"COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IS THE WAY TO FUTURE"

Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of students working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. ... During this intellectual gymnastics, the learner creates a framework and meaning to the discourse.

What is collaborative learning?

Collaborative learning is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of students working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. According to Gerlach, "Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs."

There are many approaches to collaborative learning. A set of assumptions about the learning process (Smith and MacGregor, 1992) underlies them all:

Learning is an active process whereby students assimilate the information and relate this new knowledge to a framework of prior knowledge.

Learning requires a challenge that opens the door for the learner to actively engage his/her peers, and to process and synthesize information rather than simply memorize and regurgitate it.

Learners benefit when exposed to diverse viewpoints from people with varied backgrounds.

Learning flourishes in a social environment where conversation between learners takes place. During this intellectual gymnastics, the learner creates a framework and meaning to the discourse.

In the collaborative learning environment, the learners are challenged both socially and emotionally as they listen to different perspectives, and are required to articulate and defend their ideas. In so doing, the learners begin to create their own unique conceptual frameworks and not rely solely on an expert's or a text's framework. Thus, in a collaborative learning setting, learners have the opportunity to converse with peers, present and defend ideas, exchange diverse beliefs, question other conceptual frameworks, and be actively engaged.

Collaborative learning processes can be incorporated into a typical 50-minute class in a variety of ways. Some require a thorough preparation, such as a long-term project, while others require less preparation, such as posing a question during lecture and asking students to discuss their ideas with their neighbors (see concept tests). As Smith and MacGregor state, "In collaborative classrooms, the lecturing/listening/note-taking process may not disappear entirely, but it lives alongside other processes that are based in students' discussion and active work with the course material." Regardless of the specific approach taken or how much of the ubiquitous lecture-based course is replaced, the goal is the same: to shift learning from a teacher-centered to a student-centered model..

Often, collaborative learning is used as an umbrella term for a variety of approaches in education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers by engaging individuals in interdependent learning activities.....Simply defined, collaboration takes place when members of an inclusive learning community work together as equals to assist students to succeed in the classroom. This may be in the form of lesson planning with the special needs child in mind, or co- teaching a group or class.

Collaboration is a deceptively simple concept with wide-ranging and exciting implications for the education of all children and the effectiveness of all educators. Originally termed "collaborative consultation," the emphasis was upon the special educator and the classroom teacher sharing information about a child so as to better plan an appropriate educational program. Such consultation was defined as an interactive process that enables people with diverse expertise to generate creative solutions to mutually defined problems (Idol, Paolina-Whit comb & Nevins, 1987). The operant definition was later expanded to refer to the participants as co-equal partners (Friend & Cook, 1992) and as having a shared vision (Wing, 1992). The expanding definition reflected a broadening of the concept of collaboration in common professional practice.

Simply defined, collaboration takes place when members of an inclusive learning community work together as equals to assist students to succeed in the classroom. This may be in the form of lesson planning with the special needs child in mind, or co-teaching a group or class. Friend and Cook (1992, p. 6 - 28) listed the defining characteristics of successful collaboration as follows:

1. Collaboration is voluntary;

2. Collaboration requires parity among participants;

3. Collaboration is based on mutual goals;

4. Collaboration depends on shared responsibility for participation and decision making;

5. Individuals who collaborate share their resources; and

6. Individuals who collaborate share accountability for outcomes.

Many years ago, when the elementary section of the International School of Tanganyika first moved to a collaborative approach in serving students with special needs, general

education teachers were given the option of forming collaborative partnerships with the special education teachers. In the first year of the program, very few took up the invitation. A variety of reasons were cited: suspicion of the unknown, lack of self-confidence in sharing personal classroom space, and increased responsibility for the education of special needs children. Despite the slow start, class teachers and special educators did gradually come to understand the potential of their relationships and what they each stood to learn from the other. The exposure also served to De-mystify special education practices for the class teacher and enhance appreciation for the regular class program for the special educator. In her annual review of their collaborative work, one 5th grade teacher said she especially appreciated the credibility of the special education teacher and her skill when conferencing with "difficult parents." The class teacher also appreciated having learned some of the theory behind using specific strategies that had made content more accessible to diverse learners. The special education teacher said her own learning curve had also been high, recognizing how quickly the class teacher was able to assess changing classroom dynamics and adapt lessons accordingly.

