CHAPTER 11

1. CHAPTER 11 Engaged Learning: Cooperation and Community

2. Social Processes in Learning • Positive and Negative Effects • Peers- Students often surround themselves with those with shared interests and activities • Adults- Parents & Teachers serve as role models

3. Collaboration & Cooperation • Collaboration-A philosophy about how to deal with people that respects differences, shares authority, and builds on the knowledge of others. • Cooperation- Working together with others to reach a shared goal

4. Cooperative Learning • Cooperative Learning- Arrangement in which students work in mixed-ability groups and are rewarded on the basis of group success.

5. Elements of Cooperative Learning • Face to Face student interaction • Positive independence • Individual accountability • Collaboration skills • Members monitor group progress

6. Misuses of Cooperative Learning • Students rush through their work • Unsure students support group misconceptions • Used as social time • One “expert” quickly does the work • Students that feel like they aren’t needed do no contribute

7. Designs for Cooperation • Reciprocal Questioning: Approach where groups of two or three students ask and answer each other’s questions after a lesson or presentation • Students create questions and take turns answering them and encourages deep thinking on the topic • Question stems to facilitate reciprocal questioning: What would happen if…? Or What is the meaning of…? Or What do you think causes…?

8. Designs for Cooperation • Scripted Cooperation: A learning strategy in which two students take turns summarizing material and critiquing the summaries • Can include any task or subject • Example: students read a passage, one gives a summary and other critiques it then students work together to form information, then partners switch roles

9. Guidelines for Cooperative Learning • Fit group size and composition to your learning goals • Assign appropriate roles • Make sure you assume a supporting role as the teacher • Move around and monitor the groups • Start small and simple until you and students know how to use cooperative methods

10. Using Cooperative Learning Wisely • Special needs: not always best for special needs students especially with hard to grasp subjects • Often have problems with social relations and puts them in situation to be rejected • Often have difficulties with new concepts and can frustrate the student and explainer in reciprocal questioning and scripted cooperation

11. Using Cooperative Learning Wisely • Gifted students: do not always benefit from cooperative learning when groups are of mixed ability • Pace is often too slow, simple, or repetitious • Fall into role of teacher or do all the work • Allow gifted students complex tasks at different levels to keep interest

12. Using Cooperative Learning Wisely • ELL Students: students with backgrounds of 2 or more languages can help students of those languages • Receive more language practice • Smaller groups may be less anxiety provoking • Jigsaw: A cooperative structure in which each member of a group is responsible for teaching other members one section of the material • Forces students to talk, interact, and explain and makes everyone's contribution important

13. Constructive Conflict Resolution • Important because conflicts are inevitable and necessary for learning (Piaget’s conceptual change) • Often conflicts are resolved in destructive ways or not at all • Often able to correct misunderstandings if argue about conflicting wrong answers

14. Peer Harassment • Common form is bullying or teasing and harassment • In a study, 60% students said we bullied while teachers thought only 16% • National survey found 33% of students were bullied moderately or frequently • Do not tolerate teasing of someone less powerful/popular or racial, ethnic, or religious slurs

15. What Can Teacher’s Do? • Practice conflict management: steers students away from lives of violence • Do’s in class: be careful of others feelings, use humor gently and carefully, ask whether teasing hurts someone’s feelings, accept teasing if one teases, tell other’s if hurts feelings, know difference between friendly and malicious teasing, read other’s body language, help a weaker student when ridiculed

16. What Can Teacher’s Do? • Don’ts in class: tease someone you don’t know well, tease about sex, tease about body, tease about family, tease on a topic when asked not to, tease someone who is having a bad day, be thin skinned about teasing that is meant to be friendly, hide feelings about being teased • Conflicts mostly over resources and preferences • 90% resolved destructively or not at all

17. Peer Mediation and Negotiation • Johnson’s 5 step negotiating strategy • 1. Jointly define the conflict • 2. Exchange positions and interests • 3. Reverse perspectives • 4. Invent at least three agreements that allow mutual gain • 5. Reach an integrative agreement • Have student mediators that rotate everyday • Successful in younger and older students

18. Civic Values • Understandings and beliefs that hold the community together • Learned through direct teaching, modeling, literature, and discussions • “Concerns Box”: Students can put in concerns and comments; a class meeting ensues to talk about these issues • Respect begins with the teacher

19. Character Education: To be or not to be… • To be: families not teaching well enough, school violence, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol use • Not to be: concerned with narrow set of program strategies to achieve not actual character education, students do this just because extrinsic rewards and never fully understand, believe should fix structure of schools to be more just and caring instead of the students

20. Getting Started on Community • Ask students what it would take for class to work for them and tell class what it takes for class to work for you • Often overlaps with one another and fosters good cooperation and community • Have class meetings to discuss what is working and not working • Create a classroom constitution • Have “Trouble Baskets” for students so can see dispositions of students • Have students give you a word they don’t know they heard and talk to them privately about it

21. Belonging • Competitive environment based on race, gender, or ethnicity makes students more likely to act out or withdraw • More likely to bond with schools when emphasis is on personal improvement and students feel respected and supported by teachers • Care about students: academically and personal, make classes interesting, be fair and honest, make sure students understand, ask if something is wrong if seem upset, notice when students are absent and why, and use humor in classes • Trust and respect students and care about them as learners and people

22. Violence In Schools • With a trend of school shootings in the mid of late 1990’s and early 2000’s, schools and society have been looking for answers • Suggested “solutions” for prevention of school violence include: • Early Identification of potential troublemakers by • Student informant • Searches of students property and web postings • Metal detectors • Better gun control • Censorship of the media

23. Real solutions and band aids • The solutions that many give might help control the situations to an extent but not entirely “solve” them • What many questions teachers and adults should be asking is: • What is it about the atmosphere of schools that make these students desperate, diabolical, and callous? • Why do they seek revenge or a twisted notion of glory, by shooting their classmates?

24. Real solutions and band aids Questions continued: • In what ways have they felt rejected, ignored, humiliated, or treated unfairly at school? • Do schools care as much about developing students characters as well as their intellect? • Can schools do a better job at creating inclusive, caring communities with positive role models for students?

25. What we can do • Teach acceptance and compassion • Be firm and insistent with students to learn, while caring about them as well • Studies have shown that “really tough students” respect teachers who show an interest in them • Service learning outside the classroom can help promote moral and political development in adolescents

26. The end!