The Project Work as a way to promote group interactions

Introduction

America intends to achieve good levels of material and cultural development for its population, along with an uninterrupted social process in which an excellent place is granted to the education of people. Governments recognize the formation of the present and future individuals as an essential part in the construction of the new society.

Our education based on its historical mission and on the interests of the labor class, has as an end, the formation of the new generations and the whole people according to the scientific conception of the world, which is that of the dialectical and historical materialism, to develop the individual"s intellectual, physical and spiritual capacities, and to foment on him, high human feelings and aesthetic likes, to have principles and morals become into personal convictions and daily acts of behaviors; to form, in summary, a free and cultivated man, capable of living and participating actively and consciously in the construction of a better society.

The achievement of this purpose implies the continuous and permanent improvement of the quality of the educational process, incorporating the scientific contributions to the pedagogical professional practice which enrich the human culture and set rules regarding the theoretical conception and the practical instrumentation of the teaching- learning process.

Schools must educate in coordination with the needs of society, to develop the individual not only for its personal profit, but mainly for the benefit of the community he or she is part of. The role of the Cuban school is indispensable in the accomplishment of such task. The school should offer the students the mechanisms that allow them to Iearn for themselves in such a way that those skills acquired while learning may be useful when meeting the challenges of their professional careers. Therefore, project works in the educational process gain further didactic and educational values every day.

Dr. Carlos Rojas expressed that "the recognition of the role of project works as a way of cognitive activity is a question broadly accepted in the pedagogical literature as well as by the professors and teachers; however all the results expected from its application have not been achieved yet." (C. Rojas 1982)

So, our students need, beyond any doubts, to learn how to carry out a project work, how to study, how to think; abilities which are not acquired overnight. It takes conscious, systematic work until students feel the need to acquire the contents for themselves.

The study about the effectiveness of project works has been the goal of this investigation for the following reasons:

• It is adjusted to the problems of each territory and its schools and has to do directly with the quality of the teaching-learning process.

• It becomes necessary that professors and students be concerned about the quality of project works as a way to improve the learning activity and the cognitive independence.

• It is necessary to achieve in the students an independent, dialectical and creative thought by means of a project work system, as a fundamental component of the intellectual education.

• Project work as organizational form of the process propitiates the development of qualities in the personality.

Many authors have researched into project work, but students have only deepened on the cognitive part, not on the qualitative one. It has been approached by different foreign authors as: Klingberg (1972), P.l.Pidkasisti (1976), N. Talizina (1985).

In our country, project works have been subject of investigation, by authors as Gladys Valdivia (1988), Rojas Carlos (1982), Alberto Labarrere (1996, 1998), Rico Pilar (1996), and Josefina López (1990).

At Pepito Tey Teachers Training Collage this topic has been researched by Marcos Conde (2000), Yoannys Martínez (2000), Yuritza Pérez (2000) and Alexis Vásquez (2001).

Nevertheless, the literature consulted does not reflect project work as a way to promote group interaction. That is the reason why this investigation has declared the following scientific problem:The none stability of group interaction related to the activity of studying in group II from Teachers to be in Primary Education.

As Investigation objective we propuse: The validation of a set of project works for the achievement of a greater stability of group interaction during the activity of studying from Teachers to be in Primary Education.

Some issues about the group and its influence in the formation of personality

One of the concerns of Psychology is that of the development of personality, which includes the question of the psychological mechanism of its social determination.

In this sense, the task of forming political and moral ideals on the new generations is presented as a task of supreme importance but at the same time of great magnitude. For psychologists that work in this area, one of the most immediate objectives lies on the discovery of ways and methods to influence on the personality of youths which ease the formation of reasons and goals according to the Cuban socialist moral.

The conditions of the Cuban socialist life, characterized by high spiritual growth, supply the reasons and goals of the activity for our young people, ever since students form their convictions, a group of necessities and reasons which acquire hierarchy, forming this way, the psychological organization of personality. This psychological organization controls and guides the activity of personality to make it act consciously upon the objectives has been previously stated.

In a concrete individual, the system of social relationships has its specific form within the social group he is part of. This concrete individual has his primary existence in the family and later in other groups where he develops himself. However, students bear no more than the norms which may become or not reasons and goals of the individual"s activity. This conversion will take place in such an extent that the individual becomes an active being in the relationship individual-group, in which a dialectical interrelation is observed.