Knowledge, perspectives and values must be shared by participants in order for collaboration to be successful, and for this to happen, participants must be willing to work together. Collaboration can be an expectation in an organization but individuals must participate voluntarily. They need to develop and share common goals for their work together and have sufficient knowledge to understand the ideas and suggestions of other participants. Team members must have compatible and interactive work styles. Their individual knowledge needs to be complementary and yet the team members need to have sufficiently different perspectives and experiences so as to make their contributions diverse.

Clear, simple definitions may inadvertently suggest that the concept itself is simple. Collaboration is anything but simplistic. At its heart collaboration means:

? Self-consciously forging constructive interpersonal relationships

? Working towards interdependence (giving and receiving help)

? Sharing information, expertise, observations and reflections

? Overcoming territoriality - "turfism has no place in the collaborative process (Tilton, 1996, p. 129)"

? Moving beyond what Piaget termed "ego centrism"

? Instilling a community-wide expectation of ongoing reflection and professional development

? Participating in co-planning and co-teaching

? Working to improve communication

? Developing a sense of belonging and membership in a learning community

? Creating a common vision/a shared purpose

? Moving from the idea of "work" to the concept of meaningful mission, what Hannah Arendt (1958) refers to as the vita activa

In our minds, the remarkable motivating power of collaboration lies in the last three. Teachers come to share a common vision, one that is larger than themselves and their self-focused needs. They feel included and part of a community and their work takes on a new and greater meaning - they develop a sense of mission.

SOME OF THE BENEFITS OF COLLABORATION FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

? Instruction becomes more accessible to all students because frequently, one teacher 

  will focus on content material while the other might focus on presentation and processing of material

? Direct whole class teaching and individualization can occur simultaneously

? More time is available to provide individual assistance to students as teachers pool strategic repertoires

? Greater and more varied ways to check for understanding

? Reduced referrals to special education (Wood, 1992)

? Increase of direct student-teacher contact time (Villa & Thousand, 1995)

? Access for all students to limited resources

? Potential for maximizing instructional outcomes (Wood, 1992)

? Potential for increasing teacher accountability (Wood, 1992)

? Opportunities for co-planning and co-teaching

? Opportunities for peer teaching and observation

? Opportunities for teachers to further develop a "sense of audience"

? Increased creativity in lesson planning (more ideas)

? Enlarged repertoire of instructional strategies

? Increased awareness of educational research and recent developments in learning theory

? Shared responsibility for celebrating success and analyzing failure

? Better understanding of different roles and areas of expertise

? Greater clarity and precision in communication

? Improved professional understanding of colleagues, greater openness, honesty and mutual

  respect

? Increased flexibility

? Improved organizational skill (including time management)

? Professional and personal growth through shared reflection and ongoing feedback

? Less teacher territoriality

? Less teacher isolation/alienation

? Greater professional satisfaction

? Improvements in staff morale (Villa & Thousand, 1995)

It is not always easy to set up collaborative partnerships. Obstacles are plentiful. School systems are not always set up to encourage collaboration, community biases may need to be addressed, and resentment may exist when content-area teachers come to perceive collaboration as "extra work" and additional responsibilities (Teemant, Bernhardt & Rodriguez-Munoz, 1996).

SOME OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION

? Existing organizational hierarchy (learning to collaborate as equals)

? Lack of planning/reflecting time

? Scheduling/time-tabling problems

? Absence of training/inservice in the skills of collaboration

? Personality conflicts

? Differences in teaching styles

? Territoriality

? Absence of administrative support

? Communication problems

? Resistance to change

? Loss of classroom autonomy

? Teacher discomfort in developing a "sense of adult audience" (experiencing colleague

observation - perhaps for the first time)

? Fear of criticism and/or judgment by colleagues

? Fear of the unknown: "What, exactly, does collaboration look like?"

