The Double-Edged Prospects of Peer-to-Peer Cooperative Learning in Ethiopian Secondary Schools

Abstract

Cooperative learning is an instructional approach that has several advantages to students’ learning. Over the last two decades, Ethiopia has been trying to adopt this approach to its education system. However, little is known about its actual socio-academic advantages and barriers to students. The objective of this study is, therefore, assessing the benefits and barriers associated with this approach to students from Johnson and Johnson’s elements of cooperative learning. Using a focus group discussion method, we collected data from 23 students. Based on classical grounded theory analysis, we found that peer-to-peer cooperative learning (PCL) has several advantages and barriers to students. The primary benefit of PCL is social interaction instead of academic. The attributes of cooperative learning are more than Johnson and Johnson’s five elements of cooperative learning and have double-edged outcomes in school. This study might help to promote benefits and to intervening barriers associated with PCL.

Keywords

peer-to-peer cooperative learning secondary school Ethiopia

Cooperative learning becomes one of the widely used learning approaches in the 21st century (Laal & Laal, 2012; Laal, Laal, & Kermanshahi, 2012). It is a method in which a few students, usually four to seven, work together to solve problems, complete assigned tasks, and create products (Gillies, 2016; Laal & Laal, 2012; Laal, Naseri, Laal, & Khattami-Kermanshahi, 2013). Its primary goal is enabling students to do in collaboration and achieve a shared goal (Laal, 2013; Laal & Laal, 2012; Volet, Vauras, Salo, & Khosa, 2017). It may even have a greater impact on students’ learning than what they can get in a classroom (Colvin & Ashman, 2010). Mainly it is crucial to help students who are at-risk and minorities through non-hierarchical peer mentoring (Snyder, Sloane, Dunk, & Wiles, 2016; Thalluri, 2016). Peer-to-peer cooperative learning (PCL) is also believed to increase students’ involvement in academic activities, reduces the rate of dropouts, and improves students’ learning (Laal & Laal, 2012; Thalluri, 2016; Tien, Roth, & Kampmeier, 2002; Topping, 2005).

Although there is a clear consensus on the importance of PCL for students’ learning, there is no common understanding of its nature and applications (Laal & Laal, 2012). Consequently, its conceptions and practices might vary from time to time and from place to place. Thus, the primary objective of this study is assessing how secondary school students in Ethiopia reflect the benefits and the barriers associated with PCL from the Johnson and Johnson’s (1991) five elements of cooperative learning. This article may contribute to the unnoticed barriers associated with PCL into the body of literature granting scientists have studied the benefits of PCL over decades (Baloche & Brody, 2017).

However, students gain several advantages of cooperative learning, they also often confront challenges such as physical, sociological, or psychological factors that make them resist teamwork. Therefore, physical challenges involve students’ access to adequate supplies that they use to achieve the given instructional objectives. In the developing countries where physical resources such as information technologies are scarce, students may be tempted to get advantages of PCL (Qing & Li, 2011). As a result, the perceived benefits of PCL to students might not be successful. From the sociological perspective, PCL might be associated with frequent conflicts because students do not necessarily cooperate during cooperative work (Gillies, 2016). Furthermore, the ways teachers, team leaders, and mentors function within the group can affect the benefits and challenges students get from teamwork. From a psychological perspective, cooperative learning might expose students to psychosocial problems such as stress, depression, and frustration (Hossain & Tarmizi, 2013; Makewa, Gitonga, Ngussa, Njoroge, & Kuboja, 2014).

Theoretical Framework

Johnson and Johnson’s perspective is being in use as an operational structure of cooperative learning by educators over the world (Johnson & Johnson, 2009; Siciliano, 2001). However, it does not seem to be in a comprehensive manner that involves five elements of Johnson and Johnson (1991). These elements are positive interdependence, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, face-to-face promotive interaction, and group processing. The authors believe that each of these elements contributes to the viability of PCL. To start with the positive interdependence, it happens when “students perceive that they can achieve their goals if and only if the other students with whom they are cooperatively linked achieve their goals” (Mesch, Johnson, & Johnson, 1988, p. 345). That is if entire group members believe that they swim together for success or sink together in failure, cooperative learning becomes successful and the vice versa.

