesch, Lew, Johnson & Johnson, 1986). Our research indicates that positive interdependence provides the context within which promotive interaction takes place, group membership and interpersonal interaction among students do not produce higher achievement unless positive interdependence is clearly structured, the combination of goal and reward interdependence increases achievement over goal interdependence alone, and resource interdependence does not increase achievement unless goal interdependence is present also.

What children can do together today, they can do alone tomorrow.-Vygotsky

Among the early settlers of Massachusetts, there was a saying: "Ifyou do not work, you do not eat. " Everyone had to do his or her fair share of the work. The discipline of using cooperative groups includes structuring group and individual accountability. Group accountability exists when the overall performance of the group is assessed, and the results are given back to all group members to compare against a standard of performance. Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual member is assessed, the results given back to the individual and the group to compare against a standard of performance, and the member is held responsible by groupmates for contributing his or her fair share to the group's success. On the basis of the feedback received, (a) efforts to learn and contribute to groupmates' learning can be recognized and celebrated, (b) immediate remediation can take place by providing any needed assistance or encouragement, and (c) groups can reassign responsibilities to avoid any redundant efforts by members.

The purpose of cooperative groups is to make each member a stronger individual in his or her own right. Individual accountability is the key to ensuring that all group members are in fact strengthened by learning cooperatively. After participating in a cooperative lesson, group members should be better prepared to complete similar tasks by themselves. There is a pattern to classroom learning. First, students learn knowledge, skills, strategies, or procedures in a cooperative group. Second, students apply the knowledge or perform the skill, strategy, or procedure alone to demonstrate their personal mastery of the material. Students learn it together and then perform it alone. Hooper, Ward, Hannafin, and Clark (1989) found that cooperative technology-assisted instruction resulted in higher achievement when individual accountability was structured than when it was not.

In cooperative situations, group members share responsibility for the joint outcome. Each group member takes personal responsibility for (a) contributing his or her efforts to accomplish the group's goals and (b) helping other group members do likewise. The greater the positive interdependence structured within a cooperative learning group, the more students will feel personally responsible for contributing their efforts to accomplish the group's goals. The shared responsibility adds the concept of "ought" to members' motivation: One ought to do one's share, contribute, and pull one's weight. The shared responsibility also makes each group member personally accountable to the other group members. Students will realize that if they fail to do their fair share of the work, other members will be disappointed, hurt, and upset.

In an industrial organizatiom it~ the group effort that counts. There ~ really no room for stars in an industrial organization. You need talented people, but they can't do it alone. They have to have help.-John F. Donnelly, President, Donnelly Mirrors

The discipline of using cooperative groups includes ensuring that group members meet face to face to work together to complete assignments and promote each other:v success. Group members need to do real work together Promotive interaction exists when individuals encourage and facilitate each other's efforts to complete tasks in order to reach the group's goals. Through promoting each other's success, group members build both an academic and a personal support system for each member. Promotive interaction is characterized by individuals providing each other with efficient and effective help and assistance, exchanging needed resources such as information and materials and processing information more efficiently and effectively, providing each other with feedback in order to improve subsequent performance, challenging each other's conclusions and reasoning in order to promote higher-quality decision making and greater insight into the problems being considered, advocating the exertion of effort to achieve mutual goals, influencing each other's efforts to achieve the group's goals, acting in trusting and trustworthy ways, being motivated to strive for mutual benefit, and a moderate level of arousal characterized by low anxiety and stress. Promoting each other's success results in group members' getting to know each other on a personal as well as a professional level.

While electronic communication has many positive features, face-to-face communication has a richness that electronic communication may never match. There is evidence that up to 93% of people's intent was conveyed by facial expression and tone of voice, with the most important channel being facial expression (Druckman, Rozelle & Baxter, 1982; Meherabian, 1971). Harold Geneen, the former head of IT'L believed that his response to requests was different face to face than through teletype: "In New York I might read a request and say No. But in Europe, I could see that an answer to the same question might be Yes... It became our policy to deal with problems on the spot, face to face " (cited in Trevino, Lengel & Draft, 1987). For this and other reasons (such as lack of effective groupware), instructional programs may be most effective when they use face-to-face rather than electronic teams. Learning teams, however, may be electronically linked with other training teams in other sites.

35.7.5 Interpersonal and Small-Group Skills

I will pay more for the ability to deal with people than forany other ability under the sun.-John D. Rockefeller

The fourth arena in the disciplined use of cooperative groups is teaching group members the small-group and interpersonal skills they need to work effectively with each other In cooperative learning groups, students are required to learn academic subject matter (taskwork) and also to learn the interpersonal and small-group skills required to function as part of a group (teamwork). If the teamwork skills are not learned, then the taskwork cannot be completed. If group members are inept at teamwork, their taskwork will tend to be substandard. On the other hand, the greater the members' teamwork skills, the higher will be the quality and quantity of their learning. Cooperative learning is inhere-111dy more complex than competitive or individualistic learning because students have to engage simultaneously in taskwork and teamwork. In order to coordinate efforts to achieve mutual goals, students must (a) get to know and trust each other, (b) communicate accurately and unambiguously, (c) accept and support each other, and (c) resolve conflicts constructively (Johnson, 1991, 1993; Johnson & F. Johnson, 1994).