This way the group becomes a transmitting agent of the social influences. It should be clear that this process will only be possible in a group representative of the society in which it is developed; that is to say, as long as it is a community that develops its main activity with success. For that reason, it is considered necessary to work with the group interactively; in order to influence on the individual"s personality. Only this way, one wiIl achieve the prospective manifestations of the youth"s personality.

Community plays a fundamental role in the formation of multilaterally developed personalities for the following reason:

Community is a group which has reached a higher level of development. It is a higher type of group that should characterize the socialist society. It lies on the principles of productivity and efficiency aimed at the social development of the different tasks assigned, and at the integral development of its members" personalities. There are different points which constitute dynamic processes of development reached by the subject. These are: pressure, cohesion, leadership, the taking of group decisions, the effectiveness and the satisfaction of their members.

For this reason, the establishment of a community is the result of a long process of mutual interrelations among the members of a group, and this is not achieved spontaneously or abruptly.

A group must undergo several stages through which it will progressively become a community. A decisive stop in this progression takes place when all its members realize that they have a common objective to fulfill in order to perform a certain activity successfully.

The motivational which accompanies that perception also changes. That is to say, this is not achieved by the simple knowledge of the objectives; students must penetrate the motivational sphere, at least in a first level.

The process of formation of group objectives goes from a proportional or parallel way to the development of a group; and we call it parallelly when this change is due to factors unaware the group: influenced by the family, friends or others. This process is proportional to the collective activity as a necessary and indispensable condition of the psychological work. In the collective activity the leaders and educators are the ones in charge of impelling the process, taking advantage of the characteristics of the personality of their members and the favorable conditions of this process.

For the group objective to become into individual objectives some premises must be considered: new necessities and reasons as well as the assimilation of new knowledge about those objectives, the acceptance of new demands and the emergence of new results from the actions, among others.

The objectives or group goals frequently appear as contradictory demands and the person builds one"s own objectives depending upon of the relationship established between the objectives and the current or potential need to be satisfied.

The group gets its psychological existence as a result of the integrating sociopsychological processes which take place on its members. Therefore, the primary mechanism that gives psychological existence to the group is the integrating mechanism of the interpersonal relationships, which should be logically expressed in the cohesion established among its members.

Because of the complexity of this phenomenon, this study requires a research in three levels: a first or superficial level, in which the verified cohesion is expression of emotional links and dislikes; a second or intermediate level; in which the expressed cohesion expresses the unity of judgments and opinions of its members and a third (nuclear) level, in which the cohesion reflects the unity among the members in the group regarding the carrying out of the combined action.

In groups of higher levels of development appears, as an integrating mechanism, the unity concerning evaluating orientations among their members, in connection with outstanding questions of importance for the group and society. Group cohesion is the expression of a harmonic unity of action, judgments and affections among its members. The evaluation of its partners is the result of an analysis of the individual participation in the group work. Here the effects are not irrational or emotional manifestations, but a consequence of the interpersonal attraction that consolidates interpersonal relationships and bring satisfaction. The affective, evaluating, and behavioral integration, the unit of interests and ends verified in this level of development, determines these groups to act as subjects of the actions, in order to attain this way a highly collective power that can be used in a satisfactory way to enrich and develop the personality of its members.

The groups of intermediate level of development are characterized by possessing a defined formal structure. The group exists at least as a psychological structure, although some processes of their socio-psychological peculiarities can be observed, the group has not consolidated its organization processes and its internal dynamics yet. It does not act as a "subject" of the action yet.

It has been seen that integration in these groups is based typically on an affective unity, in which the interpersonal valuation is erected on the basis of emotional sympathies and dislikes of a very superficial kind. Although it is not to the extent commented before, the data of this investigation have shown that in this level it may happen that the group integration takes place as a consequence of a unity while evaluating orientations of their members in connection with transcendent aspects for the group.

The influence of these groups and their concrete possibilities to develop the personality of their members are subject to the action of certain individuals who greatly influence specific members. That is to say, the global group action is not exercised as a typical thing (although this does not exclude that it happens particularly before certain events of high significance for the group or for society as a whole), because the group expresses itself in terms of actions performed by its most outstanding members, and therefore, the exercise of the influence on each personality is materialized in acts of singular type.

