Enhancing cooperative learning in TESOL teacher education

This paper discusses how a TESOL teacher educator took reflective action in an ESL methods class with the goal of increasing pre-service and in-service teachers’ use of cooperative learning (CL) activities in their own ESL classrooms. CL has been at the forefront of educational research and is a frequent topic in methodology textbooks, teacher education programmes, and in-service coursework. The positive benefits of CL have been documented in a variety of studies. Despite these benefits and the prevalence of the topic in teacher educational contexts, CL is not as widespread as would be expected. Teaching practices are influenced by teachers ’ prior experiences and beliefs. If pre-service teachers are not exposed to effective models of CL in their teacher education programmes it may be unrealistic to expect them to engage in CL in their own classrooms. Introduction This paper investigates the prevalence of cooperative learning (CL) strategies in English as a second language (ESL) classrooms and the results of a semester long TESOL methods course that attempted to deconstruct