The next to the positive interdependence is individual and group accountability. It is an element of PCL that demands the responsibility of each group member to achieve the given tasks and contribute equally to the success of the team (Johnson & Johnson, 1991). Therefore, no student depends on others and each student is assessed individually, regardless the result is for the entire team. The third element of cooperative learning is interpersonal and small group skills. These skills are crucial for PCL and demand members to function within the team effectively. These skills involve effective communication, decision-making, building trust, leadership skills, managing conflicts, a timely realization of tasks, and appreciating group members. The fourth element of cooperative learning is face-to-face promotive interaction, which represents students’ interaction and encouragement of one another to achieve shared goals (Johnson & Johnson, 1991). This element helps each group members to sustain the achievement of the shared goals by sharing resources and experience. The fifth element of cooperative learning is group processing. It refers to the team member’s state of feeling to openly express their concerns and successes, ways to achieve their goals, and how to sustain the team’s productivity.

This Study

Over the last four decades, the practices of cooperative learning have been attracting the attention of researchers (Baloche & Brody, 2017). However, Ethiopia has been trying to integrate PCL into its education system over the last two decades. Most public schools have changed students’ seating arrangement to U-shaped to make students discuss, work, and share academic affairs. Every year, schools place five students in a group, which is called five-to-one. Political authorities have a firm belief that this practice has incredible advantages for students. There are, however, scarce scientific evidences that show the benefits and the barriers associated with PCL for students. Therefore, comprehending the benefits and barriers associated with PCL can make it easier for the education stakeholders to use it and deal with the barriers. This study, hence, focuses on assessing the ways PCL benefits students from Johnson and Johnson’s (1991) five elements of cooperative learning. The following guiding questions have been forwarded to achieve this objective: (a) How do students perceive the overall benefits of PCL in school? (b) How secondary school students reflect the ways PCL promotes positive interdependence, the individual and group accountability in teamwork, interpersonal and small group skills, face-to-face promotive interaction, and group processing? (c) What are the barriers associated with PCL for secondary school students?

Method

A qualitative research design based on focus group discussions (FGD) method has been utilized in this study. The rationale for using FGD was that it is dynamic, allows interaction and in-depth data than other methods (Howitt & Cramer, 2011). There were three stages that we have tracked down to accomplish the FGD: questions development, grouping procedures (composition, sample selection criteria, and discussion protocol), and data analysis techniques. Along with the suggestions of Garrison et al. (1999) to prepare a tool for conducting FGD, we have developed questions considering (a) the sequencing of questions from general to specific, (b) using open-ended questions instead of dichotomous questions, and (c) focusing the participants’ specific personal experiences. The first entry points were questions that gave participants an opportunity to introduce themselves and personal biographies. These questions include self-introduction, consent, confidentiality, and group rules. The second was transitional questions that explored the experiences of participants with PCL in school. The last was to end the discussion and allow the participants to summarize the previously mentioned opinions.

The target population of this study was students from two chosen secondary schools in Bahir Dar, Northwestern Ethiopia. The representative sample was 23 students from these two schools. We recruited the sample using a protocol considering the sex, leadership roles, and grade levels of the participants. With this, we used a purposive sampling method supplemented with a convenience sampling method. We used a purposive sample to include team leaders—who are responsible to organize, facilitate, communicate, and ensure the equal distribution of tasks among team members, and female participants from each grade level. There were 11 male and 12 female students involved in the discussion, of which seven were functioning as a team leader. Regarding grade-level structure, except in 12th grade from which five participants involved, six participants were selected from each grade level from 9th through 11th grade. Finally, we labeled the participants S1, S2, S3, . . ., and S23 where S1 represents the first participant, S2 represents the second participant, and the like.

Initially, we had taken permission from the Bahir Dar University College of Education and Behavioral Sciences Research Program Coordinator Office. Three days before the data collection we contacted the school officials and requested participants to provide informed consent to take part in the discussion. We also received consent from parents of nine participants under the age of 18 via the participants. Having collected the informed consent, we agreed to include eight participants into each of the discussions. However, there were seven participants in one of the three discussion sessions. The discussions at the Students’ Union Offices were held through the support of a co-researcher. The median time to close the discussions was 28 min. Although FGD often takes longer, participants could not say any more about PCL after the median time. No more new information was found in the third discussion due to the redundancy of the data. Therefore, we could no longer continue further discussions. At the end of each focus group discussion, we have had a coffee session with the participants, which is valuable among the local people. This session is to show appreciation for the participants’ involvement in the discussion. After the interview, we conducted debriefing times to record the key themes that participants raised during the discussion.