It has been seen that the groups with low development are characterized by not existing as a psychological fact, students rather bear a formal existence; therefore it wilI not influence in real life situations on any their members. In these groups it has been observed that the behaviors of the students are essentially individualistic and their answers to any of the environmental situations reflect a personal characterized orientation because the student tends to precede his individual interests over the social or group ones.

An explanation to this behavior can be that the group only exists as long as a declared fact, the group goals and ends only exist as an external fact to the group. (M. Febles 1985)

These elements are considered as the basis for this investigation, but other elements are of great importance as students are closely related with our topic and are of great use for the teacher"s work.

The biological aspects of the adolescent"s development are of great importance for the teacher"s knowledge; because it allows him to obtain wider information on any anomaly that students should have.

The teacher must keep informed about the students" health, to know if students have any physical problem that affects their academic development. This facilitates the teacher"s work by giving him an opportunity of establishing a stronger relationship teacher-student. During this period of life, it is very important for the teacher to know the physical changes of his students because they stop to be children and become teenagers. Students change their ambitions and need more emotional support and a lot of understanding.

Another important aspect is the current pedagogical communication, which has to turn from the teacher- centered pedagogical practice to the interactive pedagogical practice, characterized by dialogue and discussion. Once the conversion is attained, it favors the building of knowledge through a communicative process of teaching — learning, combining intellectual aspects and living experiences from the group exchange. Likewise, it favors the acquisition of knowledge, the development of abilities and the formation of values in the students. This demand implies that teachers must reconsider their current educational conceptions from a communicative view, and thus obliges them to think in terms of the standards of the current practice.

Knowing the interests and goals of adolescents teachers may prepare themselves for their coming researches. The scientific and technical advances constantly compel us to improve, mainly in the pedagogical area, in order to achieve a more effective teaching and a more appropriate and continuous relationship between the teacher and the student.

During adolescence the structuring of new qualities is performed in each and every aspect. In this period there appear some signs belonging to adults, as the result of the changes undergone by the organism, the appearance of selfconsciousness, and the new kind of relationships with adults and classmates. Precisely during this period, the formation of relationships at different degrees of intimacy takes place, something that teenagers distinguish accurately: students may simply be classmates, friends or close friends.

The adolescents relationship with their mates acquires such importance that they sometimes set the study aside or to a second place, and considerably impairs the importance of the relationships with their relatives.

They tend to relate others and live actively, the desire to live collectively, making friends, even an intimate friends, and they show an equally intense desire of being accepted, acknowledged and respected by their partners. (M. Sources 1987)

All these elements are of great importance for the success of this investigation, but the analysis of some aspects about cooperative learning cannot be avoided, because it is closely related to the topic the author is dealing with.

Some considerations about cooperative Iearning

There have been, in one way or another, pronouncements and practical actions pointing out the need of interaction and cooperation among classmates in order to learn. Learning, in spite of being an individual phenomenon, occurs in a social environment characterized by relationships and interrelations and help. lt makes possible the formation of knowledge (information); the "know-how" or ¨know how to do¨ (skills and abilities) and the social being (attitudes and values).

Cooperative learning is not new. Its idea has been present along the history of education. What is new are the experimental investigations which prove their effectiveness and efficiency if compared to other forms of organization in the educational process; as well as the theoretical re-conceptualization based upon viewpoints of contemporary science: Psychology, Pedagogy and Didactics; likewise upon the theories of organizational development.

Man is a social being living in connection with others, and groups are the forms of expression of the links established among people to survive, grow and develop. The solutions to most of the problems of contemporary society are hardly ever achieved through individual, isolated actions. A community of efforts is needed to achieve development. In that sense, schools should continuously be concerned about teaching the students how to participate and be related to one another.

The interdependence and technological, economical and political integration that characterize the current world is a proof of man"s need of being related to others and of collaborating with them. Changes had never been before so frequent and drastic neither competition and life itself so demanding. The theoretical pluralism (that does not please a single point of view) should be added to the above mentioned and the crisis, according to specialists, of existing paradigms.

