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International research and pedagogy
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The effectiveness of cooperative

learning with trainee teachers
a
Garry Hornby
a
College of Education , University of Canterbury , Private Bag
4800, Christchurch, New Zealand
Published online: 20 Apr 2009.

To cite this article: Garry Hornby (2009) The effectiveness of cooperative learning with trainee
teachers, Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, 35:2, 161-168

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 Journal of Education for Teaching
Vol. 35, No. 2, May 2009, 161–168

The effectiveness of cooperative learning with trainee teachers

Garry Hornby*

College of Education, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand

(Received 21 May 2008; resubmitted 5 October 2008; accepted 17 November 2008)

A plethora of research studies has found cooperative learning to be effective in

promoting academic achievement with students of all ages. It has been suggested
that key elements of cooperative learning are individual accountability and
positive interdependence. Forty-four final-year teacher trainees participated in a
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study which compared the effectiveness of a two-hour workshop on cooperative

learning with and without these two key elements. A multi-choice test focusing on
what students had learned and a post-workshop questionnaire focusing on the
students’ experiences of and attitudes towards cooperative learning were used to
evaluate the impact of the workshop. Results indicate that academic learning was
greater in the experimental group, in which individual accountability and positive
interdependence were structured into the activity. They also indicate that the
inclusion of these two elements did not significantly affect students’ experiences of
the workshop or their attitudes towards cooperative learning. These findings
support the suggestion that to achieve optimum effectiveness, individual
accountability and positive interdependence should be built into cooperative
learning activities.
Keywords: cooperative learning; teachers; individual accountability; positive
interdependence

Introduction
Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups in which students work
together to maximise their own and each other’s learning (Johnson and Johnson 1999,
73).
The kind of cooperative group work referred to in this quotation has a long history
in schools, but has suffered from both extravagant enthusiasm and conservative
cynicism. On the one hand, cooperative learning has recently been hailed as ‘one of
the greatest success stories in the history of educational innovation’ (Slavin 1999, 74).
On the other hand, the slow uptake of cooperative learning methods has been put
down to, ‘cynicism among teachers about the actual benefits which group work
brings’ (Cowie et al. 1994, 59).
An examination of numerous research studies has suggested that cooperative
approaches to learning lead to higher academic achievement than individual or
competitive approaches (Johnson, Johnson and Stanne 2000). This has been found
to be the case for both high- and low-ability children, for students of all ages, and
across a wide range of subjects in the curriculum (Cohen 1994; Hodson and Hodson
1998; Marzano 1992; Sharan 1994). In addition, it has been found that cooperative

*Email: garry.hornby@canterbury.ac.nz

ISSN 0260-7476 print/ISSN 1360-0540 online

# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/02607470902771045
http://www.informaworld.com
 162 G. Hornby

learning has positive social and motivational effects (Littleton and Hakkinen 1999;
Sharan 1980).
The term ‘cooperative learning’ has been used to cover a wide range of different
strategies and approaches. A recent review identified 10 different widely
disseminated methodologies (Johnson, Johnson, and Stanne 2000). Sufficient studies
had been conducted on eight of these for them to be included in a meta-analysis
comparing their impact on student achievement with that of traditional methods. All
eight cooperative learning approaches were found to have had a greater impact on
achievement than competitive learning, but the biggest effects were found for
‘Learning Together’ and ‘Academic Controversy’ (Johnson and Johnson 1991),
followed by ‘Student Teams Achievement Divisions’ and ‘Team Games
Tournaments’ (Slavin 1999), then ‘Group Investigation’ (Sharan and Sharan 1992)
and then ‘Jigsaw’ (Aronson and Patnoe 1997).
Johnson and Johnson (1991), Kagan (1990) and Slavin (1999) all define
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cooperative learning in terms which exclude mere contact and sharing in small
groups. They insist that the term cooperative learning can only be applied to
activities where there is individual accountability and positive interdependence
linked to group rewards or goals. Individual accountability, ‘exists when the
performance of each individual student is assessed and the results given back to the
group and the individual’ (Johnson and Johnson 1991, 57), whereas positive
interdependence is present when, ‘students perceive that they can reach their learning
goals if and only if the other students in the learning group also reach their goals’
(Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec 1993, 6).
Two surveys of teachers carried out in the USA have found that a majority
report using cooperative learning in their classrooms. One study reported that 79%
of third-grade teachers and 62% of seventh-grade teachers made regular use of
cooperative learning approaches (Puma 1993, cited in Slavin 1999). The other study
found that 93% of the teachers surveyed reported using cooperative learning and
that 81% said they used it every day in a typical week (Antil et al. 1998). However,
only 24% of the teachers reported using individual accountability linked to group
goals, which suggests that these teachers were omitting the two elements of
cooperative learning which are considered to be critical to its effectiveness in
increasing student achievement. This has prompted Slavin (1999) to express concern
about the quality of cooperative learning methods being used by teachers.
Research conducted in primary schools in England (Kutnick, Blatchford and
Baines 2002) has suggested that cooperative group work is rarely used, that teachers
rarely think about the strategic use of groups in relation to learning tasks, and that
little training is provided to help children to develop the skills necessary for working
in groups. Research carried out in secondary schools in England found that teachers
had little awareness of the pedagogic potential of group work, had limited training in
conducting group work, and had little faith in the ability of students to work in
groups (Blatchford et al. 2001). These researchers have called for a major drive to
increase awareness of the benefits of cooperative group work and for greater efforts
to help students work in cooperative learning groups, at both primary and secondary
levels.
Antil et al. (1998) suggest that the discrepancy between research and practice in
cooperative learning needs further investigation. Is it just that researchers have failed
to communicate the importance of including positive interdependence and individual
 Journal of Education for Teaching 163

