2。 Literature review

2。1The Definition of Group Cooperative Learning

Group cooperative learning, in different forms, has been used in classroom teaching for a long time。 Experts define it in various ways。 Elizabeth Cohen broadly defined cooperative learning as “students working together in a group small enough that everyone can participate in a collective task that has been clearly assigned。 Moreover, students are expected to carry out their task without the direct and immediate supervision of the teacher。”(28-31) Group cooperative learning is defined as “a set of instructional strategies by which small groups of students to facilitate peer interaction and cooperation for studying academic subjects” (Sharan, 241-271)。 “More common and more restrictive definitions of cooperative learning, although similar to Cohen’s definition, refer also to the use of techniques that employ cooperative task structures, in which students spend much of their class time working in heterogeneous groups。 However, these definitions also focus upon the use of cooperative incentive structures, in which students earn recognition, rewards, or grades based upon the academic performance of their groups。” In spite of the differences in definitions, most experts agree that cooperative learning has two essential characteristics: a cooperative goal structure and inpidual accountability。 To put it more concretely, cooperative learning is the process that groups of students work together to fulfill a learning task cooperatively and work for the honor of their group。

2。2The Development of Cooperative Learning

In fact, cooperative learning has a long history but not under the notion “cooperative learning”。 As early as 2000 years ago, Confucius, the greatest ancient sage put forward such an educational thought about cooperative learning as “Whom learning alone without friends will ignorant。” and “Two heads are always better than one。” Comenius also stressed in “The Great Didactic” that “those who teach others teach themselves at the same time。” These great ancient educators share with us their understanding about cooperative learning, which underlies the appearance of this approach。 Cooperative learning first sprang up in America in the 1970s and received continuous attention in the 1980s all over the world。 As a new learning style, cooperative learning was introduced into our country in the 1980s and applied in some schools。 In the new century, as national elementary education curriculum reform was started, cooperative learning has been extensively used in China。 Most teachers today use some form of group work in their classrooms。

3。 Theoretical Basis of Cooperative Learning

3。1Group Dynamics

Group dynamics most often refers to the scientific study of groups, including the analysis of group structure, group norms, interaction patterns, and group cohesion。 Lewin first used the word group dynamics to explain the complex nature of human behavior in relation to other inpiduals and groups。 Educators in our country hold that group dynamics refers to a kind of energy inside the group。 It can be analyzed from two aspects。 For one thing, members with different levels of intelligence, structures of knowledge, modes of thinking and styles of cognition are complementary。 For another, cooperative learning benefits the generation of self-respect emotion。 Researchers find that students’ academic achievement is positively related to the level of self-respect emotion based on analysis of a large sum of data。文献综述

3。2Classroom Instructional Technology Theory

According to classroom instructional technology theory, there are three factors affecting the quality of classroom learning and the social psychological atmosphere, namely task structure, reward structure and authority structure。 Specifically, task structure covers teaching ways and methods and organized form of teaching like class teaching, group instruction and inpidual learning。 Group cooperative learning, in terms of task structure, utilizes group cooperation or heterogeneous group to reach the teaching objectives。 Reward structure refers to the utilization of some method to strengthen the outcome of learning activities, which includes types of reward, frequency of reward, acceptability of reward and objects of reward。 Group cooperative learning takes advantage of reward structure to stimulate and maintain learning activity。 Authority structure refers to the extent to which teachers or students take control of the teaching activities。 In traditional teaching system, the class is under the control of the teacher by means of reward and grading。 Group cooperative learning is different in that it requires students to utilize the intrinsic motivation and motivation from peers to carry out the learning activity。