3 Ways for teachers to embed collaborative learning with ease in preschool today

Collaborative learning involves children learning in pairs or small groups through different learning activities.

It is student-centric and provides children with a sense of autonomy over their educational process.

It also builds the communication and social skills of children while increasing their motivation and engagement in group activities.?

Collaboration is important in the early years because when children share joint attention in activities this process provides a significant cognitive challenge in itself.?

Studies have also indicated that those who favour ICT are likely to value collaborative working, enquiry and decision-making by children. This is one of the reasons why positively encouraging collaborative learning is a key principle in teaching ICT capability in early childhood education.

?

Planning in Early Childhood Education

The use of technology in preschool activities, looking at computers in particular, offers a rich range of possibilities for collaborative learning in the zone of proximal development.

Therefore, the best organisational strategies for the early years setting should be at the most basic level to be able to make computers more a part of the general experience of play and dialogue alongside the writing area, the modelling, the books and play equipment.

“It means making the computer accessible for use in a range of contexts, both collaboratively and singly, with an adult and without an adult, in the same way as any Early Years activity might be designed to maximise learning opportunities.”?- Allan, Potter, Sharp & Turvey

?

Issues in Collaborative Learning

Computer-based activities actually promote collaborative learning more than any other classroom activity.

The computer screen is more public than a page of writing and has a natural tendency to bring young children together to share ideas and to discuss what they are they doing on the computer.

However, it is important to bear in mind that a further difficulty is the collaborative nature of ICT.?

For example, when children use ICT in meaningful contexts it is a practical experience for them and this sometimes makes it hard to separate out the individual contributions to a joint project.?

In addition, some pairings can lead to an unequal sharing of responsibility or effort.

Pairs may have included keyboard hoggers at times while in other instances, there may be those who lack confidence or experience.

They could be afraid to expose their perceived inadequacy to public scrutiny.

To Learn more, please follow this link.