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.