cooperative learning: intro (johnson, johnson & holubec)

I was recently out of town (hence the big gap in posts) and on the plane ride, I zipped through much of a very useful book:
Cooperative Learning in the Classroom (c 1994, by Johnson, Johnson & Holubec)

It's a slim little volume by what appear to be (at least, judging from the bibliography) several people who have devoted the last decade or more to researching (and reviewing others' research) into effective procedures for cooperative learning.

I recommend this book highly--as I said it is brief (110 pages incl. bibliography), and it goes quickly because it covers a tremendous amount of ground, with clarity but in a very succinct space. I'm going to try to post the key ideas here, chapter by chapter, for those of you who don't have time to go read it this instant, i.e. all of you (if there are any of you in the first place) *grin* Also, for myself for future reference.

Anyway, in the introduction, the book asserts that cooperative learning accomplishes three separate goals:

1. raises the achievement of all students, including those who are ahead of their classmates and those who have disabilities or other "issues"
   
2. builds positive relationships among students, which is essential to a positive classroom environment
   
3. provides the opportunity for students to have a variety of experiences that promote their development on three levels: social, psychological, and cognitive.

Instead of a model where the teacher is the one working hard, trying to pump knowledge into students as passive vessels, this model requires the teacher to structure and facilitate tasks where the students do the hard work of learning.

[My observation is that although this seems like a lot of work to set up, once it's up and running smoothly, it's actually easier on the teacher than the traditional model, because you don't need to propel students through material--they move under their own steam. This ties in with stuff in the Wong & Wong book, too--if the teacher does all the work, then the teacher does all the learning...].

Important: I didn't know this, but the authors state that in order to be successful,

cooperative learning should be used 60% to 80% of the time!

This makes sense if you think about it--cooperative learning requires a particular set of social skills, a particular orientation toward work and toward classmates, that really would become a part of the classroom culture and climate. If you were constantly switching back and forth between cooperative learning and other systems, then you would dilute the strength of that culture and climate, and reduce the students' ability to function successfully in a cooperative context.

The introduction also lays out the teacher's basic jobs, which are described in more detail in later chapters...this is essentially the table of contents. I'll make this a separate post.