Cooperative learning.

On my teaching rounds this week I worked with a group of students while they prepared for an upcoming debate. They had previously done a lot of work on debates and had plenty of practice, but this particular group had been selected by the teacher and the class to compete against other year five classes. Their topic was ‘Students should be allowed to wear any hairstyle they want to school”, and their debate group was ‘negative’. As they were competing, my role as the teacher was not to provide them with the answers, but rather, to guide them in the right direction and supervise the group. I must admit, I was very impressed with how cooperatively they worked as a group, and also at how motivated and self-directed they were. It was obvious their teacher had put in a lot of work into teaching them about not only the key components of debates and their structure, but also about effective group work.

This is a clear example of ‘cooperative learning’. Cooperative learning is “an organisational strategy for teaching social skills and responsibility, while at the same time focusing on academic content” (Goodwin, 1999, Udvari-Solner & Thousand, 1996 in Arthur, Gordon & Butterfield, 2003). Students utilising this strategy are normally immersed in an activity, as they work collectively in small groups towards achieving a common goal. In this instance, the students were working collectively to research their debate topic. The essential idea surrounding cooperative learning however, is the social skills the students acquire to function effectively as a group. This can include roles such as “reporter, recorder, leader, clarifier, and encourager” (Arthur et al. 2003). It was interesting to watch the students, as while no roles were assigned to each individual student for the research component of the debate, I did notice that roles naturally emerged amongst them. Essentially, cooperative learning combines academic content with social skills so students can gain an understanding of the roles people adopt in order to work cooperatively to achieve a common goal.

Reference:

Arthur, M., Gordon, C., & Butterfield, N. (2003). The impact of curriculum and instruction. In Classroom Management: Creating Positive Learning Environments, (pp.43-52). Thomson: Southbank, Victoria.