A study of the effectiveness of co-operative learning strategies on professional skills of B.Ed students

Education is a lifelong process. It starts at the birth and continue till the death. India has seen various era of education right from Vedic education system up to the post independent period. In the start the education system was totally teacher centered. Whatever teachers taught was considered as an ultimate truth and reality. Teacher centered learning is not sufficient to fulfil the requirement of education hence there is a need of strategies based on the student centered approach. Cooperative learning is one of the teaching techniques where student’s involvement in teaching learning process has given importance. Cooperative learning strategies are based on social constructivism which is one of the main stream of constructivism. In this concept students works in a small group and collectively for better learning. Students get the chance for the activeparticipation than the passive listener like in traditional teaching methods. If teachers are developed allroundly in their life directly it would help the students to develop their personality and help them in their future careers. Right from the ancient education system more stress was given on the cognitive developmentof the students and emotional development has been totally ignored as our curriculum is mainly based onintellectual development of the child. Hence it is a need of today to strengthen the emotional intelligence of the students and it would be possible if we introduce new strategies of cooperative learning the curriculum.The success of teaching is depends upon the required professional skills. Cooperative learning can help the teacher training students to improve their professional skills.