Despite these obstacles, teachers who have entered into collaborative relationships with colleagues very rarely wish to return to their previous isolated autonomy. They see that both inclusion and collaboration "offer tremendous opportunities for growth for all students and the adults who work with them (Tilton, 1996, p. 134)."

The two most commonly cited challenges to collaborative planning, teaching and reflection are the lack of sufficient time and scheduling difficulties. While these obstacles to collaboration may on occasion be used to mask personality conflicts or a school climate lacking in trust, there is no question that sufficient time is a vital resource for teachers and it is "not auxiliary to teaching responsibility . . . it is absolutely central to such responsibilities and essential to making schools succeed (Raywid, 1993, p. 34)."

"For most of us, time permeates and controls our lives through schedules, appointments, seasons and life's rites of passage. Generally, we're in a rut when it comes to our use of time. Our days, weeks, and months are programmed, and we flow through them happily or sadly, relaxed or, all too often, stressed out. Usually, we become conscious of how we use our time when we want or need to make major adjustments to our lifestyles or workstyles."

  Adelman, & Walking-Eagle, 1997.

And yet, many (perhaps most) schools suffer from a shortage of time. Not surprisingly, the most energetic schools with the most dynamic programs suffer the more acute time famines, leaving precious little opportunity for the "relaxed alertness" that Caine and Caine (1991; 1997) describe as the optimal state for reflection and learning. Sometimes schools become so busy and so task-oriented that personal relationships are abandoned and the day to day workplace becomes emotionally barren.

There are some very powerful, specific behaviors that promote and nurture collaboration. Here we turn to the groundbreaking work of Bob Garmston and Bruce Wellman in developing the concept of the Adaptive School (1997). They identify seven norms of collaborative work. These are behaviors that, when carefully employed, will create opportunities for groups to experience relaxed alertness (Caine & Caine, 1991; 1997), the state in which we experience low threat and high challenge at the same time. Research shows clearly that threat and fatigue inhibit brain functioning, whereas challenge accompanied by safety (but not comfort) and belief in one's abilities leads to peak performance (Caine & Caine, 1997; Jensen, 1998). Relaxed alertness is vital for the trusting reflection of meaningful collaboration.

SOME STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING TIME FOR COLLABORATIVE PLANNING, TEACHING AND REFLECTION

? Identify staff who need to collaborate and re-design the master timetable to include those regular meting time

? Build team meetings (child study, grade level, etc.) into the master timetable

? Hire a "permanent substitute" to periodically cover for teachers who need to attend meetings during the school day

? Schedule specialist elementary school lessons (French, music, PE, etc.) during the same periods so that class teachers have one or two periods each day to collaborate

? Schedule a regular program of assemblies during which specific teaching teams can be released for collaborative planning

? Institute a "late start" program in which every other Wednesday school for students begins 90 minutes later. Teachers then use the 90 minutes for collaborative planning and reflection

? Increase the school day for students by 10 - 15 minutes. The additional student contact time could then allow for regular (monthly?) early dismissal of students and corresponding time for teachers to meet

? Set aside some faculty meeting time for small group meetings

? Use a portion of professional development days for collaborative meetings

? Lengthen the school year for staff but not for students.

We need another word!” I was quiet for a moment, while I nodded in agreement that the word collaboration was certainly in and on everything at the event. I don’t know if another word is needed, but we certainly need to know what collaboration really means, because I don’t think most educators, or marketplace experts really do. And I think that may be where the problem lies.

Collaboration in its simplest, and most understandable form, is getting individuals, who may or may not have similar interests, to work together in an organized endeavor to a satisfying and most appropriate group end. Now, while we hope that all the individuals feel the group end is satisfying, it can’t always be guaranteed, so therefore another “C” word needs to be learned as well, and that is compromise. That can be a bit more difficult for individual group members, but certainly is the part of collaboration that makes groups go far beyond just going through the working-together motions.

If that is still a bit difficult to understand, try this: Place a big piece of oak tag in front of a group of individuals, toss an assortment of crayons or markers onto it. Give the group the task of working together on something that has a group outcome. They decide what that outcome is as a group. What you’re really asking is for individuals to collaborate, join together as a group, to solve a problem—together. What you may discover quickly is that deciding on the project becomes the problem. You may also discover that the oak tag becomes divided into individual sections where individuals work on individual solutions. That is not collaboration.

