Health Education Development/Critical essay

For your assessment, you will research and turn in an individual Critical Essay comparing and contrasting Social Isolation, Social Independence and Social Interdependence in terms of potential influences on learning outcomes for individuals and groups. You should compare with ‘traditional’ approaches to learning and propose circumstances where one might be preferred over the other and why.

This assignment is to be 1500 words. It is due at 9am, 14 April 2014. Assessment comprises 30% of your overall mark.

If it has been awhile since you have written an essay or you did not receive a strong grounding in the practice in secondary college, you might wish to review the topics in this play list. Do not watch it all at once. Use it as a resource. Watch it here. The topics covered by the videos are:

How to think critically—Ben Powers
Argument & Evidence in Expository Essay Writing
Compare and Contrast Essay
Five Paragraph Essay: Three formulas for the basic essay
Basic English Essay Skills: Build a Strong Body Paragraph
Basic English Essay Skills: Paragraph Transitions & Connections
Basic Essay Skills: Conclusion Paragraph
How to Write an Introduction Paragraph for Your Essay
Avoid Plagiarism in Research Papers with Paraphrases & Quotations
How to Use Quotations In Writing Essays-APA or MLA

Steps

Step One: Ensure that you have scanned through the introductory material for the first four topics of the subject. Then, obtain the following pre-selected texts that are to be used in your essay:

Baker, T. and Clark, J. (2010) Cooperative learning--a double-edged sword: A cooperative learning model for use with diverse student groups. Intercultural Education 21(3):257-268.
Johnson, D.W. and Johnson, R.T. (2009) An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational researcher 38(5):365-379.
Johnson, D.W. (2003) Social interdependence: Interrelationships among theory, research, and practice. American Psychologist 58(11):934-945.
Prince, M. (2004) Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education (July):223-231.
Smith, K. (1979) Learning together and alone: Cooperation, competition, and individualization. NACTA Journal (September):23-26.
Tsay, M. and Brady, M. A case study of cooperative learning and communication pedagogy: Does working in teams make a difference? Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 10(2):78-89.
Wang, M. (2012) Effects of Cooperative Learning on achievement motivation of female university students. Asian Social Science 8(15):108-114.
Zohar, A. and Dori, Y.J. (2003) Higher order thinking skills and low-achieving students: Are they mutually exclusive? Journal of the Learning Sciences 12(2):145-181.

Step Two: Having scanned the pre-selected texts, obtain four more articles from referreed journals that help you to better understand the concepts of "social isolation", "social independence" and "social interdependence" as they influence teaching and learning within a tertiary setting.

Step Three: As you read, try to keep track of the various ways in which the three main topics that you are to compare and contrast are spoken of. Consider how they relate to cooperative learning. Which support cooperative learning? Which would work against cooperative learning? How might group dynamics and group processes influence this?

Step Four: There is a very strong assumption that cooperative learning is a worthwhile way to engage students to enable them to achieve higher order thinking and learning. As you read, what is the evidence that this might be the case? Is there strong evidence to the contrary? Under what conditions is cooperative learning best employed? When are special considerations to be taken with cooperative learning?

Step Five: There is good evidence that students engaged in cooperative learning can do better in their studies than working individually. Under what circumstances might this be true and under which circumstances might this not hold true? A critical essay will try to be as specific on these points as possible. Nothing is perfect in this world and it is good to know the limitations of any technique or process. Be sure that you have understood what traditional teaching and learning methods have focused on and be able to outline the key differences between cooperative learning or active learning and passive learning approaches.

Step Six: As you read and reflect, you will begin to develop your own questions as well. Ensure that you take note of these and attend to them in your essay, if they add both clarity and depth to your argument. Start gathering your thoughts together. Check to see that you have material to cover the main points for your essay. Begin drafting or creating dot points for some of your ideas. There are a variety of ways to do this and you may wish to visit the library web-site and other resources for writing an essay.

Step Seven: Take a piece of paper for each of your main ideas and write down a few thoughts with the reference material. If you need more than one piece of paper for an idea, use more pages. But, keep your references with your ideas and your paraphrasing of other people's dieas. The hardest thing to do is to go back and try to find which reference goes with which idea that was sparked for or paraphrased by you.

Step Eight: Put all your different ideas into some order. Ensure that they flow as smoothly as possible from one idea to the next and that you create an over all idea (or, a big idea). Make sure you take your reader step by step from the beginning to the end in clear language. Read your work aloud as your brain will put words into play which are not on the paper without your realising it; but, the reader will. Look out for correct spelling and punctuation. Shorten longer sentences into two, three or even four shorter and better coordinated sentences. Put in your 'intext' references and create your reference section.

Step Nine: Check and recheck that you have all your references in the right place and that your 'intext' reference and reference section match up. Write an introduction that tells the reader what you are going to talk about. Then, tell them briefly what you have to say about the topic. Finally, in your introduction, give them a taster about the significance of what you are going to talk about. Then, move to your conclusion. Think about your argument and summarise it in a few sentences. Then, give a longer account of the significance of what you have to say. For instance, you might say that your argument is significant because it demonstrates that, in most cases, when students and staff have done their preparation work, cooperative learning will have better outcomes for most students. However, folks with special concerns may need more resources.

Step Ten: Have someone else look over your work to find any clangers and, then, upload your work into "Turn-it-in" before submitting it on the LMS. There will be further instructions about this last point a little later. Now is the time to gather your materials, start your reading, and begin to develop your own thoughts.

All the best.

Criteria

Due at 9am, 14 April 2014
Equivalent to 1500 words
Submit through Turn It In by (due date on LMS)
Incorporate the eight set texts and at least four additional texts selected by you
Criteria for an essay

Help

How to write a critical essay (Wikihow)

Since your assignments are related to workplace practice, you should begin to develop and demonstrate the following attributes as well as your subject learning objectives:

Researching, developing and articulating your essay will help you to understand the various issues that have been highlighted in relation to cooperative learning as an extension of Morton Deutsch's theories concerning social interdependence.
It will be important to demonstrate that you have adequately understood how group dynamics (relationships) and group processes (mechanisms) either enable or hinder groups as they seek to achieve their goals. You will need to pay special attention to a potentially vulnerable group within a relevant setting such as a university, workplace or community.
The ability to analyse the key aspects of cooperative learning, vulnerable groups in settings and health promotion practice will be crucial to pulling these same concepts together (synthesis) to solve new problems in particular contexts. Your ability to critically evaluate your own ideas and the ideas of others will enhance your capacity to develop a shared understanding of what will be required to plan, implement and evaluate health education lessons for selected vulnerable groups.
One key attribute demonstrated through an essay is the capacity to act in an ethical and responsible manner. Exhibiting and maintaining a high level of diligence in crediting the work of others, ensuring the credibility of their work and your own, and directing enquirers to further examples of related work (including different points of view) are examples of such capacity.

Examples

Forthcoming (exceptional student work published here)