Research summary - collaborative learning

'Cooperative learning is the use of small groups through which students work together to accomplish shared goals and to maximise their own and others’ potential.' Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (ASCD 1994)

What is collaborative learning?

Collaborative learning is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint effort by learners. Collaborative learning activities vary widely, but most centre on the learner’s exploration or application of the curriculum, not simply on the teacher’s presentation of it. The teacher’s role is to create an environment where young people are willing and able to work collaboratively, where there are plenty of opportunities and stimulating contexts for learners to work with others, and where they feel safe to share their emerging ideas and understandings. 

Usually, learners are working in groups of two or more, searching mutually for understanding, solutions, meanings, or creating a product. Group challenges often require learners to produce a product for a specified audience and purpose. Collaborative learning programmes also place great emphasis on assessing the contribution of individuals within the group and of the performance of the team. 

In collaborative learning situations, pupils are not simply taking in new information or ideas - they are creating something new with the information and ideas.

American researchers David and Roger Johnson have done more than anyone to popularise the concept of collaborative learning. Their research identified 700 studies relating to cooperative, competitive and individualistic efforts to learn and they identified five defining characteristics of cooperative learning. 

1. Groups work together to accomplish shared goals. Group members buy into a mutual goal. They seek outcomes that are valuable for themselves and the group. They believe they sink or swim together. 

2. Group members are hard on themselves and each other - they make each other accountable for producing high quality work and achieving goals. 

3. Group members work face to face and support each other to produce joint products. 

4. Group members are taught social skills and are expected to use them to work together to achieve their goals. 

5. Group members analyse how effectively they are working together in achieving their goals.

Collaborative learning in schools

Collaborative learning is not new to schools. For example, Circle Time, a very effective form of collaborative learning, has been embedded in the learning routines of many Scottish primary pupils for some time.

In Scotland two recent initiatives have focused on promoting collaborative learning techniques. 

North Lanarkshire’s ‘Cooperative Learning Programme’ uses materials which emanate from the Johnson brothers’ work in Canada. The aim of the authority is to have all teachers trained in cooperative learning. 

The other initiative is known as the ‘Critical Skills Programme’. This programme was developed in the 1980s after leaders in the business and education communities identified a similar wish list of skills and dispositions required of school leavers.

The case for collaborative learning

The rationale for promoting more collaborative learning, especially in secondary schools, is based on our growing understanding that: 

• learning is fundamentally a social activity. We often learn best by building our knowledge, understanding and skills through working with other people;
• because people are social animals, most of our goals relate to those of the group or community;
• classrooms that operate as learning communities get better results;
• being able to learn and work with other people are highly regarded competencies, both in the world of work and in social contexts; and
• cooperative learning helps young people develop the interpersonal skills and attitudes required in a world that is increasingly pluralistic and diverse. 

Johnson and Johnson’s study in 1989 reviewed over 100 years of research into the benefits of cooperative versus individualised learning. They identified three key outcomes of cooperative learning: 

1. increased effort
2. positive relationships
3. improved psychological health. 

Their findings were translated into three objectives contained within a publication in 1994 for ASCD, the main curriculum organisation in the US. This involved using collaborative learning approaches to: 

1. raise achievement for all
2. include those who are gifted or academically challenged
3. give students the experiences they need for healthy social, psychological and cognitive development. 

Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (ASCD, 1994)

Collaborative learning - the main messages

• Collaborative learning recognises that humans are fundamentally social animals and that both motivation and learning are usually strongly linked to social influences. 

• Most of the activities and the learning undertaken in schools are individual experiences, even where students are sitting together in pairs or in groups. 

• Genuinely collaborative learning requires a fundamental shift in attitude and a change in role for both teachers and pupils. It requires both groups to learn new skills. 

• Placing students in pairs or groups and telling them to work together does not in itself result in cooperation.

•  Structuring lessons so that students genuinely collaborate requires an understanding of the strategies and techniques that make cooperative work effective.

