Classroom Collaboration

Phillida Salmon, Hilary Claire

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000769579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Originally published in 1984, this is an account of a two-year study of four comprehensive school classrooms, where teachers were fostering collaborative learning methods. The authors draw on their joint knowledge and experience as a psychologist and a teacher to give an insight into pupils' perceptions of their schooling, and a dynamic analysis of the process of education that they experienced.

Working on the premise that successful collaboration demands common goals and mutual understanding, the author observed pupils at work, transcribed their talk, and carried out interviews with both pupils and their teachers. They show how individual children can support and learn from each other, document the social and psychological features underlying the use, or non-use, of collaboration, and take the teachers' own frames of reference as a standpoint in evaluating success.

The authors' findings were intended to encourage teachers to move away from the traditional view of education as the transmission of knowledge to passive pupils. Social relationships within the classroom can potentially be, not merely a source of disruption, but the basis of learning itself. This possibility is particularly significant in the context of inner-city schools where there is often mutual mistrust and hostility across lines of race, class, gender or ability.

Chapter 1

The concerns of the study

 

 

 

Traditionally, school learning has been seen as the transmission of a body of knowledge - as teachers passing on their expertise to pupils. This view makes certain assumptions about children and teachers, and about how people come to know. One of these assumptions is that, in the situation of school learning, the teacher has knowledge, while the child is ignorant. This fits with the convention that communication should be largely one-way, from teacher to pupils, since pupils are seen as receiving rather than constructing their understanding of the curriculum. Implicit in a knowledge-transmission view of education is also the idea that what is learned in school is an impersonal body of knowledge, existing independently of the particular human beings there. This idea makes legitimate the separation of school knowledge from out-of-school experience, and the exclusion from classroom concerns of personal feelings and personal relationships.

Many secondary teachers would themselves strongly dispute this definition of their work. Yet, in some ways, it is deeply entrenched in secondary school practice. The gearing of the curriculum to external examinations means that teachers must provide inputs for testable outputs. The separation into compartments of school knowledge confirms its impersonal character, and, additionally, creates a timetable in which there is little continuity of human relationships, and social encounters are transient and short-term. The organization of learning carries heavy pressures on teachers to control and manage pupils - pressures which are most easily met by making learning individualized and demanding that children play a largely passive and silent part in the classroom.

It must surely be time to question the assumptions on which these practices rest. There is by now a substantial body of writing and research which challenges the view of education as knowledge-transmission, and shows the fertility of alternative definitions. Sociologists of education such as Keddie (1973) and Young (1971) have shown the political basis which underlies the reproduction of knowledge in school, and the function which education-as-transmission can serve in social control and maintenance of the status quo. Other writers have questioned the anonymity of knowledge, by examining the meaning of the school curriculum for particular groups of young people. The work of Willis (1977) makes clear the irrelevance of school learning for many working class boys, while writers such as Searle (1978) have illuminated the ethnocentric character of the curriculum and the kinds of radical reconstruction that are needed if minority ethnic pupils are to be engaged in classroom learning. Other research, considering the differential significance of the curriculum for boys and for girls, has revealed the extent to which Maths and Science, for instance, are inter-penetrated by differential gender expectations (for instance, Deem, 1980).

On another level, many writers have considered traditional teaching modes, and examined the ways in which they can act to alienate pupils. The work of Barnes (1976 and 1977) has been seminal in showing how these modes are inimical to real personal learning, which depends on much freer and more open kinds of communication. James (1977) argues that learning methodologies are particularly crucial in multi-racial classrooms where content and method are essentially inseparable. The educational fertility of non-traditional modes, within such classrooms, is shown in a recent study by Richmond (1982). In examining the hidden agenda of classroom teaching, Spender (1982) demonstrates the extent to which, by the ways they engage with their pupils, teachers convey different messages to boys and girls. The processes of classroom learning are also mediated by pupils themselves, and particularly by pupils acting together. This perspective informs a study by Furlong (1976), who shows how unofficial, often covert pupil-pupil interchanges are used to construct moment-to-moment definitions of the classroom situation - definitions which carry very different kinds of response to the teacher.

