Cooperative Learning in Physical Education and Physical Activity

A Practical Introduction

Ben Dyson, Ashley Casey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317576945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

This book introduces Cooperative Learning as a research-informed, practical way of engaging children and young people in lifelong physical activity. Written by authors with over 40 years' experience as teachers and researchers, it addresses the practicalities of using Cooperative Learning in the teaching of physical education and physical activity at any age range.

Cooperative Learning in Physical Education and Physical Activity will help teachers and students of physical education to master research-informed strategies for teaching. By using school-based and real-world examples, it allows teachers to quickly understand the educational benefits of Cooperative Learning. Divided into four parts, this book provides insight into:

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• Key aspects of Cooperative Learning as a pedagogical practice in physical education and physical activity

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• Strategies for implementing Cooperative Learning at Elementary School level

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• Approaches to using Cooperative Learning at Middle and High School level

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• The challenges and advantages of practising Cooperative Learning

Including lesson plans, activities and tasks, this is the first comprehensive guide to Cooperative Learning as a pedagogical practice for physical educators. It is essential reading for all students, teachers and trainee teachers of physical education and will also benefit coaches, outdoor educators and people who work with youth in the community.

1

COOPERATIVE LEARNING AS A PEDAGOGICAL MODEL IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Chapter overview

This chapter provides an introduction to Cooperative Learning as a pedagogical practice. It explores the five key elements and characteristics of Cooperative Learning and positions them within Physical Education. Drawing on our substantial experience of Cooperative Learning, the chapter presents the research in layman’s terms and offers the reader a chance to engage with the ideas behind the model. This chapter also examines and describes different approaches to teaching and makes clear and understandable links between these approaches and practice.

Key aspects of Cooperative Learning as a pedagogical practice

In our experiences of teaching through, and researching about, Cooperative Learning in Physical Education over the years we have come to value and believe a few things. At the beginning of each chapter we present things that we believe about Cooperative Learning.

We believe that

1. Physical Education needs to be raised to a higher status in the education system. As educators we are tasked to facilitate student learning and student success.

2. Being a teacher, an outdoor educator, and/or a community worker is important and makes a vital contribution to society.

3. Physical Education and Outdoor Education are important subject areas that can make a valuable contribution to the education of all students.

4. Teachers can improve students’ physical, cognitive, affective, and social skills through the creation of a positive learning environment.

5. All students deserve high-quality Physical Education and physical activity programs. That is, we believe in truly inclusive Physical Education programs.

6. Teaching through Cooperative Learning in Physical Education is not ‘business as usual’.

7. Cooperative Learning generates interest for young people in Physical Education and physical activity settings.

Imagine the scene

The gym is alive with activity and students are divided into their Cooperative Learning Teams, with four students in each group. Students in this class of 14-year-olds are working on their training programs both in the gym and outside. Each group has a coach, a manager, an equipment organizer, and an encourager. As you watch the teacher, Jackson, asks his class ‘What’s your Learning Team’s training goal for today? Are you going to meet your team target today?’ The students reply loudly ‘Yes we are!!!’ Each group has a clipboard with their tasks hand-written by the group on it. It is to these tasks that they now turn.

Some groups start by running shuttles, some by lifting weights, while others are doing plyometrics (box jumping in this instance). The groups stop their activity at a time of their choosing, sit in a small huddle, and engage in an inclusive interchange of ideas. After observing these individual group discussions for a while you can see that all students in these mixed groups (mixed by ability, gender, and race, etc.) are contributing to the discussion. They are intensely engaged in talking about what they need to do today to reach the targets they have set for each other. One group asks Jackson, ‘Can we combine different training programs?’ Jackson smiles and replies, ‘That’s your choice, but think about the best way to ensure you get the full benefit from what you have planned.’ Jackson, a former college rower, has taught the students about periodization for different training programs for different activities like triathlon, dance, kayaking, and martial arts – among others – and they have the knowledge to perform different activities safely.

As you continue to watch you see that Jackson is very active as a teacher, moving quickly to each group to monitor and interact with each of his students, while resisting the urge to tell them exactly what to learn. Stopping briefly to scan the whole class, Jackson sees something he thinks is important and quickly moves closer to one of the teams, the ‘Wanderers’. He is watching all groups, but standing closer to the Wanderers, listening to their discussion. He is ready to provide different ideas to help them fine-tune their target for their Cooperative Learning Structure Learning Teams. You sense that Jackson wants to make a comment based on what he sees but he tries to stand back and listen. Eventually, sensing an impasse in their discussion, he makes a suggestion, ‘Why don’t you try it and see what happens and then change it if you need to?’ Jackson sees them safely back into action and then moves to the other end of the gym and to another team, the ‘Vibes’.

Before he steps in with a prompt, one of the group members makes the suggestion that they should vote on how hard they should push themselves and what training targets they should set for themselves in their practice time today. Jackson steps back and looks around at his class, who he finds working hard, problem-solving, and working together at their own pace on the activities. Some teams are still discussing their workout, while the Wanderers have started a 10m shuttle run on the gym court. Jackson’s intended learning outcome for this lesson was for students to apply the knowledge they had learned to create a training program for their choice of activity (triathlon, dance, kayaking, or martial arts, etc.), and set an appropriate training goal for today for their Learning Team. Looking around the gym one last time you would agree that everyone appears to work together in their group with the unifying aim of the group to contribute to achievement of their mutually agreed group goal.

