DOCUMENT RESUME PS 024 803 ED 402 038 Daniels, Ed; Gatto, Mike AUTHOR The Cooperative Companion Digest (No. 1-4). Thinking TITLE about the Nature and Power of Cooperative Learning. PUB DATE 96 NOTE 20p. Non-Classroom Use (055) Guides PUB TYPE MFO1 /PCO1 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Accountability; Class Organization; Competition; DESCRIPTORS *Cooperation; *Cooperative Learning; *Educational Cooperation; Elementary Secondary Education; Group Activities; *Grouping (Instructional Purposes); *Learning Strategies; Resource Materials; School Administration; *Small Group Instruction; Student Participation; Teamwork Interdependence IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT These digests provide information for educators about the nature of cooperation and how cooperative principles can be used to restructure classrooms, administrative hierarchies, and work relationships of all types. Digest 1 describes the competitive, individual, and cooperative interaction patterns and examines the impact of cooperative learning experiences on achievement levels. Digest 2 presents one teacher's experiences with traditional student grouping; differentiates traditional and cooperative learning groups; recommends the number of students in a cooperative depending upon the teacher's intent; examines group composition; and discusses random and structured grouping as two ways to arrange cooperative groups. Digest 3 discusses positive interdependence and individual accountability as elements differentiating cooperative learning from group work and examines simultaneity, proximity, and social skills as important elements of cooperative learning. Digest 4 further examines nine types of positive interdependence and how teachers can (1) goal incorporate them into cooperative learning activities: (3) role (2) resource interdependence; interdependence; (5) task (4) identity interdependence; interdependence; (7) outside enemy (6) reward interdependence; interdependence; (8) environmental interdependence; and (9) fantasy interdependence; interdependence. (KDFB) *********************************************************************** * * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) "SX This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve The Cooperative reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this docu. ment do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy Companion Digest #1 Thinking About The Nature and Power of Cooperative Learning PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL by Ed Daniels & Mike Gatto HAS BEEN GRANTED BY s Ea INKY% tel e(1%ke. Go:ft 0 What's The Purpose of TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES The Cooperative Companion Digest ? INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Are you interested in finding out more about cooperative learning? If the answer is yes, then this digest is for you. The Cooperative Companion Digest seeks to provide basic understandings about the nature of cooperation and how cooperative principles can be used to restructure classrooms, administrative hierarchies, and work relationships of all types. Related topics will include the transforming powers of cooperation and the relationship between cooperation and competitive power structures. This first digest concerns different types of interaction patterns and how they affect behavior. What Are Interaction Patterns? The way people behave toward each other is heavily dependent upon the type of environmental structure or behavioral interaction pattern they are engaged in. W. Edward Demming, the late Total Quality Management guru, estimated that 85% of an individual's behavior is due to the framework in which he/she operates. Demming's claim is significant since it strongly suggests that changing a person's interaction pattern can vary the behavior of those functioning within that pattern. In other words, if you're not satisfied with behavior in a given environment, alter the way people interact and you'll alter the way they'll respond to each other. David and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota maintain there are three basic types of interaction patterns people can find themselves in. One is a competitive pattern where individuals complete for limited resources, with one winner and lots of losers. Another is an individual pattern where people act on their own behalf with little or no regard for what others are doing. The last is a cooperative interaction pattern where the success of one individual is interdependently tied to the success other individual members of a group who have the same goal. These three interaction patterns are found BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 in schools, the work place, and even in social settings with the competitive and individual interaction patterns the most prevalent. While all three interaction patterns are important and likely necessary, each generates different types attitudes and associated behaviors. Not all of them are good. Those locked into a competitive pattern are likely to want their opposition to fail since this is the only way they can succeed. Competitors are negatively interdependent in that they need each other, but only to define themselves as either winners or losers. While competition can motivate and push one toward a higher performance level, it can also be counterproductive. Alfie Kohn, in his book No Contest : The Case Against Competition, presents an interesting argument against competition claiming it can produce such negative behaviors as a "winner