Cooperative learning for Interracial Interaction: An action research study

Abstract

South Africans are challenged daily by the legacy of apartheid. The racial divisions of the past continue to haunt South Africans, nine years into its democracy. This mini-thesis reports on an action research project that attempted to investigate the racial divisions that existed in my Natural Sciences classroom and to explore how cooperative learning could be utilized to get learners from different racial backgrounds interacting with one another. Learning to be an effective tool to get learners working together and interacting with one another, there need to be proper planning and structuring of cooperative leaning lessons, learners should know and understood what is e4pected of then, and learners should be placed in groups that would encourage interact interaction My research has also highlighted the difficulty) Xhosa speaking learners have with English being used as a medium of instruction and how this deepens the interracial division amongst learners in the classroom. This mini-thesis also puts forward the argument that education is a powerful tool to be used for social transformation and that teachers need to play a proactive and reflective role as agents of social transformation