What teaching strategy involves pairing students to work together on a task?

Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that emphasizes collaboration among students by pairing them to work together on a specific task or project. This approach enables students to share their perspectives, learn from one another, and develop essential social and communication skills. It fosters an interactive learning environment where students are actively engaged in the learning process, encouraging discussion, and helping each other achieve common academic goals.

Through cooperative learning, students often take on different roles within a group, which can enhance their understanding of the material as they explain concepts to their peers or work collaboratively to solve problems. This method also promotes a sense of community in the classroom, as students can build relationships and support each other in their learning journey. The focus on teamwork and shared responsibility is what fundamentally distinguishes cooperative learning from other methods such as individual learning, which isolates students, or lecture-based teaching, where the teacher delivers information without student interaction.