Student Team-Achievement Division (STAD) is one of cooperative learning techniques in which students work in a group of four or five. The groups consist of students from difference academic levels, sexes and background ethnics. They are responsible for discussing and working group before answering quiz individually.
The main idea behind STAD is to motivate students, to encourage, and to improve each other’s skill presented by the teacher. If the students want their team to get team rewards, they must help their teammates learn the material, they must encourage their teammates to do their best, and express the atmosphere that learning is important, valuable, and fun.
In STAD, students are assigned to four-member learning teams that are mixed in heterogeneous teams. The teacher presents a lesson and then students work within their teams to make sure that all team members have mastered the lesson. Then, all students take individual quizzes on the material, at which time they may not help one another.
STAD is one technique in teaching learning process which is done by grouping the students in teams that consist of four or five students. By this technique, the students can increase their understanding of the material that delivered by the teacher and discusses it with their group. Each member helps one another to present their best performance, and then the teacher gives a reward to the best team.
a. The Components
According to Slavin, there are five components of STAD:
1) Class Presentation
In STAD, the material introduces first in the classroom presentation. This is a direct instruction as is often done or lesson discussion led by the teacher. In this way, the students will realize that they should be really paying full attention to help them in working the quizzes.
2) Team
The students are assigned to four or five member learning teams that are mixed in heterogeneous teams. The team representing all parts of the class regarding academic performance, gender, race, and ethnicity. The main function of the team is to ensure that all team members actually learn to prepare its members to be able to properly quiz.
3) Quiz
After gave presentations and about one or two periods of team practice, the students will working on individual quiz. The members of team was not allowed to help each other in a quiz.
4) Score individual progress
The idea behind the individual progress score is to give to each student performance goals that will be achieved if they work harder and deliver better performance than before. Each student can contribute to his team maximum points in this scoring system, but no students were able to do it without giving their best effort.
5) Recognition Team
The team will get a certificate or other form of reward if their average score reaches a certain criteria. Team scores students can also be used to determine the twenty percent of their ratings.
b. The Procedures
Student Team Achievement division (STAD) requires through prior preparation before learning activities undertaken. The preparations include:
1) Learning Equipments
The learning equipments which need to be prepared are including lesson plans, student books, and student activity sheets along with the answer sheet.
2) Establish a cooperative group
The team members in a group tried to be heterogeneous, by considers race, religion, gender, and social background. Capabilities between one group to another homogeneous relatively. If the class consists of races and backgrounds are relatively same, then the formation of the group can be based on academic achievement, they are: (1) students in the class is ranked first according cleverness in the lesson, (2) determine the three groups in which the upper group, middle group, and the lower group.
3) Determining the initial score
Initial score that can be used in the classroom is a cooperative previous test scores. This initial score may change after the quiz. For example in further learning and after extensive tests, the results of each individual test can be used as initial score.
4) Seating arrangements
The seating arrangements is done to support the success of cooperative learning, if there is no seating arrangement can cause chaos that caused the collapse the cooperative classroom learning.
5) Working Group
To prevent any obstacles on the Student Team Achievement Division (STAD), first held teamwork exercises. It aims to further introduce each individual in the group.
c. The Steps
According to Ibrahim et al in Trianto, steps of STAD based on cooperative steps measures consisting of six steps or phases, as follows:
Phase Teacher Activity
Phase 1
Delivering objective and motivate students Delivering all the learning goals to be achieved in these subjects and motivating students.
Phase 2
Delivers / Presents information Presents the information to students by demonstrating or through reading material.
Phase 3
Organize students into groups to learn Explain to the students how to form study groups and assist each group in order to make the transition efficiently.
Phase 4
Guiding groups working and learning Guiding groups working and learning groups learned by the time they do their work.
Phase 5
Evaluation Evaluating the learning outcomes of the material that has been taught or each group present their work.
Phase 6
Giving reward Finding rewarding ways to appreciate the effort and the learning outcomes of individuals and groups.
According to Hanafiah, steps of STAD can be completed in the following phases:
a) Learners are given an initial test and obtained a score early.
b) Students are divided into small groups of 4-5 people that are heterogeneous.
c) Teachers communicate its goals and motivate learners.
d) Teachers present the lesson materials and the learners work in teams.
e) Teachers guide the students.
f) Students were given a test on the material that has been taught.
g) Giving the reward.
From some statements above, it can be concluded that the steps of STAD began by the presentation of information or learning materials, divided the students into small groups that consist of four or five students, teachers led the study groups, evaluate the learning outcomes of matter that has taught or each group present their work, and reward the effort and the learning outcomes of individuals and groups.
d. Advantages and Disadvantages
In STAD, students are working in a learning group. (Damon, Murray and Wadsworth)”…argue that interactions among students on learning group will lead in itself to improved student achievement. Students will learn from one another because in their discussions of the content, cognitive conflicts will arise, inadequate reasoning will be exposed, and higher-quality understandings will emerge.”
Giving reward for their best performance also can motivate the students to do their best. When students work together toward a common goal, as they do when a cooperative reward structure is in place, their learning efforts help their group mates succeed. Students therefore encourage one another’s learning, reinforce one another’s academic efforts, and express norms favoring academic achievement. These are the advantages of STAD.
While STAD also has some disadvantages, one of its disadvantages is that grouping students together will almost always form a group in which some students are faster learners or workers than others. The students who need more time to understand the work may feel frustrated at being left behind. Alternately, students who learn faster may feel delayed or held back by having to wait for the ones that learn more slowly.
Another disadvantage of cooperative learning is that there are certain groups dynamics present in all groups. Some students will always be leaders while others are followers. If one student tries to take over the group and the other students don’t feel equally heard or valued, it can make it difficult for work to be done.