That sort of group work is common, and it happens even with the best interactive technologies in classrooms every day. The reason for this is that in our effort to individualize learning, we’ve forgotten to define, or integrate the collaborative, groups of individuals working together. If you’re an educator, who is fortunate enough to have personalized computing devices in class, do a simple check. Ask whether you are still teaching as if your students were seated in rows? Even if students are not in rows, are you still teaching as thought they were? Are you working completely with individuals as a teacher, or are you allowing those individual to interact with each other, and not just with you as teacher? If done well, those sorts of interactions, or collaboration, have a much larger impact than working on oak tag. Personalized technology in the hands of every student can make the entire class a fluid and ever-changing collaborative environment, but unlike oak tag, there can’t be any edges or group boundaries.

This is a next step in thinking for many teachers, who are already breaking barriers in personalized classroom instruction, and can be one that is much more difficult. For those who haven’t thought along these lines, yet, it should at least be a thought, and then an eventual goal. It’s far easier to assess an individual than a group, and individual assessment is usually the one that gets the most attention and scrutiny by administrators—and used during parent conferences, as well as in most very archaic grading systems. For that reason, most interactive instructional technology in schools hasn’t gone beyond simple answer responses and last century slide shows. The key words there are simple, easy, and fast. Working in groups collaboratively for the best possible outcomes is not simple, it takes time, and unfortunately assessment for doing it well has taken a back seat to simple, easy, and fast.

Whether educators are looking at collaboration as putting individuals into individual groups to work separately, or classrooms, as learning environments with flowing and ever-changing groups, we have not begun to touch the possibilities in talk, blog posts, or education professional development. Part of this is because collaboration isn’t simple, and it actually requires more thinking, preparation and time to do. Collaboration continues to get lost in marketing catch phrases like, “easy, faster, and even 1:1, and personalized.” The word collaboration is not the problem; it’s our lack of doing collaboration right that is the problem.

Might I suggest, if you’re a teacher doing a wonderful lesson, and only a few out of an entire classroom of students are engaged, maybe you’re still teaching in rows, and bit of real collaboration is needed. And I don’t mean sitting students in small groups around oak tag. That just waters down the problem to smaller classroom problem groups. Seek ways to create that fluid collaboration within a classroom that takes advantage of individual expertise. You’ll not only discover the wonderful in individuals, but also the most complete and wonderful collaborative success in larger groups. We haven’t begun to address true collaboration in learning, and it’s about time we do.

The Collaborative Classroom is a model that honors all teachers and supports all .

students with intentional, field-tested practices that create safe environments.

The Advantages of Collaboration in Education

Kids can collaborate in the learning evironment.

Creating a collaborative educational environment can build a community of caring individuals who are all working toward one common goal: increasing the students' positive outcomes. Whether you are collaborating with another educator to team-teach, working hand in hand with other adults such as the school's administration or parents, or are encouraging the students themselves to learn together, collaboration in education can benefit everyone who has a stake in the school setting.

Teacher Collaboration

While the traditional image of the school teacher features a lone educator working in one classroom, a more collaborative approach can increase the likelihood that students will succeed. Whether teachers are team-teaching — with two or more educators actually co-teaching one group or class of students — or they meet for brainstorming and reflection sessions before or after school, creating a collaborative educational community can also help teacher effectiveness. Teaching in a collaborative environment allows educators to divide up the tasks at hand, making classroom activities more manageable. Additionally, according to the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, teaching collaboratively provides a means for the exchanging of ideas. For example, teachers can share lesson-planning ideas or specific classroom activities during weekly meetings or discuss the positive and negative parts of a project for the other educators to learn from.

School Administration

Collaborating in the educational environment doesn't stop at the teacher level. The advantages of teachers and administrators collaborating are numerous and include creating shared educational goals, developing a community sense of belonging and increasing student success. The School Superintendents Association suggests that administrators expand the scope of leadership opportunities among teachers, encouraging them to feel on a more equal level with the administration and to help take on some of the workload that is traditionally given to principals and similar personnel.

