Collaboration

During this blog post, the definition of collaboration and cooperation will be explained, along with comparing them. It will then go on to demonstrate how collaboration is used in primary schools and how it has such an impact on education.

The definition of collaboration is working with one or more people to achieve a common goal (Dillenbourg et al.1996; Kirschner et al. 2009; Nokes-Malach et al. 2015). Cooperation is very similar as it is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary (2017) as “the act of working together with someone or doing what they ask you”. The definitions may not seem so different however, it is the act itself that separates the two, during collaboration, all parties are as equally involved as each other but, throughout cooperation there is the possibility of having one person that dominates the group entirely.  

"The emphasis has shifted from individual efforts to group work, from independence

to community” (Leonard and Leonard, 2001). Collaboration has become a 21^st Century trend in primary schools due to the benefits it has on education and the children’s engagement as “the need in society to think and work together has increased” (Austin, 2000; Welch, 1998).  Collaboration can be implemented simply by involving the students in group activities for example; problem solving, debating and group reading exercises. This enhances their learning as it is more fun and engaging than working alone, not only does this engage the children but also increases their ability to learn, even if each child has different learning abilities, they will be sharing their thoughts and ideas with each other to produce outcomes and therefore demonstrates that “two heads are better than one” (Heywood, 1546).

There are more complex ways for children to collaborate and an example of this is by implementing a foreign exchange programme. Recently, we have had Year 5 students join us in a lecture, we had to talk to the children about the topics they enjoy learning about and one child explained how she was travelling to Denmark to learn about their country and culture. Whilst she learns about Denmark, some students from a primary school in Denmark will be travelling to Wales to learn about our country and culture. A foreign exchange programme is a very good example of collaboration as it allows the students to interact with people out of their comfort zone and may even come across challenges such as language barriers. Once the children have finished their expedition, they will return to their countries and present their findings and their adventures to their classmates.

Talking is one of the most important forms of communication and it is ‘a vital tool which we use to interpret and make sense of our experiences’ (Lloyd and Beard, 1995). Communication is key to everything that education has to offer, Barnes (1976, p.73) proposes that “learning to communicate is at the heart of education”. The basics of communication must be taught for the child to understand what is going on around them, the failure of this will cause the child to be at risk of feeling isolated and alone, whilst the children who are able to communicate will be introduced to a whole world, full of new and exciting experiences that they can endure. Communication is taught even before you can talk, this is through a method called scaffolding.

Vygotsky developed a concept called the Zone of Proximal Development (1978, P.86), which is also known as scaffolding. His theory suggested that if you gave a student an activity that was just outside of their comfort zone and capability, and provided them with support from a teacher then using this method, the teacher would offer a lot of assistance at first but then by gradually reducing the amount of support, the child will learn to figure things out on their own but without allowing them to become frustrated or dependant (Learningdiveristy.org, 2013).

“What others first did for the child and the child next learned to do for himself, speaking aloud as did others, he has now learned to do for himself”

(Garvey, 1984, p. 215)

To conclude, collaboration is a huge phenomenon that has been brought to 21^st Century pedagogy and has proved to have a beneficial impact on children due to the method being more engaging, fun and therefore enabling the students to learn not only from the teacher, but also from their class peers. Collaboration can be achieved through simple group activities but also more complex activities such as foreign exchange programmes and gives the children a sense of authenticity throughout their education. Also in this blog post it has been mentioned that talking plays a big part in collaboration as it allows students to communicate and listen to each other as well as learning off each other. Studies have shown that students can achieve a deeper understanding of concepts and make better progress in their learning when they complete group activities rather than working alone (Johnson & Johnson, 1981; Schwartz, 1995). Barron (2000) agrees with this as he states that “students who participate in group learning task tend to perform better when assessed than those who had only worked individually”, the method ‘scaffolding’ contributes greatly to the reason that children perform better working with others.

 (Whitby and Anderson, 2014)

References

Austin, J.E. (2000). Principles for Partnership. Journal of Leader to Leader. 18 (Fall), pp. 44-50.

Barnes, D. (1976) From Communication to curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Barron, B. (2003). When smart groups fail. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(3), 307-359.

Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Collaborative learning: Cognitive and Computational approaches: Advances in Learning and Instruction. Pergamon: London.

Garvey, C. (1984) Children’s Talk. London: Fontana.

Heywood, J. (1546). A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. Classic Books.

Johnson, R.T. and Johnson, D.W., (1982). What research says about student–student interaction in science classrooms. Education in the, 80, pp.25-37.

Kirschner, F., Paas, F. & Kirschner, P.A. Educ Psychol Rev (2009) 21: 31. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-008-9095-2

Learning Diversity . (2013). Piaget, Vygotsky, and the Pedagogy of Learning Diversity. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.learningdiversity.org/2013/04/piaget-vygotsky-and-the-pedagogy-of-learning-diversity/. [Accessed: 24/11/2017].

Leonard, P.E. & Leonard, L.J. (2001). The collaborative prescription: Remedy or reverie? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4(4); pp. 383 99.

Lloyd, C., & Beard, J. (1995). Managing classroom collaboration. (Cassell Practical Handbooks). London: Cassell.

Nokes-Malach, T., & Richey, E.,  & Gadgil, S., (2015). When Is It Better to Learn Together? Insights from Research on Collaborative Learning. Springer: New York.

Schwartz, D.L., (1995). The emergence of abstract representations in dyad problem solving. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(3), pp.321-354.

The Cambridge English Dictionary (2017) Meaning of Cooperation. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cooperation (Accessed: 24/11/2017).

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Welch, M. (1998). Collaboration: Staying on the bandwagon. Journal of Teacher Education; 49(1), pp. 26 38.

Whitby, T. and Anderson, S.W., (2014). The relevant educator: How connectedness empowers learning. Corwin Press.