The Impact of Cooperative Learning on CHC Students’ Achievements and Its Changes over the Past Decade

Abstract

Informed by emergent learning theories and multiple evidenced benefits, cooperative learning has developed into a widely accepted organization mode of class in the Western context. For the same reason, cooperative learning is transferred, during the past decade, into classrooms of Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC) contexts. Concerns, however, are raised regarding the effectiveness of the transfer, for contextual factors have long been acknowledged as a powerful barrier to borrowed initiatives, especially those that are not compatible with the deep-rooted cultural values in the situated contexts.

This paper is built on Thanh-Pham’s (2014) review of literature, which is on the impact of cooperative learning on the CHC students’ learning achievements and conducted during 1990 to 2006. This paper has expanded Thanh-Pham (2014) with a similar review on available literatures, which were published from 2007 up to 2016. This review of 39 publications shows up noticeable changes regarding the impact of cooperative learning in the CHC contexts. Specifically, the positive findings have risen from 47.2% to 86.9%, whereas negative and null change studies fall considerably. Influencing factors are analyzed via SPSS22.0 Software and verified with exemplars. Reasons for these changes point to the changing context and adaptive agency.