I can do things you can not, you can do things I can not; together we can do great things
Mother Teresa
Group work. Two words that can and do, rightly, send shivers down both inexperienced and experienced teachers alike. At worst it can unlock the potential to turn a once calm classroom environment into a complete circus act. It can bring out the worst in the most likeable little learners and even lose learning along the way.
I have recently reflected upon this a lot. Having experienced the “children-as collaborators-circus-act” unfold in my practice, I have at times, avidly avoided ‘group work’. However, working in a school that has a project-based curriculum has meant that this has become increasingly unavoidable. In addition to this, my interest in cognitive science has led me down the path into the realms of cognitive co-dependent learning.
Herein lies my problem. In that short paragraph, I used, synonymously, the idea of collaborative learning and group work. For far too long I have almost definitely conflated the two and would assume I am not the only one guilty of this.
Although these two phrases tend to end up intertwined in our daily dialogues they are very much different concepts. Collaborative learning is the ‘invisible ‘stuff’. The actual learning is unlocked, when children successfully think and learn both together and from each other. Group work, refers to the actual task or activities that we observe in action. The mistake of mixing these up is easy when we confuse the idea that group engagement in a task equals learning. I know I have said this previously but we must not forget what Coe tells us about engagement being a poor proxy for learning.
So let’s take a moment to consider what collaborative learning or cognitive co-dependent learning needs to be successful. We know that as teachers we have a duty to teach learning. We wouldn’t dream of simply sending our early readers off to just ‘read’ or expect our mathematicians to solve complicated problems without unpicking the learning process with them first. However, far too often we expect children to just become cognitive co-dependent learners without any support or scaffolding. There is definitely a danger in simply ‘sending them’ away in their mixed ability groups naively hoping, through osmosis, success will unfold…
There is no national curriculum guidance when it comes to teaching collaborative learning, however, neither is it rocket science. Unsurprisingly, when children work and learn together it is the same in how us adults do it. The same dynamics exist and when these dynamics are in Goldilocks-esk state we become witness to the same level of success. I am sure you can think of copious occasions where you have experienced this kind of learning and I would also assume that the majority of these experiences have been mediocre. However, as teachers, we are fine-tuned to have high expectations of everything our children set out to do. Group work is by no means exempt so we simply must add rigour to how we teach our children to combat collaborative-working well.
This can begin with having conversations about how we effectively work together and learn together. We must share our experiences, just like we do with other aspects of learning. Children need to know we can empathise with the difficulties they will still come up against, despite pre-empting these. Like everything else, even if we were to nail the teaching of ‘cognitive co-dependent learning’ we would be foolish to think we could make it fully failproof…
Next, just like we think about key concepts when we think of learning as part of our curriculum, we need to consider the key competencies that unlock good collaborative group learning and working. To name just a handful we need to think about: problem-solving, teamwork, negotiation, motivation, persuasion, leadership, and of course perseverance. These are competencies that exist elsewhere in our classroom cultures and it is a case of hooking children’s mental schemas to their prior experiences of these so they can apply them to this way of working.
Like we will have experienced, successful teams involve taking on roles and responsibilities. Although these seem instinctive to us we must ensure we give clear guidance to our children as to what these look like in practice. They not only need to be named they need to be reflected upon. It is more than just leader and follower but also in the realms of negotiator and even practical roles such as timekeeper. Just like you would take time during a lesson to review and retrieve new knowledge, time should be made for children to take stock and reflect upon how well their team is working and why… These whole-class discussions are powerful platforms to put forward publicly problems and share solutions.
Finally, we have some practical aspects to be considered. There is the structure of the task itself, the whole idea of what the group is doing, what the group is studying. We need to consider this idea of shared cognitive load and how we unlock it within collaborative settings and group work. Slavin argues that one way to do it is to set a task that requires the whole group to focus their working memory on activating knowledge together. Providing different sources of research is a great way to do this inclusively, thinking diagrams and images as well as text. Something else I have come to realise, which seems incredibly simple, is how the children sit when working together, I mean our table layouts. Allowing children ownership of the structure in how their group is going to physically work together is incredibly effective.
So here is my pitch as to why having conversations about group work and taking time to teach children how to be cognitive collaborators is well worth your precious teacher-time. Learning and working together is something we are wired up to both want and need, but just like every other type of messy learning journey, we must unpick what our children need in order to succeed.