The Effects of Cooperative Learning on Students' Academic Achievement, Retention and Social Skill Levels

The aim of the study is to investigate the effects of Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) and Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT) techniques of cooperative learning on students' academic achievement, retention and social skill levels in mathematics lesson. The study which was applied on 152 students in an elementary school in Adana in 2009-2010 academic year was a semi-experimental study and lasted in eighteen weeks. There are two experiment groups and a control group in the study. There are fifty two students in the STAD group. There are fourty eight students in the TGT group. There are fifty two students in the control group. "Mathematics Achievement Test" and "Social Skills Scale" were applied in all groups (STAD, TGT and conrol groups) as pretest at the beginning of the study and as posttest at the end of the study. After five weeks from the posttest, "Mathematics Achievement Test" was applied again as retention test. At the end of the study, "Interwiev Form" was used in experiment groups for getting students' opinions about techniques. Conclusively, TGT was more effective in terms of academic achievement and regarding to retention test, STAD was more effective. There was statistically significant difference in favour of STAD and TGT groups in terms of the social skill levels.