Investigating Effects for COoperative Open Learning (COOL) on Students' Learning Process! Early Findings from a Longitudinal Survey

Description

COoperative Open Learning (COOL) is a progressive model of teaching that was introduced in Austria in 1996 by a small team of teachers, who struggled with heterogeneity in their commercial college-classrooms. COOL gained nation-wide attention and soon spread over Austria. At the moment over 100 Austrian commercial colleges are “COOL-certified” (cooltrainers 2011). However, there have been hardly any attempts to analyze the effects of this specific instructional design so far. A few cross-sectional studies give insight into the state of selected teaching- and learning-related dimensions such as classroom climate (Eder 1999; Helm 2011), self regulated learning (Neubauer 2010), self concept (Eder 1999; Sturm et al. 2009), social competence (Raabe 2008; Helm 2009), commercial mathematics performance (Aff & Rechberger 2008; Altrichter, Helm & Kallinger 2010). However, the results are inconsistent and do not allow to draw causal inference, due to the design of these studies. The main purpose of the presented dissertation project is to remedy this research desideratum. Research questions concerning the extent of external guidance in learning processes lead to a paradigm controversy that has lasted for 30 years (Meyer 2004) and ended in the rationale, that there is no single instructional design that serves all goals and solves all problems of institutional education (Weinert 1998). The present study aims to replicate those empirical findings on high school/college level (e.g. for subject-specific knowledge guided instruction seems to be more effective, whereas for key competences open learning environments seem to be slightly more effective; Hedges & Giaconia 1981).

Period	19 Sept 2012
Event title	European Conference on Educational Research (Main Conference)2012: The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All
Event type	Conference
Location	SpainShow on map