This study conducted a meta-analysis on the effects of cooperative learning on the social competencies of democratic citizenship competency, communication competency, social relationships, social skills, multicultural respect competency, and cooperation competency.
Experimental field studies on the effects of cooperative learning were collected and their effects were compared with those of individual learning. Seventy-eight studies published between January 1, 2005 and June 30, 2022 were selected and a total of 142 effect sizes were analyzed. The results revealed that the effect size of cooperative learning on social competencies was .59 in comparison with individual learning, which indicates a larger effect size than effect sizes found in previous meta-analysis studies examining the effects of cooperative learning on academic achievement. Effect sizes were not significantly different for the six types of social competencies, suggesting that cooperative learning is similarly effective for all six types of social competencies. Moderating effects were analyzed in terms of school level, gender, composition method of cooperative learning, methods of interaction between groups, number of members in a group, characteristics of learning context, cooperative learning period, group compensation, role within the group, training of social skills, reflection after group work, and publication type. A significant moderating effect was found only for school level and publication type. As for school level, cooperative learning was found to be more effective with lower-grade elementary school students than with high school students. These results suggest that, unlike previous research on the effects of cooperative learning on academic achievement, cooperative learning is generally effective for social competencies across different learner characteristics and specific characteristics of cooperative learning.