Parents

Just because parents aren't trained educators — at least, most of them aren't — doesn't mean they can't play a crucial role in the school setting. The Michigan Department of Education notes that 86 percent of Americans think parental involvement is the number one way that schools can see improvements. Creating meaningful partnerships with parents, and involving them in school activities as well as the students' studies, can help to improve educational outcomes such as grades and test scores as well as building self-esteem and decreasing the dropout rate.

Student Collaboration

• Aside from teachers, administrators and parents collaborating to enhance the educational process, student teamwork scenarios can also have academic advantages. Group projects encourage children to cooperate, improve social and interpersonal skills and help them to better understand the material at hand through discussion and a team learning effort. Students must communicate effectively, work as a team and demonstrate self-discipline while working collaboratively with their peers. This, in turn, can increase their learning and maximize the educational experience

Taking the Doors Off the Classroom Through Collaboration

Isolation can be a side effect of becoming a teacher. It is very easy to get caught in the trap of walking into a classroom, shutting the door, and tending to your own students. This is how many schools function, with educators sharing nothing more than a parking lot. Some people like it this way, but an effective teacher is someone who wants to grow in the profession. An effective teacher wants collaboration.

What is collaboration?

Each day teachers gather in hallways, lounges, or other communal locations to talk. They talk about their families, movies they watched, difficulties they’ve had with students. Some would define this type of collegial discussion as collaboration. While these discussions are crucial to maintaining the morale and sanity of any faculty, do they help anyone grow as an educator?

Professional Learning Communities co-creators Rick DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker would define collaboration as teams of teachers who work interdependently to achieve common goals — goals linked to the purpose of learning for all — for which members are held mutually accountable. This type of definition seems to take all the fun out of teacher planning time, but it is exactly what needs to be in place in order to build strong students and strong teachers.

How does it begin?

When opening Heritage Trails Elementary in 2010, I had the opportunity to interview some of the very best teachers in my school district. The very first question I would ask each applicant was, “What is your ideal school environment?” The overwhelming answer was an environment where people could share ideas and learn from each other. This proved to me that the majority of educators wanted collaboration. This would become the vision for the school: collaboration with a purpose.

Although there is a willingness to work together, few teachers have direct experience with quality collaboration. This can lead to power struggles and frustration if there is not an understanding of the stages of team development. Educational researchers Parry Graham and William M. Ferriter labeled these stages forming, storming, norming and performing.

1. Forming

This is the easiest stage where a team comes together with a sense of excitement and anticipation. People begin to learn about each other and develop processes for how their group will function. It is not unusual for a few dominant personalities to try to lead the discussions.

2. Storming

Teaching styles and practices can be a very sensitive and personal area for many educators. Those who are used to working in isolation can find it difficult to share ideas or have their practices questioned. This can sometimes lead to conflict within the collaborative team. It’s not unusual for members to feel defensive or overloaded in this stage. There has to be a realistic expectation that not all groups will function at the highest level from the very start. Working together can lead to conflicting views of educational practices and team goals. Keep in mind that through conflict, growth will occur.

3. Norming

As educators continue to collaborate, they begin to see the positive side to collaboration. Teams begin to see an increase in productivity, interpersonal relationships improve, and meetings begin to focus on achieving consensus through shared input.

4. Performing

When a team reaches a high level of functioning, the academic and professional growth goes through the roof. When teammates disagree about a topic, they can discuss it with a sense of collegiality and an understanding that the ultimate goal is an improvement of the learning environment for everyone. Regardless of the stage of development, progress is easy to identify as long as collaboration exists.

Why does it matter?

Collaboration is not always a concept that is greeted with open arms. Educators who have had success working in isolation may view this process as an invasion of their pedagogy and a waste of time. Harry K. Wong, a well-known educational author, states that the trademark of effective schools is a culture where all teachers take responsibility for the learning of all students. The key to strong collaboration is recognizing that a student shouldn’t be the responsibility of only one teacher, but of all teachers.

