First Responsibility of a Teacher: Create a Learning Community

There are a lot of myths about cooperative learning. Most of them disparage the technique as being "socialistic", or of "bringing everyone down" to the level of average, or of keeping good students from being able to earn the high grades they deserve.

I don't see any of these things, and I have used cooperative learning techniques for almost 20 years. Moreover, it has to be said: the most basic responsibility of any educator is to create a respectful, functioning, focussed classroom atmosphere, where learning about the subject at hand is the central concern.

To that end, in my experience, there is no better pedagogical approach than cooperative learning.

Please read the rest of the posts in this section if you want to know more about where I am coming from on this.

As I mention in an earlier post--What is Cooperative Learning?-- there are five essential principles behind the cooperative strategy: positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, and group processing.

All right, that may sound like a lot of eduspeak gobbleydegook to you, and I am not going to unpack each one of those in this post, but let's talk about what this means holistically and why cooperative learning should figure into almost any course offered in a K-12 context today.

First, almost everyone in and around education acknowledges that "collaborative people skills" are essential in today's world, not only for work, but also in terms of being an effective family or community member as well.

In today's economy, there just are not a lot of jobs in which you sit quietly at your cubicle, do your own work, do not have to explain or relate it to anyone else, then go home at the end of the day secure, knowing that your job will always exist and pay a living wage.

Similarly, in raising a family or living a community, there are not many situations in which you can simply depend upon yourself, and yourself only, to accomplish the complex tasks of family and community, whether advocating for health care or fighting to shape the future of your neighborhood.

What we are really talking about with cooperative learning is using the classroom experience of students to maximize their development of effective people skills.

What I most love is that this skill development happens without conscious effort on the part of students. In other words, while students are working out an intellectual problem or solving a particularly difficult question, they are also growing people skills because they are listening, speaking, mediating and moving toward developing a consensus answer in their group.

On that level alone cooperative strategies are a strong positive for developing learners. How often in education do you get a "two-for-one" special in terms of learning outcomes?

But, there are other benefits as well, significant ones.

Like second, for instance, how students in cooperative groups--when structured properly--are able to process material more fully and more deeply then when stationed alone at their desks.

Why?

Easy.

As the material is being worked, if the group is responsible for each other's learning, the reinforcement of concepts and ideas is continuous, and it comes from fellow students themselves, not the teacher. Every single day, I hear students grabbing ahold of content material and putting it in their own words and their own explanations to fellow students. In essence, they are doing the teaching for me to those who may not have gotten it the first time, for whatever reason.

Unethical, you say?

Not so. In fact, as many a teacher can explain, only by teaching something to another person do we ever really master the content to a level that it is profound and not easily forgotten. The "re-teaching" that happens amongst students is some of the most significant learning that occurs on a daily basis because they are incorporating their understanding at a very deep level--deep enough to be able to explain it coherently to others right here, right now.

(I would add that they get the feeling of "success" at being able to do this well, thus reinforcing in their own mind their efficacy at being able to help others. And for the cynics out there: sorry but, most human beings actually generate positive feelings about themselves and others when they feel as if they are able to genuinely help another person. Those feelings of positive self-worth themselves lead to other multiple positives in terms of a sense of belonging, interest in learning and a desire to be of service in an organization or a community.)

Third, what you are really creating in a room that uses cooperative learning techniques is a community of learners. It is one in which cooperation, empathy and sharing are valued for the humanistic assets that they are. It is one in which sincerity, authenticity and honesty are held up as the highest form of human interaction. It is one in which the search for truth is not about absolutes, but mediated by the kind of discussion and careful listening and thinking that makes for good scholarship generally.

You see, the real goal of a classroom is to have a community of learners who are focussed together on a common topic. The goal is not to have everyone agree or achieve mastery at the same level. (Sorry, if you are looking for some utopist conception of socialism, push on down the Web.)

Rather, the goal is to have everyone engage at the level of ability they can, to be stimulated and moved by the words of others, and to push the dialogue to its highest level by using the natural curiosity and abilities found in that room. Leaders will be leaders. Followers will listen, respond and consider. Outliers will chip in where they can.

What we are really talking about is structuring an environment so that the contributions of all are valued for what they are. Not privileging some over others, but rather, learning from them all.

The overall sense that is created in such a classroom is one where the material stimulates a reaction in learners; learners have a process in small groups leading to their best work; that work is then shared, assessed and evaluated for the qualities it contains. When returned and digested, it will inform each student as to the quality of their process, thinking and productive abilities. They can then adjust their efforts and move forward.

Somewhere along the line, we have turned our back on a fundamental truth about the learning process: namely, a student can learn as much, or more (and often does), from his/her peers as he/she can from the adult in the room.

After all, there is only one adult (usually), but there are a couple dozen or more fellow human beings, all of whom have genuine feelings, reactions and ideas about the issues at hand. The opportunities for learning are multiplied many times when the room is open to cooperative strategies; instead of one discussion, there are nine or ten.

What cooperative learning is really about is opening the learning process to the natural and inherently profound reality that surrounds us regardless: the manifold diversity and abilities of the human family.

To think that only one person in a room holds all the answers or is the sole authority over the response to the material before the class is nothing less than a form of authoritarianism, if not an outright example of magical thinking.

And so too, is the idea that the teacher is the only one in the community responsible for a child's learning.

Hogwash.

We might as well hold the president responsible for everything that happens across the country on a given day. (I would note that we can't get our president to take responsibility for anything, much less admit to ever having made a single mistake during the course of his entire administration. So much for magical thinking.)

Teachers are responsible for creating effective learning communities. And that is something which is not that hard to observe, measure or assess. The sooner we move toward that as an educational ideal, the sooner all children will be able to achieve their full potential.