The COPE model for promoting cooperative learning in classrooms

Abstract

© 2020 Primrose Hall Publishing Group. Students of the 21st century are expected to acquire essential soft skills such as creativity, communication, critical thinking and collaboration. In order to cultivate such skills, it is necessary to embrace a form of teamwork based on cooperative learning in which students can interact with each other and exercise their skills in an appropriate environment. A key characteristic of cooperative learning is to assign a designated role to particular team members, making each important to contribute to the achievement of team mission. However, it remains unclear how many roles should be constituted in one team and how students with different personality types should be grouped together. This paper therefore adopts the framework of DISC personality and Kolb's experiential learning cycle to develop a synthesised model called COPE which composes of four crucial roles of teamwork: Communicator, Overseer, Philosopher and Empathist. Each of the roles can be well aligned with the four personality types which are classified by their focus when working towards the completion of a given mission (task-focused or people-focused) and their preferred mode of idea expression (expressive or passive). The COPE model offers designated roles for students to accomplish in classroom settings. In addition, it offers a cyclical rotation of the roles which is believed to be theoretically appropriate for students to learn to work with others effectively and to adapt themselves to work on a newly given role professionally.