The Beginner's Guide to Cooperative Learning

Make your learners your main teaching resource

Drew Howard, Jakob Werdelin

• Publisher: Crown House Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781785835858
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785835902
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit describes collaborative learning as an approach which 'involves pupils working together on activities or learning tasks' and in such a way that enables 'everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned'. In the context of this book, Cooperative Learning relates to a number of such activities from simple memorising to more complex analysis and debating which are designed to boost learners' interdependence, participation and interaction.

Drawing upon both research-informed theory and real-world examples, Jakob Werdelin and Drew Howard present both an insightful introduction to Cooperative Learning as a practice and philosophy and a practical guide to classroom application.

The authors share their expertise on how to amplify the effect of current pedagogical approaches and schemes of work, simplify performance management as an empowering tool for teachers and leaders, and create an inclusive environment in which every pupil is able to fulfil their learning potential. Jakob and Drew also discuss how Cooperative Learning relates to a range of other aspects of teaching, including assessment, metacognition and Rosenshine's Principles.

The book focuses on Catch1Partner as an exemplary Cooperative Learning Interaction Pattern (CLIP) as, by fully grasping the principles of staging and running Catch1Partner in its many forms, readers will then be better equipped with the foundational know-how to deploy other CLIPs, such as Sage and Scribe, Word-Round and Rotating Role Reading. The authors also provide a variety of ready-to-photocopy (and downloadable) sample teaching materials, tools, guidelines and an activity transcript in the appendices.

Suitable for teachers and leaders in both primary and secondary school settings.

11

Chapter 1

What is Cooperative Learning? (And Especially What It Isn’t)

It’s the early 1980s in a suburb north of Copenhagen. Jakob is in the Danish equivalent of Year 6. He is sitting with five other children around a table: Madeline and Maria are discussing boys and trying out different types of make-up; Martin is throwing balls of crumpled paper at other groups of children, conveying messages that would be obscene if only he could spell; Andreas is reading a comic book; Jenny, who suffers from undiagnosed Asperger’s, is quietly solving the task; Jakob is drawing a knight fighting a dragon in the margin of his textbook. When the bell rings, they all sign their names on Jenny’s paper and the clueless teacher compliments them on their ‘collaborative skills’.

So, first a definition: the Education Endowment Foundation describes collaborative learning as an approach which ‘involves pupils working together on activities or learning tasks in a group small enough for everyone to participate on a collective task that has been clearly assigned. Pupils in the group may work on separate tasks contributing to a common overall outcome, or work together on a shared task.’1

Note: Cooperative Learning and collaborative learning are used interchangeably in the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit to describe structured shared activities.

Collaborative or Cooperative Learning (used interchangeably in the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, but from this point on we will use Cooperative) is a term that refers to a number of such activities, which can stimulate thought and conversation about a given subject. The range and scope of said thoughts and conversations can (to a sufficient degree) be controlled, which means that Cooperative Learning can facilitate the full 12taxonomy spectrum from simple memorisation to analysis, debating and creating. The activities have simple steps that do not overwhelm learners; indeed, they help to focus minds on what needs to be learned.

The Education Endowment Foundation continue: ‘Effective collaborative learning requires much more than just sitting pupils together and asking them to work in a group.’ Or to put it even more directly: ‘simple steps which focus discussion in an activity’.2 This is the form of Cooperative Learning presented in this book: it pre-organises peer interaction into reusable patterns, which we have dubbed CLIPs. CLIP is an acronym for:

• Cooperative
• Learning
• Interaction
• Pattern

It is a pattern, in the sense that, again and again, it sequences your learners’ interaction with your materials/tasks/questions and with each other, regardless of what or whom these might be in a given activity in a given lesson. But it’s not just any interaction pattern; it’s specifically a Cooperative Learning Interaction Pattern. Now, there are a number of definitions of what is required for a sequence of interactions to warrant the designation ‘Cooperative Learning’ as opposed to ‘group work’. Here, we have chosen the leanest delineation by American educator Spencer Kagan, who first coined the mnemonic PIES.3 PIES is an acronym for:

• Positive interdependence
• Individual accountability
• Equal participation
• Simultaneous interaction

This sounds a lot, but it is not,4 because these four principles are always facilitated by the very pattern itself – no planning is required to achieve PIES.

13Let’s investigate how PIES is facilitated using a CLIP called Catch1Partner, which is the centrepiece of this book. In the most basic form of Catch1Partner, each learner has a subject-relevant question on a card which they discuss in changing pairs (see Figure 2.1 for a step-by-step description).

Note: Please do not over-focus on ‘questions on cards’. These are just one example of many possible materials. As we will discuss in detail in Chapter 2, any physical object can be connected to any question across any subject – for example: worksheets (What do you have for question 3?), Numicons (Can you count out this for me?), photos (Was kannst du sehen?), graphs (What are the coordinates of this point?), rocks (How can you tell whether this is flint or not?) and so on.

