The effects of individualistic learning and cooperative learning strategies on elementary students' mathematics achievement and use of social skills

This study is to examine the effects of two methods of teaching elementary mathematics—individualistic and cooperative learning—on students' mathematics achievement and use of social skills. The sample that is selected for this study consisted of 102 fourth-grade mathematics students in four intact classrooms with two regular fourth-grade classroom teachers, who taught the mathematical unit to the students. This sample size compromises of 56 boys and 46 girls elementary fourth-graders. One boys' and one girls' class are instructed using individualistic learning strategies; in addition, one boys' and one girls' class are taught by utilizing cooperative learning strategies. Two main instruments are used and constructed by the researcher to measure students' mathematics achievement and students' use of social skills. These instruments are achievement test which is administered as a pretest and posttest and social skills survey. T-test is used to examine the effectiveness of using individualistic and cooperative learning strategies on fourth-grade students' mathematics achievement and use of social skills. Finally, observation techniques on these classes are used by the researcher and interviews are constructed with seven elementary mathematics teachers, which include the two regular classroom teachers, to enrich the findings of the quantitative data. The results are significant when utilizing cooperative learning strategies. Therefore, the null hypotheses of the study are rejected to support the use of cooperative learning strategies to improve fourth-grade students' mathematics achievement and use of social skills. Also, most of the interviewees prefer the use of cooperative learning strategies which support the statistical results in the study.