Cooperative learning: Exploring its effectiveness in the Physics classroom

Conclusion

Within the limitations of the study, it was found that the use of cooperative learning does increase students' academic achievement, helps students to achieve a better understanding of physics concepts and increases students' motivation to learn. Both the teacher and students gained much from this study. The students gained a better understanding of the concepts and in the process of taking the pre-tests and post-tests, they discovered that they actually like sitting for the pre-tests as these tests give them an idea of what to expect from the topics, and in a way, make the topics easier to comprehend. This is a surprising discovery for the teacher which could lead to further research.

The researchers have also gained valuable insights on the design of the CL lessons, the crafting of the journal prompts as a form of reflection and the importance of facilitating cooperative learning activities to allow students to connect new and past experiences. By examining the extent on how the use of cooperative learning strategies can help students achieve better understanding of physics concepts, the researchers have gained valuable insights into how well students understand the concepts; whether students are able to explain how things work, whether students can make connections to different concepts they learn; whether students are able to interpret, apply and effectively use and adapt what they know in diverse contexts, whether students can infer assumptions upon which an idea or theory is based. It was also interesting to note that different cooperative learning strategies achieve different purpose. For example, the teacher-researcher noted that the students were extremely excited when she implemented STAD and TGT. All the students were on task and were strongly motivated to perform well for their groups. Through the use of these cooperative learning strategies, the teacher-researcher found that the students' motivation to learn increases tremendously and this may have contributed to them showing higher achievement.

With this new knowledge, future physics lessons could be designed with appropriate instructional material and suitable cooperative learning strategies so as to engage the students meaningfully, which is line with the MOE's focus on promoting engaged learning in TLLM. Hopefully, this will arrest the problem of students being disinterested in the learning physics. The valuable insights gained from this study will contribute towards building the corpus of local knowledge on the effectiveness of cooperative learning as a teaching and learning strategy in the physics classroom.