• This involves taking existing lessons, curricula and courses and restructuring them. It means designing collaborative lessons so they meet the needs of the curriculum, the subject, the students and the time available. It means diagnosing problems some students may have in working together and intervening where necessary to increase the effectiveness of groups.

• Collaborative learning is not a soft option. It is demanding for both teachers and students and requires teachers to be less controlling and students to be autonomous learners who take more responsibility for their learning. 

• Research shows that collaborative learning can reap great rewards, both academically and in young people’s ability to operate effectively in the world beyond school.

The implications for learners

'In classrooms where a sense of community is built, students are the crew not the passengers.' Chris Watkins

In a collaborative learning situation pupils are active agents. 

In collaborative learning environments students: 

• frequently work as a team
• actively solve meaningful problems
• publicly exhibit their learning
• reflect on what they are learning and doing
• apply quality criteria to their work
• take responsibility for and ownership of their learning.

Collaborative learning places different demands on students. It requires the group or class to become a community of learners that takes more responsibility for their learning, motivation and behaviour. 

There is significant evidence to suggest that where collaborative learning is done well, students become self-motivated and much less reliant on the teacher. They have greater autonomy for their own learning and also understand how to be team players.

To do this they need to develop a range of new skills, which require a lot of scaffolding and support to begin with.

The implications for schools and classrooms

'If individualistic learning dominates your classroom, your students will behave accordingly, even if you put them temporarily into cooperative groups.' Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (ASCD 1994)

Teachers need to control less

In collaborative learning the role of the teacher changes. Although pupils become the crew rather than the passengers, the teacher still remains the pilot, setting the classroom on course and ensuring that the pupils work and learn together effectively. Paradoxically, the less controlling the teacher, the better the students will perform.

The goals are different 

Helping young people to work and learn well together becomes an important aim in itself. In many classrooms, the underpinning goals must change, for example:

• to create a learning community

• to improve our knowledge together

• to help each other learn

• to learn how to learn together.

Students need to be taught new skills

The social skills for effective collaborative working must be taught to students, just as professionally and precisely as academic skills. These skills include leadership, decision-making, communication, building trust, and conflict management.

Moving from a classroom culture where the students are totally dependent on the teacher and work individually to one where there is an emphasis on collaboration involves what Johnson and Johnson call 'disciplined effort'. They point out that it can take years for some classrooms to get it right. It can require a fundamental change in thinking, behaviour and beliefs. 

No one is suggesting that all learning should be collaborative. There is still a place for lessons where the teacher explains and coaches and where pupils engage in independent learning activities. Johnson and Johnson suggest that if teachers are going to establish genuinely cooperative learning, they need to use it for 60-80% of the time in their classrooms. 

Teachers must foster positive interdependence

The changing role of the teacher requires them to use new techniques, skills and strategies. It involves:

• doing more planning and design work in advance

• forming different kinds of groups for different purposes

• using different methods to compose and recompose groups

• working out ground rules with students to help them move from debate and discussion to dialogue

• training peers to teach peers

• using a range of techniques such as jigsaws and carousels to promote collaborative working

• taking time to give more feedback on the process of learning as well as the product of learning and on how well students work together.

Schools must become learning communities 

The idea of classrooms as learning communities goes against the grain of how most classrooms and schools actually operate. 

To encourage and support teachers to work more collaboratively with students, they need to experience what it is like to work in a collaborative community themselves. If teachers are expected to control less, so must school and education authority management. Many head teachers already know that top-down management does not empower teachers to create vibrant and innovative learning environments.

Many schools in the UK are now using collaborative learning methods to run staff development meetings and also to help teachers become more involved in the decisions about the school. 

When governments are too prescriptive about classroom practice and ask for too much content to be covered, they not only reduce teachers’ morale but they make it more difficult for them to run their classrooms in a way that promotes collaboration. Also, when teachers are held accountable for students’ performance in national examinations that do not measure their ability to work together, they become more controlling and teach to the test.