The Nature and Character Traits of Teachers Who Use Cooperative Learning Extensively in Their Classes

Abstract

The article deals with the research on the nature of cooperative teachers. The research was done to find out the personality and/or character traits of teachers who use cooperative learning extensively in their classes. The reason for doing this was the real situation experienced in teacher in-service education that not all the teachers getting familiar with cooperative learning method would use it in their classes. So the research question was raised whether a teacher’s personality helped to determine if she/he would use cooperative learning in the class. The data were collected through the online discussion in Internet. The conclusions are based on the analysis of the responses of 153 educators from more than 25 different world countries. The discussion leads to the conclusions that personality plays a role – along with other factors such as culture and past experience. Besides, cooperative teachers have a high level of personal confidence and a high level of confidence in their students’ abilities, and they are inclined to take risks, as well as, tolerate “chaos”.