Cooperative Learning Can Promote Active Engagement and Critical Thinking: An Undergraduate Zoology Case Study at a Government College of Bangladesh

Introduction. Cooperative learning can enhance students’ motivation, active engagement, deep understanding, and critical thinking by stimulating their inquisitiveness and analytical capacities in learning process. This requires systematically operated explorative and complex problem-solving activities that apparently remain under explored in Bangladesh college education perspective. Methodology. A single qualitative method case study in one government college of Bangladesh was aimed to investigate the perceptions of undergraduate zoology students and teachers about the effect of cooperative learning on learners’ active engagement and critical thinking. Questionnaires containing a mixture of Likert scales and open-ended questions were used to investigate 3rd and 4th year undergraduate zoology students’ (n=36) perspectives, while semi-structured interviews were conducted simultaneously to understand teachers’ (n=8) experience and opinions of using cooperative learning pedagogies and their effects. All but three respondent students were female so that gender issue was not considered in data analysis. The study data- both qualitative and quantitative were analyzed statistically on MS-Excel-2016. Findings. The study revealed a clear positive consensus of the respondent students and teachers on the ability of small group work based cooperative learning to promote students’ active engagement and critical thinking. Both responding groups perceived students’ active engagement, better critical thinking and peer sharing, and alternative ways of solution as the benefits, whilst ensuring adequate learning resources, active peer engagement, and equal access to learning resources as the challenges of the learning tool. Most students (83%) viewed the new learning settings to help them engage equally and 86% assessed their performance to be promoted to very good or excellent ranks. Moreover, 83% either agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in cooperative learning classes could enhance their critical thinking ability whilst, teachers’ instructional design for students’ equal access to adequate learning resources and motivation for new and alternative ways of learning appeared the mostly viewed pedagogical elements for promoting students’ active engagement and critical thinking respectively. There was a clear agreement between the perceptions of the students and their teachers in many instances of the positive roles of the learning method for better student outcomes. Conclusion. Cooperative pedagogies not only promote students’ active engagement but their critical thinking abilities also. Forming small- groups of students to the beginning of a marking session and assigning them with research projects as part of their course works seemingly helped bring better learning achievement in the study. This has strengthened the call for adopting cooperative learning as a regular alternative instructional method in under graduate zoology classes of Bangladesh.