Student Evaluation in Co‐operative Learning: teacher cognitions

Abstract

Student evaluation procedures used by co‐operative learning (CL) teachers, and their feelings about them, have rarely been investigated. This interview study of 13 exemplary users of CL methods found that negative feelings ran through teachers' cognitions about evaluation: expressions of guilt, anxiety and uncertainty were frequent. There was a substantial gap between private and public knowledge. When individual insights were assembled in a composite picture, generic strategies emerged; for example, for teaching students their role in self‐evaluation. In this study, the mechanisms for making private knowledge public were weak. This deficiency was subsequently addressed by the teacher‐researchers involved in this study, in a series of action research projects.