Use of cooperative learning in physical education and its relationship with individual responsibility in high school students

Abstract

The objective of this article is to compare the use of cooperative learning in the physical education class at the high school level of two educational centers and to verify its relationship with individual responsibility. The study was quasi-experimental, with post-test only. In addition to confirming the psychometric characteristics of the Cooperative Learning Questionnaire we compared the scores obtained on the scales of the questionnaire between the experimental group and the control group. The expected hypothesis was that the participants in the experimental group would obtain higher scores than those in the control group on the Individual Responsibility factor. The participants of the experimental group were 104 students, who participated in a cooperative teaching unit and then filled out the questionnaire. The control group participants were 154 students, who did not participate in a cooperative teaching unit but did fill out the questionnaire. To validate the questionnaire scales, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed with the Amos 22 software to verify that the 5 originally proposed factors were maintained. As a result, we found that the mean scores in the questionnaire were always higher in the experimental group. As expected, the only statistically significant difference was found in the Individual Responsibility factor. This leads to the conclusion that cooperative classes did significantly improve one necessary skill for better learning.