Teachers who acknowledge these kinds of considerations, and who reject a transmission model of education, are inevitably entailed in developing alternative learning methods. These methods perhaps necessarily involve some form of collaborative learning. As yet, there has been little published work on collaborative classroom modes. The two short books by Barnes (1976) and Barnes and Todd (1977) have, however, been very influential. In them, Barnes gives an account of his own work in setting up small groups, in a variety of curriculum areas, in which pupils worked together without the direction of a teacher. Barnes’s own focus has been concerned with the kinds of talk generated by collaborative, as against traditional, learning situations. His argument, essentially, is that small group talk has the exploratory character necessary for personally meaningful learning. Only by thinking aloud, acknowledging uncertainty, formulating tentative ideas, comparing interpretations and negotiating differences - only by these means can learners shape meanings for themselves and others, and thereby arrive at real understanding. This kind of free, active, exploration of knowledge, though it can happen in talk among equals, is constrained by expository teaching, with its implicit demand for the correct answer. For this reason, restricting pupil participation inhibits just those kinds of learning which teachers generally see as most important.

There are also other reasons why collaborative modes may be critical if real learning is to occur. As Schutz (1932) has remarked, ‘We achieve reflective awareness when we try to act on someone whose implicit beliefs are different from our own.’ From this point of view, traditional teacher exposition, with its emphasis on consensus and discouragement of idiosyncratic interpretations, may be very un-developing intellectually. Conversely, a free-for-all among pupils, in which differences of viewpoint are bound to arise, is potentially much more stimulating.

Relatively free talk amongst pupils also has the potential for extending the narrow boundaries of classroom knowledge. Since children often inhabit similar everyday worlds - worlds typically unlike that of the teacher - their out-of-school experience is likely to form part of their common currency. Without being anchored within real-life situations and concerns, educational knowledge is bound to remain encapsulated and academic - if, indeed, it is assimilated at all.

Collaborative classroom modes are rooted in a view of learning which rejects the passive role assigned to pupils by the traditional model. Similarly, where the traditional view denies the significance of social relationships in the classroom, collaborative methods, on the contrary, make these the very basis of learning. Far from seeing children’s relationships as irrelevant to classroom practice, or as a source of potential disruption in learning, a collaborative ethos presupposes the need to build learning experiences out of the positive feeling between children. Potentially, this means more than an acknowledgment of existing pupil friendships. To the extent that teachers, in devising classroom collaborative ventures, are prepared to set up pupil groupings that go beyond established friendship patterns, collaborative learning is likely to develop positive bonds more widely among pupils. This possibility seems particularly significant in the context of inner-city schools, where there is often mutual mistrust and hostility, across lines of race, class, gender, or academic ability.

Finally, collaborative modes carry very different political messages from traditional ones - and thereby must give rise to different political outcomes. Where straight teacher exposition essentially vests power in teachers, small group working disperses authority within the classroom, giving children responsibility and power to organize their own learning. This has particular implications for the situation of working class and minority group pupils, as well as girls. The appropriation of the classroom for themselves by particular pupil groups is unlikely to happen in learning contexts which mobilize the power of all the children in them.

For all these reasons, it seems important to study the potential of collaborative learning modes within secondary school classrooms. To put such study to good use, it is necessary to cast the investigation within a conceptual framework which has some generality. Many psychological theories have been used to underpin the traditional model of learning, and the methods which derive from it. For example, the information processing model in psychology supports the idea that knowledge is received rather than constructed, and that what is learned is something essentially independent of the individual learner. The learning theory approach, also influential in education, portrays learning as a mechanical process, in which learners need to be prodded or bribed by extrinsic incentives, and knowledge consists of associations to be ‘stamped in’.

