Final answer:
Competitive grading is the least likely strategy to encourage students to share and assume responsibility since it promotes individual performance over cooperative efforts. It contrasts with cooperative learning and group projects which are designed to foster teamwork and communal responsibility, aligning more with resolving collective action problems.
Step-by-step explanation:
Out of the strategies listed - cooperative learning, peer assessment, competitive grading, and group projects - the one least likely to encourage students to share and assume responsibility for their accomplishments and behavior is competitive grading. Competitive grading typically focuses on individual performance, often promoting a comparative evaluation where students are ranked against one another. This strategy can create an environment where the emphasis is on outperforming peers rather than cooperative development and shared responsibility.
In contrast, cooperative learning and group projects are designed to promote teamwork, letting students work together towards a common goal, thus taking communal responsibility for outcomes. Peer assessment allows students to be involved in the evaluation process, giving them a role in the accountability loop.
Competitive grading can lead to a tragedy of the commons situation in which individual incentives do not align with collective well-being, creating a potential decline in group performance and deterrence from shared responsibility. Essential to avoiding such a scenario are strategies that encourage collective effort, monitoring, and peer reinforcement, as noted in the discussion of collective action problems being less severe in small groups due to peer pressure and the ease of monitoring individual behavior.