Cooperative learning is, beyond any doubts, the answer to the education in the end of the XX century and beginning of the XXI one, in front of the distension, globalization and international, economic, technological and socio-cultural collaborative. It displays like a need for the social, the personal and the professional progress and professional that should propitiate. Its practice and consequent development may allow the formation of the man and the woman that the contemporary society demands.

The new school requires its leaders to be able to organize, assist and coordinate the actions of its teachers, to create in the schools learning communities to grant the continuous development of their members and, therefore, of its institution.

A group is much more than the simple sum of its members. The whole of it (the group) shows through its integrity and unity, features that identify each of their members due to the mutual influence, norms and standard values, the current psycho-affective environment, the kind of communication, the collective satisfaction of necessities and aspirations… in short, the personal growth of each one.

Groups are not purposes themselves; students are means through which, the growth of their members is favored by multiple reasons, among them:

• The social character of growth and human development.

• The multiplication of interpersonal relationships which favor learning.

• The complementability and enrichment their members give to each other.

• The sense of ownership.

The knowledge of human groups make easy the drifting and stimulation of its members responsible and committed participation. The teacher should propitiate group self organization and self-management among group mates, as well as through institution and social means. That way, the team becomes active, critical outstanding and creator, which facilitates a significant act, starting from experiences that decisively influence the internalization of what students must and want to do.

The groups, whichever, are learning groups of growth, in a wide sense of the word. Therefore, students are not static. Just the opposite, students advance in a spiral way in function of the task student are carrying out. The interaction which takes place, generates development and a specific reality (group reality) relating the social structure with the singular one.

The success of an educational institution depends, beyond any doubts, on many factors, but one is basic: the presence of the working team. Relationships among people regarding the tasks to do constitute a motivating power for human development.These have extraordinary impact on self-esteem, self-accomplishment and, therefore, in the successful action of the team members — of each and of the whole — which means efficiency, productivity and high levels of competivity.

As teachers are able to constitute working teams, connecting with and as an effect of the synergy, they will obtain more and better results.The above mentioned demands collaborative relationships among all the members of a school and of each one of its working teams.

All the above mentioned demands to have very clear the notion of group; both because teachers are always part of one of them, and because being teachers, they work with groups of students.

The learning community is not a purpose itself; it is a means through which the growth of its members is favored by multiple reasons; among them, for the interaction of its members. The relationships among students and also among teachers to learn can be basically of three types:

Individualists: which privilege isolation and lack of exchange among the members of a school group, due to the distribution in the classroom, among other factors.

Competitive: when each of them perceives that they can only obtain a teaching-learning objective, if the other students do not.

Cooperative: when each of them perceives that they can achieve a teaching learning objective if —and only if — the other partners reach it, and students all build their knowledge learning from each other.

Cooperation is the sharing of vital, significant experiences of any kind. lt is to work together in order to achieve common goals coinciding as much in the individual as in the collective which reports benefits for aIl the members of a group.

Cooperation implies the achievement of common results, by means of a positive interdependence involving each member, and where each of them contributes with their talents to the identification and solution of the problem or the creation of something new.

The relationship —or cooperative interrelation— among partners brings:

• Models to imitate.

• Opportunities.

• Support.

• Expectations.

• Direction.

• Reinforcement.

• Different, wider and more complex perspectives.

• Development of cognitive and social abilities.

The scientific literature has denominated differently this new organizational model in the last years, for example it reads about:

• Cooperative learning.

• Collaborating learning.

• Learning in team.

• Learning among equals (among colleagues)

• Collaborative teaching.

• Cooperative education.

• Collaborative pedagogy.

Definitions used are also diverse. Some reduce it to a method or a teaching technique, others to learning alternatives. Cooperative learning is all that, and something else. Cooperative learning is an innovative educational model that proposes a different form of organizing school education at different levels. In such a sense, it is a model of institutional organization, but also of a classroom.

As innovative educational model, cooperative learning is characterized among other things by its:

• Systemic character.

• Universality.

• Opening.

• Flexibility.

• Respect for the one who teaches and for the one who learns.

• Possibilities of creation for principals, teachers and students.

Cooperative learning implies to group the students in small teams. According to the technique, students are grouped in heterogeneous teams in order to boost the development of each, with the cooperation of the other members. It is a means of creating a state of spirit which drives to significant learning, and allows the development of the competitiveness level of the members of the group, by means of collaboration.