The data analysis procedures were continual and ranged from the accumulation of raw data to the interpretation of data. We have chosen the grounded theory method to develop a framework about PCL just in our specific contexts and viewing it from Johnson and Johnson’s perspectives. The initial step in data analysis procedures was transcribing the data verbatim. Then, using a constant comparative approach (Creswell, 2007), we scrutinized the repeatedly used words and phrases to create theoretical memos. This was to look at such instances that represent the category and to continue looking for if there will be further categories. Because participants stressed that the PCL’s benefits are more social than academic, we coded the social benefits as a central benefit of PCL. From the coding, we generated a hypothesis that PCL has both the benefits and barriers to students. Finally, the coding was narrowed and organized into three analytical categories of benefits: social, academic, and economic and five barriers grounded in the data. The barriers associated with PCL were personal, sociological, organizational, technological, and legal issues.

Results

The primary objective of this study was assessing the benefits and barriers associated with PCL to Ethiopian secondary school students from Johnson and Johnson’s (1991) views. We have presented the findings by supporting the main research questions. We observed that PCL has tremendous benefits and barriers to students in school. Although it has substantial benefits, participants achieved Johnson and Johnson’s basic elements of PCL partly. Participants stressed that the primary importance of PCL was more social and interpersonal edge than academic. There were also several barriers associated with PCL, which could vary from the individual to the system levels. Therefore, PCL has contrasting outcomes to students—considerable benefits and barriers. Regarding the overall benefits of PCL, most participants contended PCL is a useful approach for students’ social support, academic pursuits, and economic utilities; however, there were considerable application issues. One of the participants (S9) expressed the benefits and application issues associated with PCL as follows:

Ideally, peer-to-peer cooperative learning is very important for students to support one another and learn from each other. . . . However, the challenge is with its practical applications. To me, peer group comes to board only for mock-up and has no more unsuccessful impacts. . . . To verify my contention, we do not even know what to do with our team and our specific responsibilities.

In addition to the application issues, it seems that students misunderstood the roles of a team leader and the underlying principles of PCL, which might affect the effectiveness of cooperative learning. For example, one participant (S6) expressed a unique idea that shows the wrong conceptions students harbored about PCL in school:

There are five students in a group, one of whom is a team leader to support others. Whenever the leader explains the given subject matter to us, we can easily understand it. It also improves our in-depth learning, but no one has been implementing it yet suitably.

How Do Students Perceive the Roles of PCL to Facilitate Positive Interdependence in the Team?

To ascertain the quality of positive interdependence, we asked the participants if they had the understanding that their success depends on the responsibilities of each group member. Accordingly, the role of PCL to facilitate positive interdependence was far left behind its theoretical assumptions. Based on the data, it is likely that the cooperative learning strategy in Ethiopian secondary school has not been encouraging positive interdependence among the team members. Instead, it has been increasing the dependency among the team members and allows the leader to do everything. For example, one of the participants (S10) said,

Wow, it is a team leader who is primarily responsible for organizing, executing and finalizing the given assignments. He is a better student from our team and who has a duty for the success of the team. We can participate, but our contribution is exceptionally slight. From the very beginning, that is why the group leader was a student who is academically best. Therefore, I do not assume that all members of the group members have an equal share for the success of our team.

Does PCL Promote the Individual and Group Accountability Among the Team?

We also asked participants to express their opinion, if PCL promoted personal and group accountability within the team. The results show that there is a gap between what was theoretically presumed and what has been observed in this regard. Although PCL is supposed to reasonably promote the individual and group accountability, participants strongly argued it has less promoted the sense of accountability both as an individual and as a team. Instead, it was facilitating social loafing. Specifically, in the project and assignment works, the role of the group members is to let their team leader write their names on the list of the team. For example, one participant (S12) who was working as a team leader has also expressed:

The school principal and our homeroom teacher informed us that each team member must fairly participate and show a mastery of the given assignments. I think it was right, but just no more than narration. However, only a few students are capable of performing the given assignments with the leader . . . Even there were the times that the group members harassed me for the fact that I pushed them to contribute something to the given assignments.

Does PCL Encourage Interpersonal and Small Group Skills for Students?

