For every teaching and learning method we can find advantages and disadvantages. I will give a list of those ones that I consider to be the most essential and vital to be taken into account when planning whether to choose Cooperative Learning or other teaching method.
The advantages could be: students get higher self-esteem; learn to be responsible for themselves and respectful towards others; have more friends; enjoy working together; creates a community environment within the classroom; leads to increased positive attitude for school, class, studies, and the teacher; learn to be empathetic; feel more relaxed and secure in the classroom; learn how to work in a team; learn to criticise ideas, not people; develops higher level thinking skills; develops oral communication skills and improves memory; enhances self-management skills; excellent in Foreign Language; addresses learning style differences and Multiple Intelligences among students.1
Not to make everything so positive and utopian, here are the disadvantages: lack of social skills; social conflicts; only one student is working in a group and all the others are just enjoying the work and praise that the group mate has done; fear of failure (when someone might not want to participate in a group work because of the fear of failure); competitions between teams; not winning (not “loosing”) will stop trying to do the best what you can do.…