It is important to remember that Cooperative learning is not:

• To group students to study.

• To sit down a group of students together at a table so that they communicate among them when making their individual work.

• To request them to make their task individually and the one who finishes first helps his/her partner.

• To assign a task to one or two students and the rest only signs the final report.

Cooperative learning consists, among other things, on:

• Focusing the work cooperatively to learn something, solve a problem, make an experiment, write on a topic, analyze a text, etc.

• To achieve relationship and interdependence between two or more people, about what is made (synergy)

• To make an active restructuring of the content, through group participation.

• To be responsible for the learning of oneself and for that of the classmates.

Cooperative learning demands the creation of conditions that, although minimum, are necessary for its successful realization:

1. Before all, a conception shift on the part of the professor about the meaning of teaching and learning, as well as the understanding on the part of the student, of the need and advantages of working in teams.

2. To know how to constitute stable or homogeneous membership teams (group base), as well as aleatory or heterogeneous ones.

The formation of the team base, that is to say, those that have an identity, can be carried out in different ways:

• Aleatory: where the leader of the group uses techniques of team formation, and the groups are conformed from that approach. Some of them starting from criteria like the letters of the name or of the last name, for the month of birth, for the number of siblings, for size, etc.

• At the leader of the group initiative, who from his own criterion, and list in hand, may form the teams; or work the first sessions with heterogeneous groups and because of previous knowledge of the members, establish the team"s base.

• For likeness among the members, those which after having worked in heterogeneous teams, decide whom to work with and create the team"s base.

Some recommendations made on this respect are:

• The optimum number of the team members is suggested to be four or, being necessary, five as maximum.

• To remark the roles that should be accomplished in the team and make clear if students are revolving ones.

• To establish norms for the group, commitment that should be completed wholly as one of the first activities.

Other demands as important as the two first ones are:

3. To fix the distribution of classroom.

4. To give precise instructions on the task to be carried out, the abilities to develop and the goal to achieve.

5. To specify the goal of each learning situation and to project the desired future state where competition and mastering of the career is shown.

6. To monitor the activity of the teams.

7. To socialize the process and the results of each team through the presentation of the works done and a wide discussion on them.

8. To evaluate the teams and their members in an individual way.

9. To propitiate self-evaluation: to what degree each of them contributed to the achievement of the common goal.

In summary, cooperative learning outlines:

• Creation, coordination and programming of the situation of group cooperative learning.

• Horizontal communication teacher-student and among students.

• Social division of the work.

• Work in team.

• Role playing.

• Individual responsibility.

• Group commitment

• Positive interdependence and promoter integration.

• Socio-affective abilities.

• Group processing of the information.

Cooperative learning is advisable for any type of task or teaching content, but preferably for those where goals of learning may be necessary and demand an effort from a group to give an answer with quality.

Numerous investigations have proved the achievements of teachers and students through quantitative and qualitative studies when students are organized in learning communities. The most important achievements of the students and of teachers that study in well structured communities have been the academic, social and affective ones. Experimental groups have been studied compared with similar groups of control and the achievements are always significant for the experimental groups.

Based on these results and in the knowledge of how to implement learning communities for students, teachers are convinced that reformations, innovations or updates can no longer being introduced in the schools without introducing simultaneously educational communities. No one can longer refuse the teachers", parents" and students" necessities. Nobody can reach his potentiality without the opportunities to be meaningful to his daily work.

Cooperative learning, like other models and contemporary educational alternatives, is based on several scientific disciplines, for example, cooperative learning makes significant contributions to the theories about organizational development, motivation and cognitive development, as well as development of personality.

Without denying neither minimizing the contribution to Cooperative Learning of all of them, the attention is centered on the basis that can be made of this, starting from the positions of Lev Semionovich Vygotsky (1896-1996), for considering them little disclosed, and mainly, for the great importance and transcendency to understand and to apply Cooperative learning creatively in the classroom.

It is impossible to understand and value Vygotsky"s proposal, without taking into consideration its conception of real integral and multifactorial human development, inspired in more than a source; as well as the synthesis and integration of very significant and transcendental contributions of their time.

