Effective Teaching

Chapter 10

Partners in Learning

Purposes and Assumptions

1. The synergy generated in cooperative settings generates more motivation than do individualistic, competitive environments. Integrative social groups are, in effect, more than the sum of their parts. The feeling of connectedness produces positive energy.
2. The members of cooperative groups learn from one another. Each learner has more helping hands than in a structure that generates isolation.
3. Interacting with one another produces cognitive as well as social complexity, creating more intellectual activity that increases learning when contrasted with solitary study.
4. Cooperation increases positive feelings toward one another, reducing alienation and loneliness, building relationships, and providing affirmative views of other people.
5. Cooperation increases self-esteem not only through increased learning but through the feeling of being respected and cared for by the others in the environment.
6. Students can respond to experience in tasks requiring cooperation by increasing their capacity to work productively together.
7. Students, including primary school children, can learn from training to increase their ability to work together.

Increasing the Efficiency of Partnerships

1. Partnerships over simple tasks are not very demanding of social skills.
2. Guidelines for developing more efficient groups are things like group size, complexity, and practice.
3. Teachers need to provide practice with smaller groups before large groups can work.
4. The complexity of the task needs to be regulated by group size and dynamics.

Interdependence in Groups

1. Students need to reflect on group process and how they could work more efficient.
2. More complex way of testing interdependence is through provision of tasks in the group.

Division of Labor

1. Division of labor increases efficiency.
2. Dividing labor increases group cohesion as the team works to learn information while all group members are responsible for learning and fulfilling an important role in the group.

Motivation from Extrinsic to Intrinsic

1. Cooperative learning increases learning partially because it causes motivational orientation to move from external to internal.
2. When students learn cooperatively they become more interesting in learning for its own sake rather than for external rewards.

Partnership Basic Concepts

1. Inquiry: is stimulated by confronting with a problem.
2. Knowledge: results from the inquiry.

Syntax of Grouping Investigation Model of Learning and Teaching

Phase 1: Students encounter puzzling situation.

Phase 2: Students explore reaction to the situation.

Phase 3: Students formulate study task and organize for study.

Phase 4: Independent and group study.

Phase 5: Students analyze progress and process.

Phase 6: Recycle activity.

Social System

1. Democratic
2. Decisions developed from or validated by the experience of the group
3. No boundaries in relation to the phenomena identified by the teacher as objects to study

Principals of Reaction

The teacher’s role in group investigation is one of counselor, consultant, and friendly critic. Must guide and reflect the group experience over three levels: Problem solving, Groups management level, and the level of individual meaning.

Support System

Maintain a high level of inquiry (ability of students to get information)

Instructional and Nurturant Effects

Instructional: Effective group process and governance, Constructive view of knowledge, and discipline of collaborative inquiry

Nurturant: Independence as learners, Respect for dignity of all, Social inquiry as a way of life, Interpersonal warmth and affiliation.

Summary:

The model is highly versatile and comprehensive; it blends the goals of academic inquiry, social integration, and social process learning. It can be used in all subject areas, with all age levels, when the teacher desires to emphasize the formulation, and problem solving aspects of knowledge rather than the intake of preorganized information.