The more socially skillful students are, and the more attention teachers pay to teaching and rewarding the use of social skills, the higher the achievement that can be expected within cooperative learning groups, In their studies on the long-term implementation of cooperative learning, Marvin Lew and Debra Mesch (Lew, Mesch, Johnson & Johnson, 1986a, 1986b; Mesch, Johnson & Johnson, 1988; Mesch, Lew, Johnson & Johnson, .1986) investigated the impact of a reward contingency for using social skills as well as positive interdependence and a contingency for academic achievement on performance within cooperative learning groups. In the cooperative skills conditions, students were trained weekly in four social skills, and each member of a cooperative group was given two bonus points toward the quiz grade if all group members were observed by the teacher to demonstrate three out of four cooperative skills. The results indicated that the combination of positive interdependence, an academic contingency for high performance by all group members, and a social skills contingency promoted the highest achievement.

35.7.6 Group Processing

Take care of each other Share your energies with the group. No one mustfeel alone, cut off, for that is when you do not make it.-Willi Unsoeld, Renowned Mountain Climber

The final phase of the discipline of using cooperative groups is structuring group processing. Effective group work is influenced by whether or not groups reflect on (process) how well they are functioning. A process is an identifiable sequence of events taking place over time, and process goals refer to the sequence of events instrumental in achieving outcome goals (Johnson & F. Johnson, 1994). Group processing occurs when members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships among members. Cooperative groups need to describe what member actions are helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change. The purposes of group processing are to clarify and improve the effectiveness of members in contributing to the collaborative efforts to achieve the group's goals by (a) enabling groups to improve continuously the quality of member's work, (b) facilitating the learning of teamwork skills, (c) ensuring that members receive feedback on their participation, and (d) enabling groups to focus on group maintenance (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 1993). Groups that process how effectively members are working together tend to higher achievements than do groups that do not process or than individuals working alone., The combination of teacher and student processing resulted in greater problem-solving success than did the other cooperative conditions. And the combination of group and individual feedback resulted in higher achievement (Archer-Kath, Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Johnson, Johnson, Stanne & Garibaldi, 1990; Yager, Johnson & Johnson, 1985).

Group processing and self-monitoring are interrelated. Discussing the observations of members' actions results in (a) a heightened self-awareness of the effective and ineffective actions taken during the group meetings, (b) public commitment to increase the frequency of effective actions and decrease the frequency of ineffective actions, and (c) an increased sense of having the ability to be more effective if appropriate effort is exerted (i.e., self-efficacy). Participating in group processing inherently increases theself-monitoring by group members. There is evidence, however, that high- and low-ability students may differ in their self-monitoring capacity. Ames and Lau (1982) found that ability and effort, among other things, played a significant role in determining students' help-seeking and self-monitoring behaviors. Zimmerman (1986) found that high school students' effective use of self-monitoring skills was related to their achievement level. Thus, because low-ability students are often lacking in self-monitoring skills, it seems reasonable to expect that they would benefit by working with students who typically exhibit more effective monitoring during the learning process.

Group processing leads not only to self-monitoring, it also leads to sey'lefficacy, which is the expectation of successfully obtaining valued outcomes through personal effort. The opposite of self-efficacy is helplessness. Sarason and Potter (1983) examined the impact of individual self-monitoring of thoughts on self-efficacy and successful performance and found that having individuals focus their attention on self-efficacious thoughts is related to greater task persistence and less cognitive interference. They concluded that the more that people are aware of what they are experiencing, the more aware they will be of their own role in deterriiining their success. The greater the sense of self- and joint-efficacy promoted by group processing, the more productive and effective group members and the group as a whole become.

Effective processing focuses group members on positive rather than negative behaviors. Monitoring one's own and one's collaborators' actions begins with deciding which behaviors to direct one's attention toward. Individuals can focus either on positive and effective behaviors, or on negative and ineffective behaviors. Sarason and Potter (1983) found that when individuals monitored their stressful experiences, they were more likely to perceive a program as having been more stressful than did those who did not. But when individuals monitored their positive experiences, they were more likely to perceive the group experience as involving less psychological demands, were more attracted to the group and had greater motivation to remain members, and felt less strained during the experience and more prepared for future group experiences. When individuals are anxious about being successful, and are then told they have failed, their performance tends to decrease significantly, but when individuals anxious about being successful are told they have succeeded, their performance tends to increase significantly (Turk & Sarason., 1983).