A collaborative approach to learning makes sense only within a theoretical position in which people are seen as essentially social, and essentially active. Such a view is basic to Kelly’s personal construct theory (see Bannister and Fransella, 1980), in which the startingpoint is that human beings constantly strive to make sense of their lives, in ways which involve continual reference to others. What this implies, for a definition of learning in its widest sense, is illustrated in another book (Salmon, 1980). For an examination of collaborative classroom modes, however, the most critical aspect of the theory is probably its emphasis on the frames of reference in terms of which people act, and in particular, on the commonality and sociality across different frames of reference. These terms refer to the relationships between the ways in which different people see things. Commonality means the degree of similarity between the perceptions of different individuals. As emerges from work like that of Furlong (1976), pupils do not always interpret classroom events in the way that their teacher does. Nor do different pupils always have a similar view of classroom learning, as Hargreaves (1967) has shown, from his study of pupil subcultures. Sociality refers to a different aspect: the degree to which people understand each others’ views. Classroom communication, if it is to be effective, must depend on mutual understanding; otherwise, as Torode (1977) describes, teachers’ messages are not received as intended, nor, as Driver (1982) shows, are pupils’ messages understood by teachers.

From this theoretical perspective, classroom learning involves the meeting of a number of different frames of reference - those of the teacher and the pupils. Traditional modes of teaching pay insufficient attention to pupils’ frames of reference, and pre-empt the teacher’s but define this in standard, very limited ways. Collaborative learning modes, on the contrary, remove the absolute priority of the teacher’s frame of reference and allow for possibilities of idiosyncratic meanings, and openness to change. They also make pupils’ frames of reference central, as constituting the material for exploration, and joint negotiation of change. Unlike traditional methods, collaborative modes presuppose different frames of meaning among different pupils.

In terms of this theoretical approach, the goals of collaborative learning are the achieving of commonality and sociality, both between teachers and pupils, and between pupils. Commonality, or common ground, represents, from this point of view, not just a consensus about specific aspects of the curriculum, but a shared understanding of its wider meaning and value. Potentially, collaborative modes achieve a widening of commonality among pupils who, through working together, find themselves sharing and exchanging personal experience. Less directly, such modes, by freeing the teacher from an authoritarian role, may enable her to communicate more fully and openly with pupils, thereby enlarging the sphere of shared meaning.

Collaborative methods can also serve social goals, which, in this theoretical framework, are defined as the development of sociality - mutual understanding. Sociality is perhaps very ill-served in traditional classrooms, which not only act to turn the teacher from a unique person into a stereotyped role, but can perpetuate or even create polarities between pupils. Collaborative learning offers the possibility of overcoming barriers to mutual personal recognition. By endorsing the existence of social relationships in the classroom, and seeking to extend positive feeling beyond existing cliques, teachers may be able to overcome antipathy and incomprehension among pupils, and develop real mutual understanding. Similarly, the less formal, more spontaneous response to pupils which collaborative settings demand from teachers, offers the chance that teachers and pupils will encounter each other more personally, and achieve greater sociality.

These concerns predicated an investigation which, as far as possible, illuminated the frames of reference which teachers and pupils brought to the classrooms they worked in. Inevitably, this entailed a close-focus, small-scale study, in which some justice could be done to individual viewpoints. Within the context of the four classrooms we studied, we explored the meanings which pupils, and the teacher, brought to the situation. For all four teachers, committed to collaborative learning modes, we tried to assess how far these modes were effectively creating common ground and mutual understanding.

Chapter 2

The conduct of the study

THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The investigation we planned was necessarily a small scale one. There were practical reasons for this, in terms of the time scale and personnel covered by SSRC funding. The research period was three years. The research team consisted of three people. Phil, the study’s director, was seconded on a half time basis. Hilary, the research officer, was the only full-time member of the team. Brenda, the project secretary, worked two days a week. Such practical constraints made it unrealistic to attempt any large scale research, encompassing a wide range of contexts, or large numbers of pupils and teachers.