accountability? Alternatively, is it that imposing these structures on students

conflicts with teachers’ values or their views on the conditions which best promote
learning? Or is it that teachers consider that including these two components will
increase negative reactions from students? Recent research conducted with
secondary-school students in Australia (Cantwell and Andrews 2002) has found
that many students report experiencing discomfort during group learning
experiences and that high levels of discomfort are related to social and cognitive
factors rather than factors such as age or gender.
The possible inclusion of positive interdependence and individual accountability
is therefore a key issue for the implementation of cooperative learning. It is
important to investigate whether individual accountability and positive interdepen-
dence are essential for optimising student achievement through the use of
cooperative learning activities. It is also important to study whether the inclusion
of these two elements affects the qualitative experience of students involved in
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cooperative learning.
The study described in this article was designed to investigate the impact, on the
academic achievement and qualitative experiences of teacher trainees, of group work
involving individual accountability and positive interdependence, compared with the
impact of group work not including these elements.

Method
Subjects
The subjects were 44 third-year Bachelor of Education (BEd) students in England
who were involved in the research as part of a foundation course in education, which
all BEd students studied. The students were aged between 20 and 43 years, with a
mean age of 22 years. There were 41 females and three males. The workshop on
cooperative learning, on which this study was based, was built into their regular
timetable and therefore was a compulsory part of their course. Subjects were
randomly assigned to two groups using the class register. The group that attended
the workshop on cooperative learning in the morning was designated the control
group (n521) and the other, which attended in the afternoon, was designated the
experimental group (n523). The groups differed slightly in size because one student,
originally assigned to the control group, was unable to attend the morning workshop
so attended the afternoon session, thereby becoming a member of the experimental
group.

Measures
Two instruments were used, a multi-choice test and a post-intervention ques-
tionnaire.

Multi-choice test
This was a test consisting of 10 questions assessing knowledge of factual information
about cooperative learning taken from an article by Slavin (1987). Questions focused
on information about cooperative learning contained in the article such as the
components of and expected benefits from cooperative learning, and also how
various forms of cooperative learning differ from each other. An example of a
 164 G. Hornby

question is: ‘Cooperative learning teams are responsible for: (a) initial teaching; (b)
helping team-mates learn the material; (c) deciding what is to be taught’. Eight of the
questions were multi-choice, one was true or false and one required a brief written
response.

Post-intervention questionnaire
This was a seven-item questionnaire designed by the author to gauge participants’
views about cooperative learning and their experiences of the workshop. Each of the
seven questions was rated on a scale of one to five with one representing a little and
five representing a lot. The questions were:
(1) How much did you learn about cooperative learning?
(2) How enjoyable was the workshop?
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(3) How much effort did you put in?

(4) How well did your group work together?
(5) How different was the cooperative learning from other group experiences
you have had?
(6) How much more confident are you about using cooperative learning
groups of this kind in your teaching?
(7) How likely are you to practise such methods in your classes?
At the end of the questionnaire there was a section which asked for ‘any other
comments’.

