THE COOPERATIVE ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL - EFFECTS ON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT, ATTITUDES, AND SOCIAL-RELATIONS

This article reports the results of a 2-year study of the cooperative elementary school model which used cooperation as an overarching philo sophy to change school and classroom organization and instructional pr ocesses. The components of the model include: using cooperative learni ng across a variety of content areas, full-scale mainstreaming of acad emically handicapped students, teachers using peer coaching, teachers planning cooperatively, and parent involvement in the school. After th e first year of implementation, students in cooperative elementary sch ools had significantly higher achievement in reading vocabulary. After the second year, students had significantly higher achievement in rea ding vocabulary, reading comprehension language expression, and math c omputation than did their peers in traditional schools. After 2 years, academically handicapped students in cooperative elementary schools h ad significantly higher achievement in reading vocabulary, reading com prehension, language expression math computation, and math application in comparison with similar students in comparison schools. There also were better social relations in cooperative elementary schools, and h andicapped students were more accepted socially by their nonhandicappe d peers than were similar students in traditional schools with pull-ou t remedial programs. The results also suggest that gifted students in heterogeneous cooperative learning classes had significantly higher ac hievement than their peers in enrichment progams without cooperative l earning.