take all" attitude, cheating, and failure to participate or try hard for fear of losing. Those in an individual interaction pattern are expected to perform with no connection to others. Each person succeeds or fails on his own since one's behavior or performance has little relationship to what another person does. There is little reason to care about what others are doing. Individual performance is important, of course. However valuable opportunities to build on and refine one's knowledge and understanding are lost when people are expected to work only by themselves, ignoring others. Individual interaction patterns are the ones most commonly found in classrooms today. Cooperative interaction patterns are designed for people to work toward mutual goals together. Properly structured cooperative interaction patterns promote positive interdependence among people. Cooperative interaction patterns are significantly different from competitive and individual interaction patterns. Rather than rooting for opponents to fail, or working alone without regard for the accomplishments of others, cooperative group members support and want their team members to succeed. Is There A "Best" Interaction Pattern? Research on cooperative learning supports the idea that cooperative interaction patterns promote the type of learning and behavior schools and those involved with the education of children might want. According to the Johnsons, and others, cooperative learning experiences tend to promote higher achievement for students of all ages, across all subject areas, for virtually all types of learning than do competitive and individualistic learning experiences. And, of course, students learn to work collaboratively. These findings are specifically related to educational research but likely apply to other types of similarly structured organizations as well. Doubtless, each pattern has value, but the position here is that the cooperative model accomplishes the most and should be the primary consideration for teachers or anyone else who wishes to use the power of properly constructed cooperative groups. 3 Interestingly, a cooperative interaction pattern can accommodate the other two so that competitive and individual behavior takes place within a cooperative context. Setting up effective cooperative groups requires some basic understandings relative to cooperation and then practice implementing them. The next The Cooperative Companion Digest will present some ideas about grouping that show how cooperative groups differ from just putting people together in and asking them to work. Ed Daniels and Mike Gatto are both teachers in the Smithtown Central School District. Among other things, they teach graduate level courses for teachers in cooperative learning for SUNY at Stony Brook and conduct workshops and inservice training in cooperative learning for school districts and other educational institutions throughout Long Island. 4 The Cooperative Companion Digest #2 Thinking About The Nature and Power of Cooperative Learning by Ed Daniels & Mike Gatto Are Your Grouping Experiences The Same As This Teacher's ? Here's what one teacher said about his grouping experiences using traditional groups. " I was primarily a chalk and talk teacher. Essentially, I put notes on the board and lectured. I conducted discussions by asking the whole class a series of questions and calling on students who I thought knew the answers. I only used groups when I needed a break from this type of teaching or I felt my students needed a break from me. When forming groups, I usually let my students pick the people they wanted to work with. Pairs, groups of threes, fours, and sometimes more formed based on friendships, romances, or other common circumstances. Some students could find no one to work with and ended up working alone. Most groups never worked well together. When group work was done, it was often by one member with the others either copying or doing nothing. Some groups did no work at all, choosing to talk to each other or other group members across the room. Even when a whole group appeared to be working, it was nothing more than a number of students sitting together, working alone, rather than a group sharing their thoughts and ideas. I was never happy with the results. Often, I'd end group work early, direct my students to sit in their seats quietly and read and answer questions by themselves. Each time, I swore I'd never use groups again. And I didn't. That is, until the next time I needed a break from chalk and talk and my students needed a break from me. When I heard about cooperative learning groups, I was afraid it would be just more of the same." 5 How Are Cooperative Learning Groups Different From Traditional Grouping ? Cooperative learning groups are anything but more of the same. One of the greatest misconceptions about grouping students is that by simply putting then together they will somehow cooperate and work well with each other. We all know this doesn't happen very often and certainly not frequently enough to rely on this type of grouping to be an effective educational practice. Cooperative learning groups are different. They are designed so that students actually need each other to accomplish their goals. In a sense, students are "forced" to cooperate in order for the group to be successful through the imposition of a cooperative interaction pattern. Most traditional group work is still used in conjunction with an individual interaction pattern, where one student's work is usually unrelated to the work of the other group members. The first step