Introduction

If it works here (and we have multiple examples of it working to share with you in this book), maybe it could work in your gymnasium, on your playing fields, or in your community setting. But before we share these examples we need to explore what Cooperative Learning is and examine the overarching idea that operates at the junction between teaching, learning, and curriculum – what we define as pedagogy for the purposes of this book. By the end of this chapter you will have a better understanding of Cooperative Learning, be able to describe different elements and approaches to using Cooperative Learning, and begin to understand its possible contributions to enhancing learning in Physical Education and physical activity. You will be able to explain the educative goals of Cooperative Learning and, using the resources for teaching that will be provided, you will be able to try it yourself. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) (2013) Futures Report suggested that Cooperative Learning is one of the six innovative pedagogical approaches that should be used to create effective student-centered learning environments in the twenty-first century.

In the rest of the chapter we will begin by briefly defining Cooperative Learning and then discuss more thoroughly, through our experiences and reflection, the notion that it is a pedagogical model that deliberately considers the divergent needs of teaching, learning, and curriculum. We will show how it can be applied to different content areas, and with different age groups, and in different schools and educational settings. We will use examples throughout and provide resources to help you get started. We hope you enjoy using Cooperative Learning and get as much out of using it as we have in our teaching, in our collective work with teachers across three continents, and in many diverse settings.

What is Cooperative Learning? The five elements

For us Cooperative Learning is a dynamic pedagogical model that allows the teacher to be flexible in their choice of which of the three aspects of pedagogy to favor. Consequently Cooperative Learning can teach diverse content to students at different grade levels. Students work together in small, structured, heterogeneous (in other words mixed by ability, race, gender, socio-economic background, and so on) groups to master subject matter content (Dyson, Linehan, & Hastie, 2010). The students are not only responsible for learning the material, but also for helping their group-mates learn (Cohen, 1994; Dyson & Casey, 2012). In the act of taking on the role of teacher, the students are better positioned to understand what is being learned.

Just putting students in groups, however, is not Cooperative Learning. We would like to emphasize, as Velazquez-Callado (2012) has argued, that Cooperative Learning is not just students working in groups, playing cooperative games, or being involved in team building activities. Johnson and Johnson (1999, p. 68) presented concerns about students working in groups:

Seating people together and calling them a cooperative group does not make them one. Study groups, project groups, lab groups, home-rooms, and reading groups are groups, but they are not necessarily cooperative. Even with the best of intentions, teachers may be using traditional classroom learning groups rather than cooperative learning groups. To ensure that a group is cooperative, educators must understand the different ways cooperative learning may be used and the basic elements that need to be used and the basic elements that need to be carefully structured within every cooperative activity.

Practitioners often state that they are doing Cooperative Learning but this is based on the fact that students are grouped together or are working together. Yet this doesn’t mean they are doing Cooperative Learning. In order to actually be using Cooperative Learning as a pedagogical model, and not just collaborative learning, cooperative games, or team games, there are five critical elements of the model (Dyson & Casey, 2012; Johnson & Johnson, 2009) that we believe act as explicit guidelines in the successful implementation of Cooperative Learning in Physical Education, as seen in Figure 1.1.

1. Clearly perceived Positive Interdependence.

2. Considerable Promotive (Face-to-Face) Interaction.

3. Clearly perceived Individual Accountability and personal responsibility to achieve the group’s goals.

4. Frequent use of the relevant Interpersonal and Small Group Skills.

5. Frequent and regular Group Processing of current functioning to improve the group’s future effectiveness.

FIGURE 1.1 Cooperative Learning elements

These elements will be introduced here and will appear throughout this book, as they are critical in the successful implementation of Cooperative Learning in your lessons. They form the backbone of the pedagogical aspects of this model and will serve as indicators that you are ‘doing it right’, so to speak. That is not to say that these are inflexible markers against which your work will be judged. Instead they should be considered as guidelines against which you can start to examine your practice.

In many ways as educators we are already experts when it comes to the first element of Cooperative Learning – Positive Interdependence. Success is only achieved when students work together in teams and rely on each other to complete the task. Only in this way are students or players positively interdependent on each other. That is to say that students rely on each other to complete the pre-designed task, i.e. ‘we sink or swim together’ (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). In Physical Education and Outdoor Education and community sport we are familiar with many examples of Positive Interdependence. In fact, every team sport requires it to be successful. For example, whether it is working in a volleyball team to develop three hits, or performing part of a dance, or holding up the rugby scrum, students or players are positively interdependent on each other.

In your Physical Education program, whenever students rely on each other to complete the task, they are being positively interdependent. Positive Interdependence exists when students perceive that they are linked to group members in such a way that they cannot succeed unless all the other group members do. That is, students rely on each other to complete the pre-designed task or class goal. As social interdependence guru Deutsch (1949) has suggested, Positive Interdependence is a sense of being ‘on the same side’.

Yet this is not someth...