More fundamentally, our own purposes themselves predicated an investigation which was essentially intensive rather than extensive. Our concern with exploring, as fully as possible, the meanings which the teacher and her pupils brought to their classroom context, meant that we needed to look closely at a small number of individual classrooms. Our approach presupposed a case study rather than a survey research format, since we wanted to explore what was distinctive within classrooms, as well as what might be common between them.

THE SCHOOLS INVOLVED

For these reasons, we chose to limit our investigation to four classrooms, within two schools. It was crucial, for examining collaborative learning modes, that both schools should be inner city, mixed and multi-ethnic, and that both should be committed to mixed ability teaching. Beyond this, however, it seemed appropriate to embody some diversity, and we therefore selected two schools which differed considerably in their resources. Although direct comparison of the two schools was not likely to prove helpful, it seemed important to examine the different meaning which a collaborative learning approach might have in two rather different institutional contexts. We have called the two schools Newlands and Claremont; the following descriptions define in outline some of their most important features.

Newlands Comprehensive

Newlands Comprehensive is a striking glass and concrete building in the inner city. Formed roughly twelve years ago by the amalgamation of five local schools (two of which had been single sex grammar schools), from the start it attracted a reasonable proportion of academically able pupils.

Its reputation was boosted soon after its opening by the introduction of a special music course, for which 15 pupils each year are selected by audition, to follow a curriculum which largely overlaps with the mainstream, but also gives special emphasis to instrumental work.

Newlands has also been used for piloting a great deal of the Authority’s experimental work, namely in Science, Maths, French and Spanish. Special projects designed by other bodies (such as the Royal College of Arts) have also been launched in the school.

The intake has always been very mixed. For London, its multi-ethnic intake is not unusual. What is more noticeable is the broad spread across social class lines. Because of its position, the school serves run-down working class estates, and high status middle class inner city areas alike. The music course attracts children from relatively far afield.

Though oversubscribed on Band 1 (partly because of its high reputation for art and music and its sixth from academic results), it also has its share of problems, social and academic.

The school is used by the community after hours, and its policy is to encourage children to stay on to ‘End On Clubs’ after school.

Pupils all have opportunities to use the country annexe which the school owns, to extend their curriculum, or for intensive courses.

Claremont School

Claremont School came into being in 1976 following reorganization from a four-form entry, all boys secondary modern. The original intake, now at the top of the school, was not only single sex, but academically unbalanced, predominantly black and working class - a reflection of selection procedures. By 1979, when we became associated with the school, the lower school had of course become socially and ethnically more mixed and academically more balanced; but the two halves seemed to sit uneasily together. New low-level buildings in a landscaped site had been built to accommodate the enlarged reorganized school, but many classes continued to operate out of the old Victorian buildings on the same site, which was not totally helpful to forging a new identity.

Like Newlands, Claremont serves quite a wide catchment area though it is sited in a less central and socially more homogeneous part of the city. It has a far larger Asian intake than Newlands, a reflection of the local community. When we were working in the school, only a very small number of children came from the middle class, though, as its ‘boys secondary mod’ reputation fades, the school has been able to build a more positive image, widen its curriculum and the range of exam subjects which are offered, and taken up.

The school has a Youth Club on the premises, which, while we were there, seemed mostly to be used by the older boys in the school. Mother tongue classes for Asian women are run in the school, by a community group.

Claremont has been working hard ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The concerns of the study
• 2 The conduct of the study
• 3 Mac’s second year Design and Technology class
• 4 Islay’s fifth year Social Studies class
• 5 Terry’s second year Humanities class
• 6 Rachel’s second and third year Humanities (Drama) and English class
• 7 Reflections on the study
• Appendix Questions about school and out of school life
• Bibliography
• Index