in unleashing the power of cooperative groups is to understand that grouping and the tasks assigned to groups require some thought and specific restructuring of the individual interaction pattern into a cooperative one. How Many Students Should Be In A Cooperative Group? Effective cooperative groups range from 2 to 4 students depending upon the teacher's intent ( Some leading cooperative learning advocates give 5 as the upper limit but our experience indicates that a group of 5 naturally tends to break into two groups, one of 2 and one of 3 ). Groups of 2 generally provide the greatest amount of interaction between members. If a teacher wants each student to explain his/her ideas to one another, pairs are very effective since it's difficult for two people grouped together to avoid talking with each other. Groups of 3 or 4 provide additional perspectives and ideas for problem solving and the strategies required for the same. When teachers want students to consider a number of different notions, groups of 3 or 4 are quite effective. What Should The Group Composition Be Like? As a general rule, groups should be as diverse as the class itself, with each made up of students representing a cross section of the class. Teachers new to cooperative learning are frequently worried about students not wanting to work with each other. Often they will allow the students to pick their own groups. While there are times student selected groups may be appropriate and even desirable, these types of groups are generally not as effective as groups that are randomly formed or teacher selected. Students, even 6 those who don't know each other very well, will get used to working with one another quickly as they complete properly constructed cooperative activities. How Should The Groups Be Set Up? Random Grouping There are two basic ways groups can be set up, random grouping or structured grouping. Random grouping involves placing students together without great concern for who ends up working with whom. Random grouping is often used by teachers early in the school year, in other situations where students abilities are not yet known, or in situations where the level of ability is very similar among the students in the class. Surprisingly, random grouping usually produces appropriately diverse groups who work well together. Random grouping is often achieved through a counting off system. Teachers determine how many students they wanted in each group, divide that number into the number of students in the class, and use the resulting number to count off with. If a teacher wanted groups of four in a class of 28, s/he would count off by sevens ( 28 divided by 4 = 7 ), grouping students who have the same number. For example, all number ones would be a group, all number twos would be a group, etc. When numbers won't work out evenly, some groups will just have one more member than the others. Suppose the teacher wants to use groups of threes in that 28 member class. This time s/he would count off by nines ( 28 divided by 3 = 9 with 1 left over ). The teacher would have nine groups. Eight would contain three students ( 24 ) and one would contain four students ( 3 plus the one left over ), accounting for all 28 members of the class. Another effective way to randomly group involves jigsawing a picture or a ditto among the students. Using the class of 28 again, and the teacher's decision to use 7 groups of 4, the teacher makes 7 copies of a worksheet, picture, or any other material s/he wants the students to examine. Each copy is separately cut up into 4 different sections and then mixed together. Every student receives one section and finds the other three who have the missing pieces needed to make the material complete. Once the students find each other, a group is formed. There are a variety of ways to randomly select groups. Some teachers hand out cards from a deck, and allow students to find others who have the same card ( All Aces are a group, for example ). Others hand out colored stickers ( All blue stickers are a group ). Whatever the method, the basic principle always remains the same : determine how many students you want in a group, determine how many groups you'll have by dividing that number into the total number of students, and then select a method that allows you to randomly arrange the class accordingly. 7 Structured Grouping Structured grouping occurs when the teacher consciously selects students for each group. Structured grouping is a good way to promote the appropriate mix and balance of students for a cooperative learning group. The criteria for selection may differ from teacher to teacher, however a common type of structured grouping is based on academic ability. The principle of diversity remains as students are placed in groups based upon their approximate ranking with in the class. High level, middle level, and low level achievers are spread among the groups so that a relatively equal amount of them are placed in each group. Groups of 4, for example, might have one high, two middle, and one low achiever. Groups of three would consist of one high, one middle, and one low achiever. . An easy way to set up structured groups is to for the teacher to list his/her students in ability order. The top student in the class would be number one on the list, the second top student would be number two on the list, and so forth. Setting up the groups now is simple. Once the teacher determines the number of groups s/he will have, students are assigned the groups from the list so that each has a high, a middle, and a low achiever. For