The effects of a cooperative learning strategy by level of students' collectivism

Abstract

In this study, the effects of STAD cooperative learning strategy on students' achievement, learning motivation, perceptions of learning environment, and perceived classroom goal structure were investigated in terms of students' collectivism level. Two classes (64 students) from an elementary school were respectively assigned to a control group and a treatment group. A individualism-collectivism test, a learning motivation test, a perceptions of learning environment test, and a perceived classroom goal structure test were administered as pretests. The intervention of cooperative learning lasted for 24 class periods. After instruction, an achievement test, the learning motivation test, the perceptions of learning environment test, and the perceived classroom goal structure test were administered. The results indicated that the students of the treatment group significantly outperformed those of the control group in the achievement test. There was a significant treatment-aptitude interaction effect in the scores of the attention subcategory of the learning motivation. In the perceptions of learning environment, the score of the treatment group was significantly higher than the control group in the cohesiveness subcategory, whereas the score of the treatment group was significantly lower than their counterpart in the competitiveness subcategory. It was also found that the score of the treatment group was significantly higher than the control group in the performance subcategory of the perceived classroom goal structure.