Kagan: 17 Pros & Cons

I probably should have read this article before the Johnson article. This one definitely does a much better job of showing both sides to cooperative learning. They discussed some of the pros to coop. learning such as building diversity skills and strengthening social skills while at the same time increasing student learning. Then they describe what can go wrong if cooperative learning is not implemented correctly. When I was reading the "Pro" of individual accountability and increased participation, I know on the teacher's side its a pro, but from the students' point of view its probably a con.... while reading it I immediately thought of one of my Spanish classes where the teacher stands up at the front with his stack of index cards with our names and photos pulling out names to answer his questions. In my opinion it makes for an incredibly stressful class, and I don't want my students to be stressed out. Thankfully I don't think this is what cooperative learning is about.