Design and analysis

The experimental design used was a pre-test–post-test control group design with the
addition of a post-intervention questionnaire. Data were analysed using the
Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) PC version 10.

General procedure
The control group participated in the workshop on cooperative learning in the
morning; the experimental group took part in the afternoon workshop on the same
day. All subjects completed the multi-choice test before and after participating in the
two-hour workshop on cooperative learning and completed the post-intervention
questionnaire at the end of the workshop. The content of the workshop was the same
for both groups of students, except that individual accountability and positive
interdependence (group goals) were built into the workshop for the experimental
group but were not included for the control group. This was accomplished quite
simply by varying instructions about how the test scores would be used. The control
group were told at the start that scores on the multi-choice test would only be used to
work out how much the whole group had learned from the workshop, individual
scores would be calculated by the researchers and only used to calculate a group
average for before and after the workshop. However, the experimental group was
told that, in addition to their scores being used to assess the whole group’s learning,
their individual scores at the end of the workshop would be checked (ensuring
individual accountability) and added to those of other members in their subgroup to
 Journal of Education for Teaching 165

work out which subgroup obtained the highest mean score, in order to award a small
prize to this subgroup (establishing positive interdependence).

Intervention procedure
The session began with a brief introduction to the workshop and research project
and students were asked to complete the multi-choice test and hand their answers in
for the researchers to score. They were then given a short presentation outlining the
elements of and benefits of cooperative learning. The students next participated in a
brief warm-up activity which required them to work in pairs and then fours.
Students then watched a video on cooperative learning which included a
demonstration of Jigsaw II (Slavin 1999). In this approach, students are organised
into ‘home’ groups of typically four persons, with each student assigned
responsibility for a particular aspect of the topic. Those dealing with the same
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aspect meet in focus or ‘expert’ groups to discuss and build their understanding of
their aspect of the topic. They then return to their home groups to report back and
discuss what they have learned, so that together each group builds up the total
picture or ‘jigsaw’. After watching the video students were given the opportunity to
ask questions.
Students were then organised into home groups of four students in order to
experience learning using Jigsaw II. They were asked to choose a name for their
home group and copies of Slavin’s (1987) article entitled ‘Cooperative Learning and
the Cooperative School’ were handed out to each student. Each home group
numbered off from one to four in order to form expert groups with five or six
members each. Students then moved into their expert groups and a different expert
topic was given to each group. The topics focused on different aspects of the Slavin
(1987) article. Expert groups were given 25 minutes to read the article and discuss
their expert topic. Students then returned to their home groups and had another 25
minutes to share what they had learned with other members of their group.
Students then completed the multi-choice test once again. The control group
handed the test sheets in for the researchers to score, as before, but the experimental
group were asked to score their own tests, using a different colour ink. (This scoring
was carefully observed and later checked by the researchers.) Experimental group
home sub-groups were then asked to work out average scores for their home groups.
These were announced and a prize of a bag of chocolates was given to the group with
the best average score.
At the end of both workshops, students in both experimental and control groups
completed post-intervention questionnaires.

Results
Results of the multi-choice test are presented in Table 1.
It can be seen from Table 1 that on the multi-choice test, mean scores of both
experimental and control groups increased between pre- and post-workshop testing,
indicating that both groups of students had improved their knowledge of cooperative
learning over the course of the workshop. The effect size for the increase in scores of
the control group was 0.46 whereas that for the experimental group was 0.95,
indicating that the experimental group had made greater gains in knowledge. In fact,
the post-test scores for the experimental group were significantly higher than those
 166 G. Hornby

Table 1. Results on the multi-choice test of knowledge about cooperative learning.

Control group Experimental group Difference

Mean SD Mean SD t p

Pre-test 4.91 1.55 5.30 1.46 0.882 0.383

Post-test 5.62 1.08 6.70 1.64 2.540 0.015*
Effect size pre- vs. post- 0.46 0.95

Note: *statistically significant at the 0.05 level.