For L. S Vygotsky the existence in the society, to live and to share with others is source and condition of the psychological development, for that reason the object of study of psychology as a science should be the explanation (not the mere description) of the origin and development of the psychological higher processes, different and common to man.

His position in respect to the object of study of Psychology, as well as his investigations and reflections, contributed to the formation of a theoretical, methodological and practical proposal that would constitute a socio cultural paradigm in the future, completely different from the ones of the current times and which was in advanced in some aspects, in respect to the later paradigms of humanism, cognoscitivism and constructivism.

The Sociocultural focus is characterized by emphasizing:

• The individual from the perspective of the social side.

• The social nature of our behaviour, mind, individuality and the personality.

• The bond of the psychological processes and the sociocultural ones.

• Social conditioning of the psyche.

• The knowledge (the culture) as the internalization of the sociocultural side.

• The psychic processes as non isolated phenomenon.

• The conscience as integration of the psychical higher processes.

• The activity and the communication that make internalization possible.

The mediation is the fundamental element for the internalization through the activity, communication, and the existence of the bond between the cognitive and the affective sides.

The Vygotskian proposal constituted in its time and maybe it is still a reconstruction of Psychology, a serious intent of overcoming the dualism and the prevailing scientific reductionism, when emphasizing on the dialectical unity (interactive system) between man and its environment and to use such categories as: it makes aware (intellectual but also affective), thought and language, activity, inter-subjectivity, communication, high psyquical processes, culture, mediation, instruments, tools and signs, as well as the dynamic inter-functional relationships among all of them.

The following are the three fundamental, historically established positions, around the relationship between human education and human development in general, and in particular of psychological development:

• The fatalist (s-o) also called biologist endogenous that outlines the need of hope the subject has and demonstrate the level of psychological development in particular.

• The preformist (o-s) also known as environmentalist or exogenous, for which all development is fruit of learning, for that reason it is considered enough, planning the appropriate learning tasks to achieve the subject"s development.

• The interactionist (s-o and or-s) focussed the attention on the subject"s as well as the environment, that is to say of the exogenous thing and stiller and their mutual relationship. J. Piaget and L. S Vygotsky are interactionists because of their positions.

From the Vygotskian"s perspective, education and development are two different phenomena. Students are two faces of a coin. Students are two processes that coexist in a very complex relationship and dynamics given from the first day of life between the mother and the child, and probably from before being born and that students constitute one for the other one: precondition, condition and source, according to the moment and the conditions.

• The development as precondition (Level of maturity).

• The development as maturation process.

• The development as condition and source. (Education – Develop)

The dialectical position (s-o, o-s) that implies for relationship in their nature a dynamic interpretation around education-development was taking to L. S. Vygotsky and collaborators to the position not only of the unity between both processes, but also to express the law that out ones that education directs development.

In the education-development relationship, Vygotsky outlined the existence of two development types:

The development reached, that is, the student is able to know and to make by himself, and it shows his current level.

And the potential development, the student is not able to make for himself, but however if is possible with the help of someone else, that he shows his potential level.

In each learning situation, each thing that students want to Iearn, either knowledge, abilities, attitudes or values, in the school or outside, there is a distance between the level of real development and the level of potential development, which Vygotsky called Zone of Proximal Development.

The ZPD is one of the most important and transcendent proposals in Vygotsky, for the integration in a concept, of theoretical, methodological and practical aspects on the learning, as condition for education and development.

As a student moves from his current level to one possible, potential-immediate, there is acquisition of knowledge, appropriation of abilities and incorporation of attitudes and values, and therefore, education and development.

Education is this way, to move or to move from a current level to another wanted in an upward hairspring, and the process that takes place is that of learning. Undoubtedly, for it, interpersonal relationships are required, communication-dialogue to favor the interaction between the subject that learns and the object of knowledge, through a mediator that offers the orientations, suggestions and necessary help, taking into account the real level of development of the subject and the objective to reach: level of the wanted potential development.

The internalization process (to take what is out inside), it is not as simple as we think; it is not free of contingencies and factors of different types that enable or block each other:

1. The subject"s attitude (person that learns), in relation to the object of knowledge.

2. The mediator"s preparation, their capacity to identify the real level of development and stimulation for the achievement of a possible potential level.