Encouraging interpersonal and small group skills seems to be the greatest achievement of PCL for secondary school students in Ethiopia. Most of the participants stressed that the striking benefit they received from PCL was social and interpersonal skills. They have had the opportunity to know one another and develop trust in one another, communicate effectively, understand one another, support one another, and constructively deal with conflicts. One of the participants (S14), for instance, said:

I have been working as a team leader for the last three years. I have had the opportunity to learn sound leadership skills and inspiration . . . The interactions among the team members, the chance to discuss together the ways we make decisions and solve problems are the incredible things I have gained from cooperative learning.

Does PCL Enhance Face-to-Face Promotive Interaction and Group Processing?

The other achievement of PCL is more likely personal support systems, which could be explained in terms of promotive interaction. There were plentiful supports among the team members in terms of personal, social, and economic dimensions. The sharing of resources is among the primary promotive interactions. It is good to see at one of the participants’ (S16) also attested it by stating:

I want to raise the economic benefits of cooperative learning to students. It creates a milieu to share academic resources with friends. It also enables us to share an expense that a given assignment incurs and minimizes students’ economic difficulties. Whenever five students assigned to complete a given project, one or two of them may unfit to bear the cost it incurs, notwithstanding, they may have better skills. Under such situations, the remaining team members would cover the expense of the project without getting into trouble.

From the group processing viewpoints, it appears that there were considerable benefits students received from PCL. It happened when team members discuss the manners in which they could achieve their goals and maintain a healthy relationship among themselves. Because the participants did typically discuss and made decisions regarding useful and useless behaviors, group processing was the other element that the group members likely achieved. Although a few members were less inclined to partake in teamwork, participants likely exercised group processing element of PCL. Particularly, there were continuous talks regarding the manners in which each member could sensibly participate, work for the team effectiveness, and maintain a sound relationship.

Overall Barriers Associated With PCL

In this study, we can categorize the most common barriers associated with PCL into the personal, sociological, organizational, technological, and legal domains. From the personal barriers, participants did not unequivocally comprehend the ways to use PCL in academic settings, its ultimate goals, and their roles and responsibilities. These limitations may encourage free-riding behaviors in a few group members and increase the benefits to a leader, which supports the principle “the rich will get richer.” Sociologically, barriers can vary from lack of allegiance in cooperation and frequent harassment and bullying. There were various dissensions between the team members and the leader that caused lack of accountability and cooperation. This is often associated with bullying and sexual harassment, especially for female leaders while they were urging team members to cooperate. Close to the disagreements and conflicts, there was a lack of professional guidance of experienced mentors.

From the organizational viewpoint, there were no clear directions, guidelines, and capable experts to lead PCL in schools. Therefore, participants have perceived that PCL was a system intended to trap students’ political views because they were frequently rebelling against the government and political operations. In addition, this discernment might be associated with the fact that non-academic organizations also practiced the five-to-one grouping approach. In terms of technology, all the interactions, correspondence, and collaborations were in traditional face-to-face manners; however, online communication can facilitate students’ interaction without physically getting in touch. The participants appealed for technologies that could help them actively interact and complete the given assignments in the due time. Legally, there was a high degree of academic fraud perceiving it as cooperation. At least certain team members did not involve in completing the given assignments at a particular time. A big concern is, therefore, whether PCL is cooperation or fraud in practical terms.

Discussion

In this study, we focused on assessing the benefits and barriers associated with PCL to students from the perspective of Johnson and Johnson (1991). Accordingly, participants partly achieved the Johnson and Johnson’s elements of cooperative learning. The interpersonal and small group skills were the element that participants successfully achieved, which supports the findings of Laal et al. (2012) and Thurston et al. (2009). The next to interpersonal and small group skills, participants achieved the promotive face-to-face interaction remarkably. Positive interdependence, which is an essential element of cooperative learning, was likely less achieved in this study. More likely, this is due to the lack of allegiance to cooperate, poor communications, and weak coordination among the team members.

We have found that PCL has contradicting effects on students, which was slightly recognized by Colvin and Ashman (2010) and Thurston et al. (2009). At the one extreme students have gained considerable social, academic, and economic benefits, which is comparable with the findings of Hossain and Tarmizi (2013) and Strang (2015). However, its leading benefit was social support than academic, which is consistent with the findings of Laal et al. (2013). Hence, this study has proven that cooperative learning is essential and has several advantages to students. Particularly, the economic benefit of PCL to students was what scientists have not yet noticed. At the other extreme, PCL involved several barriers that affect students’ well-being, which involves academic dependency, bullying, threats, harassment, and academic fraud behaviors.