for the control group (t52.540, df542, p50.015), despite not differing statistically
before the workshop (t50.882, df542, p50.383), with an effect size of 0.99 for the
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difference in post-test scores of the two groups, indicating that significantly greater
learning had occurred in the experimental group. Results of the post-intervention
questionnaire are presented in Table 2.
It can be seen from Table 2 that the mean scores of the experimental and control
groups were all greater than three on the five-point scale (with one representing a
little and five a lot) suggesting that participants in both groups had mainly positive
experiences of the workshop and mainly positive attitudes to cooperative learning.
On four of the questions (2, 3, 4, and 6) the mean scores of both groups were very
similar, suggesting that there were similar levels of enjoyment of the workshop, effort
put in, as well as similar perceptions of how well their groups had worked together
and confidence about using cooperative learning in their teaching. On questions 1
and 7, which asked how much they had learned from the workshop and how likely
they were to use cooperative learning, the experimental group had higher mean
scores than the control group. However, on question 5, which asked how different
cooperative learning was from other group experiences they had had, the control
group had a higher mean score. However, there were no statistically significant
differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups on any
of the seven questions, suggesting that experiences of the workshop and attitudes to
cooperative learning were similar in both groups.

Table 2. Results on the post-intervention questionnaire: attitudes toward cooperative learning

and the workshop.

Control group Experimental group Difference

Mean SD Mean SD t p

Question 1 3.75 0.55 4.13 0.52 1.697 0.097

Question 2 3.80 0.52 3.88 0.85 0.344 0.733
Question 3 3.90 0.55 4.00 0.51 0.623 0.537
Question 4 4.10 0.64 4.13 0.54 0.141 0.889
Question 5 3.90 1.29 3.50 0.89 1.213 0.232
Question 6 3.45 0.76 3.54 0.59 0.451 0.654
Question 7 3.35 0.59 3.63 0.77 1.311 0.197
 Journal of Education for Teaching 167

On the ‘any other comments’ section at the bottom of the questionnaire eight
students from the experimental group and four from the control group wrote
comments. In the experimental group, five wrote that they had found the workshop
‘very enjoyable’, two commented that it was not as relevant for ‘teaching in the early
years’, and one wrote that she had found the workshop stressful due to her reading
difficulty which had caused her to feel rushed. This student also talked to the
researchers about this before she left. In the control group, one wrote that the
workshop had been ‘very useful’, one that he/she would like to see it in action with
young children, one that the workshop had presented ‘really good adaptable ideas
for the early years’ and one that the activities would be more effective with older
children.

Discussion
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Overall, the results of the present study suggest that academic learning was greater in
the experimental group in which individual accountability and positive interdepen-
dence were structured into the activity. This finding supports Slavin’s (1999) claim
that cooperative learning activities including these two elements have superior
learning outcomes than those group activities which do not include them. The results
also suggest that inclusion of these two elements did not significantly affect students’
experiences of the workshop, since students in both groups reported similar opinions
of and attitudes towards cooperative learning.
These findings address the concerns, discussed earlier, that inclusion of individual
accountability and positive interdependence in group activities would be unacceptable
to teachers because it would be in conflict with their views of appropriate teaching
methods and could increase the negative reactions of students to cooperative learning.
The latter was not found to be the case in this study. This suggests that the reluctance of
teachers to use these types of cooperative learning approaches may be more to do with
their lack of awareness of the benefits of using them, which was noted by previous
researchers (Blatchford et al. 2001; Cowie et al. 1994; Kutnick, Blatchford and Baines
2002). The teacher trainees who participated in this study reported on the post-
intervention questionnaire that they enjoyed the workshop in which they experienced
cooperative learning activities and were generally positive about the possibility that
they would use such methods in the future.
The results of this study must be treated with caution for several reasons. Since
the groups were small it might be questioned whether the two groups were
necessarily equivalent, despite having been randomly assigned. The difference in pre-
test scores, although not statistically significant, suggests that there may have been
some differences. Also, the measures used were brief ones which were not checked
for reliability or validity. Most importantly, the intervention was extremely brief,
that is only two hours in duration, and focused only on learning about cooperative
learning. It is necessary to replicate this study with longer-term interventions as well
as randomly assigned subjects and more extensive measures for which reliability and
validity have been established. It is also important to replicate the study using
cooperative learning across a range of curriculum areas and with students of
different ages.
However, the findings of this small-scale study do tentatively suggest that
inclusion of individual accountability and positive interdependence in cooperative
 168 G. Hornby

learning activities may optimise students’ learning without negatively affecting their
experience of the group work involved or their attitudes towards cooperative learning.
This supports the view that, in order to ensure cooperative learning is optimally
effective, these two elements should be included in cooperative learning activities.

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