Abstract:

The use of cooperative learning methods is widely regarded as necessary by most researchers and policy makers in the educational field. It allows students to learn at the same time they increase their social relationships while they acquire cooperative skills. The vast majority of works in the 21st century will require cooperative skills by workers, so these types of learning methodologies prepare them for their future life. In this research, the opinions of 20 high-schools students’ in 7th grade who learned mathematics through cooperative learning were analysed. Eight semi-structured interviews and four discussion groups were held with the students. The information obtained from the focus groups and the interviews was analysed using qualitative methods. Results suggest that students have mixed feelings regarding cooperative learning. Some of them really enjoy the methodology while others prefer to work in pairs or simply alone. The distribution of students is one of the main issues that bothers students most of the times as many of them would prefer to arrange the groups by themselves.

Keywords:

Cooperative learning, mathematics, high-school, opinions.