Achievement by All Students within the Context of Cooperative Learning Groups

Three elementary-aged students with multiple severe disabilities acquired basic communication and motor skills within cooperative learning activities conducted in their general education classrooms. With gradually fading assistance from the instructor, the members without disabilities of the cooperative learning groups provided cues, prompts, and consequences to promote the learning of the member with disabilities. The results showed that the three students with disabilities not only independently demonstrated targeted basic skills within cooperative academic activities, but also generalized those skills during follow-up sessions to activities with other members of a newly formed cooperative learning group. In addition, tests of achievement of targeted academic objectives by the members without disabilities in their cooperative learning groups indicated that they performed as well as members of a control group within the classroom that did not include a child with severe disabilities and that members of both the target group and the control group significantly increased their knowledge in targeted academic areas.