3. The programming of orientations or of levels of help; the precise and necessary, no more, no less, given the entrance level (level of real development).

4. The creation of situations of group and cooperative learning, where social interaction (interpersonal), communication, dialogue and achieved intersubjectivity, favor mediation and therefore internalization.

5. The individual and collective reflection on the processes and results (metacognition) and more their application and transfer.

The step from outside toward inside of (intra-psychological), follows a critical route of mediation characterized by moments: first, of non regulation; regulated in group; to at last, to be self-regulafed by the subject (intrapsychological) that apprehend the external from others.

The integral conception of human development of Vygotsky; his position about the relationship education-development, to the area of proximal development and the internalization processes, the half-filled traffic of the inter-psychological and intrapsychological phenomenanons and about some of the factors that make the acquisition of knowledge, abilities, attitudes and possible values, explain and support the proposals of cooperative learning.

Cooperative learning favors the growth of the group -and of each one of its members by means of the challenge of facing the new thing, to explore the unknown and to build their own knowledge.

Students, in this way, develop intelligence, creativity, ethical values, solidarity when sharing the tasks, the need of understanding and wakes up the passion to learn, starting from fhe pleasure of discovering the social, natural and personal world together.

The subject"s potentialities according to L. S. Vygotsky are in the zone of proximal development. The student goes from an initial state where he can not work alone. The necessary help is offered by means of the interaction wifh other people, until she/he can work in an independent way and achieve the necessary autonomy.

In this pedagogical phase, it is necessary to keep in mind the interests, the style and individual rhythm of learning, as well as the subject peculiarities. The teacher organizes the situation of cooperative learning so that the group alternates its chore between individual tasks and tasks for teams for building the knowledge starting from their empiric ideas on the topic.

The teacher"s place is not, therefore, in front of the group not inside it as a partner, but next to the group, creating the conditions so that it carnes out its tasks in gradually active, independent and creative form.

In the mediation process in the classroom some barriers are present. For example: the student rejected by the group or by part of it is who refuses to share and to cooperate. Also the urgency that we always have to complete the official program that leads us to think incorrectly that when completing it, the students have learned. As well as the none comprehension of principal, teachers and colleagues to try to introduce an innovative form of working in the classroom. The training need, to know more about cooperative learning and to develop the necessary abilities to form and to integrate teams, to mediate the social process of construction of the knowledge, etc. To the above-mentioned it is necessary to add the existing need in schools of a flexible, permanent and curricular organizational development.

The cooperative learning comprises determined demands for its application on the part of the teacher.

In synthesis, cooperative learning is intended:

• To optimize the human development.

• To maximize the learning of the students.

• That students learn more and better.

• That students acquire knowledge, abilities, attitudes and values.

• That students develop the social, the affective and the volitional sides.

• And also that students learn from others and with others.

Cooperative learning contributes to the development of:

• A feeling of companionship.

• A self esteem.

• A responsibility and commitment with tasks.

• Potentialities so rnuch intellectuals as partner-affective.

As well as it brings:

• Opportunity to share.

• Models to imitate.

• Bigger supports (help system) to learn.

• Increase of expectations.

• Different perspectives on one matter.

• Cooperative learning brings the teacher its open and positive attitude of change and its effort for innovation.

• Bigger satisfaction in the process and in the results of the work as professional.

• A new forrn of organizing the teaching-learning process.

• And also a new philosophy and practice of education.

The teacher stops to be the repeater of what comes in books, the technical applicator of what others have designed and he becomes, little by little, in what he should be: a professional that rnakes decisions according to the conditions and the objectives to achieve.

Principles of cooperative learning :

1. Work in tearn and in learning cornrnunity.

2. Heterogeneous grouping.

3. Distributed and shared leadership.

4. Responsibility of each one with his/her learning.

5. To make the others" learning something of their own.

6. Positive group interdependence.

7. Group autonomy.

8. Active, committed and responsible participation.

9. Direct confrontation with the teaching content.

10. To find a sense and a meaning to what is learned.

11. lnterest to know, to solve, to Iearn.

12. Social construction of knowledge.

13. Development of metacognition and transfer.

14. Application of what is learned.

15. Teacher mediation.

These are important ideas for the correct and successful application of cooperative learning.