example, if there will be 7 groups of 4 students each, the teacher puts one of the top seven students and one of the bottom seven students in each group. Then the groups are rounded out by assigning two of the remaining students to each. Groups can be deliberately structured in other ways and the criteria for structuring need not be exactly as described above. Additional considerations other than academic ability for grouping are likely necessary. Certainly maturity, leadership abilities, and the like are meaningful and surely should be thought of when grouping. Teachers new to cooperative learning sometime see grouping like students together as an attractive option. The feeling is students can only be helped by students similar in ability to themselves. This is an especially common notion regarding both high and low level achievers. However, forming groups that contain all the same types of students, as a rule, should be avoided. The important thing to remember is that groups should be designed so that a number of perspectives may be offered and considered. All children can learn from all other children and a diversely structured group helps set up the context for this to happen. Ed Daniels and Mike Gatto are both teachers in the Smithtown Central School District. Among other things, they teach graduate level courses for teachers in cooperative learning for SUNY at Stony Brook and conduct workshops and inservice training in cooperative learning for school districts and other educational institutions throughout Long Island 3 The Cooperative . Companion Di*est #3 Thinking About The Nature and Power of Cooperative Learning by Ed Daniels & Mike Gatto What Are The Elements That Make Cooperative Learning Different From Group Work? Cooperative Learning is far more than just putting students together and asking them to cooperate. In fact, all successful cooperative activities contain a number of specific elements that anyone interested in using cooperative learning well should become familiar with. The two elements that all cooperative learning advocates agree are absolutely necessary for cooperative learning to be successful are positive interdependence and individual accountability. What is Positive Interdependence? Positive interdependence is the glue that helps hold cooperative groups together. Positive interdependence exists when group members see it is in their best interests to work together to accomplish a particular goal and that the success of each member within the group is essential for that goal to be accomplished. Positive interdependence means that "for us to succeed, you and I both must succeed." Without positive interdependence, groups are not likely to be cooperative. In a very real way, positive interdependence is what makes cooperative learning cooperative. There are two basic things to know about positive interdependence. First, positive interdependence usually doesn't happen naturally in the classroom. It needs to be specifically structured into most cooperative activities by the teacher. Second, there are a number of types of interdependence, each having a different degree of strength and a different application. Teachers well versed in cooperative learning know the appropriate types of positive interdependence required for a lesson to be successful cooperatively. Although there are many types of positive interdependence, not all of them need be present in a cooperative activity. David and Roger Johnson suggest that at least three specific forms of positive interdependence are needed for a good cooperative lesson, however. 9 A number of types of positive interdependence are listed below. Goal Interdependence Resource Interdependence Role Interdependence Identity Interdependence Task Interdependence Outside Enemy Interdependence Environmental Interdependence Fantasy Interdependence Reward Interdependence Time Interdependence Exactly what each positive interdependence is, and how it may be implemented requires a more detailed explanation than this edition of The Cooperative Companion Digest can accommodate. However, the next issue will examine the interdependences in detail and provide specific examples for each. What is Individual Accountability ? Individual accountability means that each member of a cooperative group is accountable for the work that takes place within the group. It is not acceptable for any member of the group to do nothing, piggybacking off the efforts of other group members. Like positive interdependence, individual accountability needs to be specifically structured into the cooperative activity by the teacher. There are two basic types of individual accountability relative to cooperative learning. One is within group individual accountability and the other is outside group individual accountability. Within group individual accountability occurs when each member of the group has a specific task or role that needs to be actuated for the group to succeed. For example, in a jigsaw cooperative task, each member of the group is responsible for dealing with a separate section of material and then teaching or presenting his/her finding to the rest of the group members. That member becomes individually accountable for providing information to the group it can get in no other way. Another type of within group individual accountability takes place through the assignment of roles to group members. A writer role, for example, requires a group member to be individually accountable for carrying out that specific role. Roles such as reader, time keeper, checker, and the like do the same thing. 1 0