Not only will effective collaboration improve teacher performance, but it also will improve student performance. Educational environments such as Waggoner Road Junior High and Baldwin Road Junior High in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, experienced a 20 percent increase in math scores from students whose teachers participated in constant collaboration. How does this happen? Increased effective collaboration exposes teachers to improved practices, which leads to stronger pedagogy. The more effective a teacher is, the more a student will benefit.

Teacher interaction can no longer be defined by the parking lot they share or the idle discussions in the lounge. A professional culture requires teachers who are willing to share, support, and explore together. Developing a collaborative culture will result in reducing teacher attrition, improving student learning, and creating the type of school that everyone searches for when they decide to become an educator.

Collaborative Team Teaching: What You Need to Know

Can having more than one teacher in the classroom help your child learn better? That’s the idea behind collaborative team teaching, which is also called co-teaching. Co-teaching is one way schools make sure that students who need special education services are being taught in the least restrictive environment (LRE). And for most kids with learning and attention issues, the LRE is the general education classroom.

Here’s what you need to know about collaborative team teaching.

What Is Collaborative Team Teaching?

Collaborative team teaching often occurs in inclusion classrooms. It’s an approach that makes it easier to teach all students the same content and hold them to the same educational standards. That includes kids with learning and attention issues who have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and 504 plans.

The Benefits of Co-Taught Classrooms

Being in a co-taught classroom has many benefits. Students can spend more time with the teachers and get more individual attention. And with more than one teacher, it’s easier to teach students in smaller groups or one-on-one.

Students have the opportunity to learn from two teachers who may have different teaching styles, ideas, perspectives and experience. It also makes it easier to implement differentiated instruction, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and personalized learning.

How Co-Teaching Works

Here are the basic models of co-teaching:

1. Team teaching. Both teachers plan lessons and work together to teach students. This helps students see the teachers as equals with each other. It also gives students the chance to ask questions and get assistance during a lesson. This can be especially helpful for students with accommodations.
2. One teaches, one assists and/or observes. Having one teacher actively teaching frees up the other teacher to assist and give individual help as needed. Or the other teacher can observe. For instance, an observing teacher may collect information about how a child responds to different teaching approaches and about his attention and behavior. That kind of data is valuable for IEPs and for behavior intervention plans.
3. Station teaching. Teachers may be responsible for different parts of the lesson plan. This allows them to play to their teaching strengths. Students are divided into groups and move from one station to the other. Or the teachers rotate from group to group.
4. Parallel teaching. The class is split in half, and each teacher takes one group. Both groups are taught the same thing but in a different way.
5. Alternative teaching. One teacher handles a larger group of students. Meanwhile, the other teacher works with a small group on a different lesson or gives more support to struggling learners.

What to Watch Out For

Co-teaching doesn’t always work perfectly. Teachers may disagree on the best strategy for teaching a topic or how to grade a certain student. Or one teacher may be more experienced working with students with learning and attention issues, so your child doesn’t get to know the other teacher as well.

But that also means you have twice as many people to turn to when you have concerns. If you have trouble communicating with one teacher, the other may be able to serve as a mediator. Get tips on how to talk to your child’s teacher about learning and attention issues. And explore self-advocacy sentence starters your child can use with his teachers.

How Collaborative Learning Leads to Student Success

Encouraging students to reach out to each other to solve problems and share knowledge not only builds collaboration skills, it leads to deeper learning and understanding

It's a foggy, grey morning in Oakland, California, but that hasn't deterred Betsy Thomas, a math teacher at The College Preparatory School (College Prep), from taking her students outside for a geometry lesson. Today, her students will become land surveyors, using rope and chalk to draw geometric shapes on the courtyard's blacktop. Her aims are to help students visualize the concepts already introduced in the classroom and to reinforce the learning through group collaboration. The assignment requires teamwork, communication, and precision.

A team of three boys begins constructing an equilateral triangle, after which they will construct two parallel lines and a triangle circumscribed by a circle. One student holds the rope in place at one vertex of the triangle, while the other two slowly move in a circle, using the rope as a giant compass to mark out the other points of the triangle. "Excellent work, fellas," Thomas says, nodding her approval.

