How could collaborative learning potentially impact on primary education?

Hello Education bloggers! Today’s discussion is all about collaboration. Collaborative learning is an important skill that children need to learn in order to be successful in the future as the majority of jobs demand people to work together on various projects effectively.  Dillenbourg (2000, cited in Gama, 2000) states that ‘Collaborative learning’ is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Within primary education, collaborative learning is essential to improve teacher practice, developing children’s learning through sharing ideas and concluding the same outcome and Lawson (2009) suggests that failure to collaborate may be indicative of negligence and malpractice. This indicates that if we as teachers fail to collaborate then we will be very unprofessional and inhibiting children of the best possible practice we can provide. For example, why should children learn more effectively in next door class from the teacher using an amazing pedagogical approach just because they have not collaborated sufficiently in sharing ideas? This could be why the emphasis has shifted from individual efforts to group work (Leonard and Leonard, 2001). A vital skill that can enhance collaboration is communication and Lloyd and Bear (1995) recognised this and stated that talking is a technique that we “use to interpret, communicate, work through and make sense of our experiences” and therefore, is a significant importance to learning within our classrooms. Although talking can also be a draw back to collaboration since children easily get distracted and do not discuss the topic. This can be difficult to manage as a teacher and children relationships within the classroom can also cause collaboration to become less effective however, as a teacher you can manage this by giving pupils opportunities to try and collaborate with other pupils in different ways, for example, through communication or using technology with an anonymous feature within the activity (Newell and Jeffery, 2002). For effective collaboration to take place children have to socialise with each other and Vygotsky (1978) noted that social interaction was at the core of the development process which highlights the importance of encouraging a collaborative approach to learning by adopting a ‘sustained shared thinking pedagogical method of teaching (Blatchford, 2007). Children sharing ideas about their understanding of different concepts and ideas will open up children’s minds and allow them to make sense of the world around them. However, a powerful influence within their peer group could have an overpowering idea about something which could end up being negative. However if the teacher develops children’s critical thinking skills this will allow children to think about why that person thinks the way they do and whether they have to agree with their idea or not. This will also encourage more children to be open and confident about their ideas which will bring diversity and new view points to the classroom which has been proven to be effective even within a maths lesson (Parks, 2009).

During one of our ‘areas of learning and experience’ lecture we experienced an amazing first-hand example of how collaboration with the wider world can benefit children in primary education. We Skype called a head teacher from Cheery School located in the Kibera slum in Kenya. This provided us with some hard hitting facts about the challenges children and schools face in such an under developed country. For example, they had 6 rooms and 9 teachers for 450 pupils and many of the pupils were neglected and abandoned. However, by just having one computer within the school it allows them to collaborate with people across the globe which enables them to learn about other cultures, share their own experiences and gain money other countries have fundraised for the school. Without technology and collaboration none of this would be possible. According to Coleman and Levine (2008) technological collaboration provides schools with access to experts all over the world, saving time or money on travelling, increasing quality and provides decision support and it is innovating. However, you have to do some background work to ensure who you are talking to is safe and relevant to learning and gaining first hand experiences which can be time consuming. This relates to linking learning to real life contexts which will make the learning more meaningful and motivating which Donaldson (2015) outlines within his ‘successful futures’ review, that it is important to provide children with opportunities to gain a selection of content through experience and effective pedagogy. We were lucky enough to explore the benefits of collaboration with the wider world when St Nicolas Primary School came in to create a green screen introduction for the children in Nairobi which links to Kolb’s experiential learning theory since he argues individuals create knowledge through experiences (Bergsteiner, Avery and Neumann, 2010).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWu6te0UFO4 …

This was a very beneficial experience for the children because not only did it allow them to collaborate with another country and learn about their culture but they were also collaborating with the university and learnt how to use green screens which links to the new Digital Competency Framework since they gained confidence using new technology (Welsh Government, 2016). This was also a cross-curricular activity since it developed the children’s communication skills, research skills, technological skills and in my particular group it developed their history knowledge.

Education bloggers, I would like you to reflect on the following point: if collaboration impacts primary education and benefits children’s learning to a significant extent, what about children who are home schooled?

References

Bergsteiner, H. & Avery, G. & Neumann, R. (2010) Kolb's experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective, Studies in Continuing Education, 32(1), pp.29-46.

Blatchford, I. (2007)  Creativity, communication and collaboration: the identification of pedagogic progression in Sustained Shared Thinking, Research in early childhood education, 4(1), pp.3-23. 

Coleman, D. & Levine, S. (2008) Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for

Successful Collaboration in Web 2.0 World. Happy about. 

Donalson (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales, Available at: https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/asset/A788604C-3046-4005-A1EA0EAFF023E0DD/ (Accessed: 28th November 2017). 

Dillenbourg, P. (2000) 'Book reviews'. review of Collaborative Learning—Cognitive and Computational Approaches (Advances in Learning and Instruction Series), by Cauldia Gama. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 22(1), pp.131-134. 

Lawson, H. (2009) The logic of collaboration in education and the human services, Journal of professional care, 18(3), pp. 225-237. 

Leonard,L. & Leonard, P. (2001) Achieving professional community in school: the administrator challenge, planning and changing, 36(1), pp.23-39. 

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

Newell, S. & Jeffery, D. (2002) Behaviour management in the classroom: A transactional analysis approach. London: Taylor and Francis.

Parks, A. (2009) Diversity of practice within one mathematics classroom, Pedagogies: An international Journal, 6(3), pp.216-233. 

Welsh Government (2016) ‘Digital Competence Framework: Your questions answered’. Available at: http://learning.gov.wales/docs/learningwales/publications/160831-dcf-your-questions-answered-en.pdf (Accessed: 28th November 2017).