The barriers associated with PCL comprise personal, sociological, organizational, technological to legal dimensions, which is slightly consistent with the findings of Baloche and Brody (2017); Le, Janssen, and Wubbels (2017); and Makewa et al. (2014). At the personal level, participants harbored a distorted view of PCL’s roles, goals, and operations. Hence, they were not enthusiastic to engage in teamwork, which supports the findings of Baloche and Brody (2017) and Le et al. (2017). Sociologically, lack of cooperation, poor allegiance, occasional threat and bullying, and a shortage of capable mentors were the typical barriers, which is comparable with Le et al. (2017). At the organizational level, there were no clear sets of patterns and policies that guide the operations of PCL. Regarding the technological barriers, PCL was applied only in a traditional form, which usually forces team members to contact in person. So, technology must be adhered to PCL to make students to stay in contact without being physically together, which is consistent with the findings of Kim (2013). Legally, PCL has been facilitating fraudulent behaviors, which should be given particular attention. The effectiveness of PLC, therefore, might be determined by the cumulative effects of these barriers.

In Ethiopia, community views cooperative work both as an asset and a liability. There are several statements and practices that show the asset-ness of cooperative activities in the country. For example, we can bestow common proverbs, such as ድር ቢያብር አንበሳ ያስር which means if a web allied it could hitch a lion. In practice, due to strong collective cultural backgrounds, the community has long been working together and supporting one another. In contrast, the statement የጋራ ወንጋራ, which means teamwork is fragile and its success unrealistic demonstrates the unlikely of achieving the team’s goal successfully. These contradicting views to cooperative works and the students’ distorted perception of PCL might have a direct bearing on the PCL’s effectiveness.

The other explanation for the ineptness of PCL can be viewed from the cumulative effects of the barriers and the community’s conception of teamwork. Thus, this study may have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it advances the fact that PCL’s primary advantage is social and interpersonal values instead of academic. Practically, by highlighting the importance of PCL to students, we identified the barriers associated with PCL for early intervention. Therefore, creating awareness, preparing clear sets of guidelines, arranging the monitoring and evaluation systems, giving instant feedback to teamwork, and integrating information technologies to run PCL effectively should be prioritized.

Finally, Johnson and Johnson’s theory suggests that cooperative learning may be more productive under certain situations than competitive efforts. This model tends to provide more practical solutions to understand, organize, and implementing cooperative learning at school. It would better to take into account the task complexity and students’ demographic characteristics for the effectiveness of cooperative learning at school.

Although this study is important to gain an understanding of the potential benefits and barriers associated with PCL, it is not free of limitations. The data were collected in the Amharic language to enable participants to use their own mother tongue to express their views efficiently. Translating the data into the English language and back to Amharic simultaneously with transcribing and analyzing data were challenging. As a result, a few words may not be unerringly congruent to their original meaning. Second, we found it difficult to investigate the connection between the challenges associated with PCL and the present features of Ethiopian contexts. Therefore, future research should focus on extensive quantitative analyses of context-specific and context-free PCL-related barriers.

Conclusion

This study was regarding the benefits and barriers associated with PCL to secondary school students in Ethiopia. In this study, we have affirmed that PCL has striking advantages to students in school settings. It has all the social, academic, and economic benefits; however, the application matters its effectiveness. In the real school setting, PCL’s social and interpersonal benefits were more important to students than of the academic. From Johnson and Johnson’s perspectives, the participants achieved the elements of PCL partly. We have also noticed that PCL would have double-edged outcomes for students—high benefits and considerable barriers. Therefore, it may require progressive makeover processes to advance its benefits to overcome the barriers. Particularly, it requires thorough training to students, structured follow-up, and monitoring from a dedicated mentor and continuous feedback to teamwork. Furthermore, to make PCL increasingly effective, supporting it with information technology would be prioritized.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Feyisa Mulisa

Author Biographies

Feyisa Mulisa is an assistant professor in Department of Psychology, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. He teaches undergraduate students in the Department of Psychology. Previously, he was the Head of the Department of Psychology.

Simret Kassahun Mekonnen is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. She teaches undergraduate programs in the Department of Psychology. She has been working as course chair of the Educational Psychology modules.

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