College Prep is an elite, coed, nonprofit private high school, tucked into a scenic glen in the foothills of Oakland, California. The school enrolls students from almost 80 different schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tuition is about $34,000 per student and roughly 25 percent of students receive financial aid or scholarships. None have special needs or require English-language-learner services; 100 percent are admitted to college, most to top-tier universities.

It's obvious that the school possesses opportunities and resources beyond the dreams of the majority of America's schools. And yet, when you look at the learning strategies the school embraces and you ask the faculty and students what has made the most positive difference for them, what you see and hear are not freighted with dollar signs. What you see and hear are the age-old power and impact of collaborative learning, where three boys, sharing strings and chalk, are bent over the blacktop surveying triangles, as the father of geometry, Euclid, might have directed them to do more than 2,000 years ago.

The Sights and Sounds of Peer-to-Peer, Student-Led Learning

On any given day at College Prep, you will likely see quartets of students unraveling problem sets in math class (PDF) and hear the buzz of them asking questions and explaining things to each other; in English classes, you may see the teacher silently observing from the corner of the classroom while her students lead their own discussion about the book they are reading. Outside class, the peer-to-peer learning continues as students huddle around laptops and textbooks during breaks in the courtyard or in The Learning Center.

"What our collaborative learning style empowers and enables is a student's resilience -- how do you look to your neighbor as a resource, how do you test your own theories, how do you understand if you're on the right track or the wrong track?" says Monique DeVane, College Prep's head of school. "It teaches them that it's not just about content; it's about cultivating habits of mind that are the underpinnings of deeper scholarship."

Teachers at College Prep have strategies that facilitate this style of learning and promote a sense of shared responsibility among the students. In math, for instance, the teachers prompt the students to ask each other their questions before asking the teacher, so that students learn to rely on their own collective wisdom. The daily class worksheets (PDF) and periodic group tests (PDF) are intentionally designed to be harder than the individual homework or exams, and students quickly come to recognize how they are able to solve things as a group that they might not have been able to on their own. "I like the group tests because there are more challenging questions," one student explains, "and if I were doing them by myself, I probably wouldn't get them. But when you have three other people to help, then we figure it out together."

In English classes, students are encouraged to share and to listen to each other's individual interpretations of the text, underscoring the notion that there can be multiple right answers. During a discussion on The Odyssey (PDF), students offered differing opinions for why King Alcinous of the Phaeacians offers his beautiful daughter Nausicaa to Odysseus. Using points in the text, one student suggested it was for economic reasons; another thought it was because the King saw Odysseus as a Greek-god-like figure. And a third proposed that it was because the King recognized Odysseus's shrewdness. Although they didn't come to a consensus, that wasn't the point. Nurturing students' abilities to challenge peers' ideas and scrutinize and articulate their own is the focus of this student-led learning style.

"Our discussions give us a much broader perspective of cultures and different ideas because each of us, every student, has a different background," says Zander Sante, a junior at College Prep. "We're really learning that you don't necessarily have to be right. You just have to believe in your conclusions and find ways to prove them."

Opening the Door to Classroom Collaboration

For math teacher Thomas, who was strictly a lecture-style teacher before coming to College Prep, ceding the floor to her students was at first "unsettling." But now it's clear to her why allowing her students to learn in this way is so powerful. "They're learning more than just math," she says. "They're learning to be more proactive; they're learning how to depend on their peers. When they go off to college, they already know how to work with people and draw out their strengths."

And their graduates seem to bear this out. College Prep alumni consistently report back -- through surveys and anecdotes -- how well the school prepared them for the academic challenges of college, teaching them how to reach out for help when needed and helping them to develop the confidence to contribute to college seminars with their own analyses.

Establishing a culture of collaboration isn't resource-intensive. It doesn't take hours of professional development, or technology, or even technical know-how. And assessing collaborative work is usually simple and straightforward. But you do need open minds and the willingness to trust students with their learning. You need a culture that values every student's strengths and a school community that believes everyone can learn from each other. In other words, it requires the very things that nearly every school strives for. So why not give it a try?..your Power of Collaborative Learning shall be Encouraging students to reach out to one another to solve problems and share knowledge not only builds collaboration skills but leads to deeper learning and understanding....