Experiencias de trabajo cooperativo en la educación superior. Percepciones sobre su contribución al desarrollo de la competencia social

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requires the development of key competences to respond to the demands of society and the labor market. Social Competence includes fundamental skills for quality social relationships in the personal and professional sphere. Cooperative Learning is identified as an appropriate method to achieve this goal. This article presents the experience of qualitative research during the 2009-2015 courses in which participatory action research is structured as an appropriate technique, since it investigates the sample, a teaching methodology is designed based on the shortcomings and returns to investigate the effectiveness of learning due to the methodology. We present a case in which participatory action research has been applied to the field of university education in which the adaptation to diversity is more precisely assured by the adequacy that it gives to the classroom under investigation. Besides presents the results of the analysis of the perception expressed by the students about the degree to which cooperative teamwork contributes to the development of their Social Competence after participating in a Cooperative Learning experience. A type of applied research is designed, from a qualitative perspective, not experimental, in the field of evaluation of results for decision making. 126 First and Fourth Grade students participate. Through a Likert-type questionnaire, their perception of emerging competences is gathered in the performance of the Social Competence: Empathy, Consensus or Democratic Participation and Assertiveness. This study provides novelty in that it explores a sample of students with diverse profiles, taking as a starting point in an integrated way various variables and on the perception that the students themselves express explicitly. It is confirmed that the students perceive that, through Cooperative Learning, their Social Competence is developed. The best valued skills are those related to the cognitive field and others of an emotional, axiological and paradigmatic nature are relegated to the background.