Positive interdependence means that both children in each pair are needed to perform the CLIP and therefore both stand to benefit from their peer’s successful outcome. They are not fighting for their teacher’s attention, and nor are they competing to come up with the right answer first or even for their right to speak. On the contrary, the more one partner succeeds at his task, the more the other partner stands to benefit in the form of learning, and vice versa. This mutual reliance is embedded in all steps of the interaction. As children approach a potential partner, they might be requested to use phrases modelled by the teacher (in bold) – for example, ‘Excuse me, can I ask you a question, please?’ ‘Yes, of course you may’ (smile, turn full body towards peer, establish eye contact, appropriate physical distance and voice volume – all modelled by the teacher). They take it in turns to answer each other’s questions/solve each other’s tasks and then swap cards and say, ‘Thank you.’

Usually (please be aware of the ‘usually’ here), this activity is used to remind children about something that has been taught previously (known in the current zeitgeist as ‘activating prior knowledge’ or ‘revision’). However, all CLIPs can be used at any time and/or in any situation to facilitate many different objectives across a wide range of subjects – and social skills are not to be scoffed at. In the bigger scheme of things, an 80-year longitudinal study from Harvard reveals that the most essential quality in a good life is having good human 14relationships.5 Other research notes that praise and positivity are social rewards,6 and that social reward appears to use similar subcortical regions of the brain’s reward system as receiving money.7 The social element in these activities ties the process of learning to the stimulation of the brain’s pleasure responses, which many children today find mainly in addictive games and social media.

The second aspect that defines Cooperative Learning, individual accountability, is the demand that both partners answer (how to ensure that they can answer and how to monitor this will be addressed throughout the book) and can do so using their own ideas and from their own unique understanding. A recent study showed increases in reward system activity during the answering of educational questions in conditions that favoured engagement and educational learning.8

Equal participation entails that both partners not only answer, but they have the same opportunity to speak from their own understanding and at their own length about the subject matter, irrespective of their different abilities. A key feature here is that lower-attaining children are just as important to the resolution of the CLIP steps as their higher-attaining peers. Indeed, the inclusion automatically afforded by Cooperative Learning is one of its many unique selling points. Obviously, some will talk for longer than others, but time is limited to the interaction of asking and answering the specific question, so at some point invariably they will both have answered, then swap materials and move on to the next partner. The truth is that verbose responses are the least of your problems; you will generally find yourself working to extend these conversations – which is where oracy gels into Cooperative Learning with a vengeance.

Finally, simultaneous interaction demands that everyone is doing all this at the same time – every single learner. There is no exception to this rule unless there are very specific special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) related reasons, and even so, any concessions should be temporary. For example, permission for an anxious child to remain in a corner and let people come to him should be seen as a step towards gathering the 15courage to mingle. Should you need reminding, you will find the PIES acronym explained in Appendix E.

Summary: For a classroom activity to warrant the noble label ‘Cooperative Learning’ it must pre-organise learner interactions into simple steps which combine to secure positive interdependence, individual accountability, equal participation and simultaneous interaction. If it does not, it is termed ‘group work’ – and the authors of this book wash their hands and then apply a good deal of sanitiser to boot.

Why is it so important to delineate Cooperative Learning?

An anecdote serves to answer this question. Some years ago, after much ado, Jakob finally got the opportunity to present Cooperative Learning to the leadership of a certain large primary school. He’d had this particular school in his sights for quite some time, having understood that the head teacher was decisive, open-minded, skilled and 100% dedicated to improving the lives of her children – basically, ready to take on Cooperative Learning. Full of confidence, Jakob arrived and did his song and dance; he explained the cost-efficiency, the benefits to teachers and children, t...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Cooperative Learning and the COVID Comeback
• Chapter 1: What is Cooperative Learning? (And Especially What It Isn’t)
• Chapter 2: Catch1Partner – an Exemplary CLIP
• Chapter 3: Cooperative Learning and Direct Instruction
• Chapter 4: Cooperative Learning and Social Construction
• Chapter 5: The Roles and Responsibilities of Cooperative Learning
• Chapter 6: The Story of Stalham
• Chapter 7: Teaching Materials
• Chapter 8: The Pitfalls of Cooperative Learning
• Chapter 9: Cooperative Learning and Other Strategies
• A Conclusion of Sorts
• Appendix A: More CLIPs – a Tactical Toolkit
• Appendix B: Sample Flashcards
• Appendix C: Cooperative Learning Checklist
• Appendix D: CLIP Reflection and Coaching Guide and Assessment Guide for Teachers and TAs
• Appendix E: Quick Reference
• Appendix F: Word-Round Transcript from a Key Stage 2 Maths Lesson
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright