How to Succeed with Cooperative Learning

Here is a book that does what it says - how to succeed with cooperative learning. Written by two authors who really do know what they are talking about and who have more than succeeded in translating that into a practical, accessible book for busy teachers. It is a book I wish I'd had when I was a primary teacher (many years ago) fumbling with the (then) 'new' concept of cooperative learning.

Kath and Jeni have not only explained why cooperative learning is a 'big idea' (and it is!) but how a teacher can realistically be encouraged to practically make the 'big idea' work in their classrooms. That they are able to do this in a lucid, clear way - in just over sixty pages - is no mean feat!

Of particular note is the visual layout and visual cues and resources available to the teacher in explaining, modelling, encouraging and sustaining cooperative teaching and learning practices with their students. As a 'visual learner' myself, this is a boon - I can easily imagine a teacher immediately engaged and encouraged to take on the big idea.

Jeni and Kath teach us how to translate cooperative learning into classroom practice:

• how to clarify, guide, encourage and model as teacher
• how to introduce and stimulate the concept to students
• how to practically 'group' students
• how to teach 'roles' in cooperative groups
• how to deal with the creative tension between individual accountability and cooperative behaviour and learning
• how to teach, and enable, students to reflect on their learning

In short, we learn both the 'whys' and the 'hows' in this book. It is a book not just about cooperative learning; it also addresses the essentials of effective teaching and learning.

It deserves a wide audience; I know it will be warmly appreciated by teachers because it is a book that knows what it is like in classrooms. Cooperative learning (and teaching) is a challenge; I know this book has the potential for positive and meaningful change in a learning community. Thank you for writing it.

Bill Rogers, Adjunct Professor: Education, Griffith University, Australia

| 2004

There’s been enough talk across the education sector about student-centred approaches to teaching and learning that you’d be hard-pressed to find any educator comfortable these days to continue with a tried and true ‘sage on the stage’ routine. At the same time, you’re likely to find any number of educators ready to be ‘guides at the sides’ of their students who remain desperate for practical advice. After all, since the principles and policies and rhetorical flourishes have all been said and done, the need now is for practical strategies: okay, okay, experiential, learner-centred cooperative learning communities, I agree already – just show me how to do this stuff.

Luckily, the Little Books of Big Ideas series does exactly that. In How to Succeed with Contracts, How to Succeed with Cooperative Learning, How to Succeed with Creating a Learning Community, How to Succeed with Learning Centres and How to Succeed with Questioning, you’ll find practical reference books that put the detail into what’s often an amorphous concept: lifelong learning. How do you develop individualised learning plans or contracts for a diverse range of students so that activities facilitate and motivate learning? What exactly is a learning community, why should you build one and how do you do it? How do you get your students really learning cooperatively? What might a learning centre look like in your classroom?

Some of the most artful teaching I’ve ever seen was back in the late 1970s in a lower-primary school classroom where many of the practices outlined in this series had been developed by a master practitioner. She’d built a range of ways for her students to learn – without naming them. There was any amount of cooperative learning going on, there was a learning centre, and the classroom was a true learning community. As a secondary teacher in the 1980s, my first assumption was that the sorts of approaches I’d seen in her classroom must only be possible in primary schools since I, like my colleagues, remained chained to the whiteboard. That was a long time ago, at a time when information and communication technologies and the learning possibilities they enable were restricted to two BBCs in a cupboard, and the teaching and learning strategies of educators have moved a good way beyond the fraud at the board. Even so, my feeling is that this series will receive a better reception from facilitator focused primary educators than from secondary educators. I hope I’m wrong.

The Little Books of Big Ideas

series typically suits the classroom-based practitioner, although other titles in the series, which includes How to Succeed with Communication and Conflict Resolution, How to Succeed with Developing Resilience and How to Succeed with Making Schools Inclusive, suit those interested in a school-wide approach to teaching and learning.

Steve Holden in Teacher magazine, ACER

| May 2005, p. 58