Cooperative Learning in the Second Phase of Teacher Training

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Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning in the Second Phase of Teacher Training

Author: ThomasK

Cooperative Learning in the Second Phase of Teacher Training[1] - Old Wine in New Skins?

[1] The basis of this article is my lecture on the occasion of the international congress "Learning - Teaching - Leading - School Development" in July 2008 at Münster/Germany. I thank Carmen Druyen to read the proofs of this article and for her many impulses.

"Teachers seem to have the task to lead a group of top-class sportsmen and handicapped people through a difficult area in fog in a north-south direction, in such a way that all participants arrive in their best moods and at three different destinations at almost the same time."

Prof. Müller-Limmroth (Züricher Weltwoche)

1. Introduction

A participant of the congress at Niagara University last year expressed this metaphor of an extremely pretentious job in other words: "Teachers are the last heroes." They have to fulfil a highly demanding task in our permanently changing society whereas the quality of our educational system will be the most important factor in our future society. Teacher training[2] in most German federal states is divided into two phases: The first phase at universities and the second practice oriented phase as well in schools as in teacher training colleges. The second phase of teacher training is constituted by a central dilemma: Young teachers are trained in today's schools with their present problems for a work in the schools of tomorrow with much different challenges. The main questions to be discussed in this article are:

- Can cooperative learning particularly contribute to this complicated process in the second phase of teacher training?

- What can the contribution of cooperative learning look like?

- Is it necessary to integrate cooperative learning into the college program?

- Can cooperative learning be more than old wine in new skins?

For a better understanding a short description of the structure of teacher training in North Rhine-Westphalia seems necessary. After a more personal report about my experiences with cooperative learning the topic will be dealt with more systematically: Before explaining some basics of cooperative learning, I would like to describe the tradition of group work in Germany. Then I will present some conceptual impulses on how cooperative learning can enrich teacher training at teacher training colleges.

2. The structure of teacher training in North-Rhine Westphalia

In Germany cultural sovereignty lies in the hands of the federal states. Teacher training in North-Rhine/Westphalia is divided into two phases and is completed with a second examination:

1. At most universities in NRW diverse sciences are the focus of studies in the first phase of teacher training. Not the future learner but science itself is in the focal point of interest of students' studies. Although there are some educational and practical elements during that phase, normally the students will not have gathered much practical experience when they get into the second phase.

2. In the second phase of teacher training the teacher training colleges are the link between theory and practice and train the student-teachers in cooperation with the schools of the region. In this phase practice in school is predominant: Teacher candidates learn the art of instruction connected with a lot of social, educational and psychological insights. The strength of the teacher training colleges lies with the integration of theory and practice. Thus the training contains both, dealing with reality and developing visions of a better school. The young teachers complete the second phase of teacher training with a final examination.

After these two phases there is a third phase of advanced teacher training: When young teachers have accomplished a job at school they can join more advanced teacher trainings on a voluntary basis but they are not obliged to do so. As lifelong learners they would be well-advised to continue professional training but a lot of teachers do not do it. This presents a serious problem: How can teachers do a good job in a world of change if they do not consider themselves as lifelong learners?

The structure as depicted above will be altered in the future: In the context of Bachelor and Master Studies the second phase of teacher training will be reduced to 18 months, starting from 2011, and to 12 months starting from 2015. The hope is that this will lead to a more integrating concept of teacher training with more practice at university. At the moment, however, I doubt that the universities are able to integrate practice into their system of teacher training and structure of learning.

3. My professional biography

I live in Duisburg a city with both industrial and rural landscapes. Typical of Duisburg are big steel-works, an international inland port but also a nice landscape, consisting of forests and lakes. My school, where I work as a teacher, is a comprehensive school in Duisburg-Neumühl. Neumühl is typical of the structural change in the Ruhr-Region with a lot of economic and social problems. Duisburg was a city with a great deal of coal mines and steel industry. Some days ago the last mine was closed whereas a few steel producing factories have prevailed. As a teacher trainer I work at the teacher training college in Oberhausen, a city bordering Duisburg on the North-East. As to its social structure it is quite similar Duisburg. Fourteen years ago I started to train student teachers for Religious Education, for six years I have been a teacher trainer for social sciences. I give lectures for future teachers at the University of Duisburg-Essen as well.

4. My first contact with cooperative learning

In May 2003 I got an invitation for a six days' workshop "Learning - Teaching - Leading - An Introduction to Cooperative Learning" in June and December presented by Kathy and Norm Green. I asked a colleague carefully: "Who is Norm Green?" and was told that Norm Green stood for important impulses of improving group work with his concept of "Cooperative Learning". That sounded interesting because, though considering group work an important dimension of the art[3] of instruction, I was not content with the kind of group work I was realizing in my lessons. Therefore I registered. Whoever did trainings with teachers in Germany knows, how difficult this clientele is: Teachers tend to pick on any supposed flaw and they always know better.

The "miracle" of Kathy's and Norm's training in Germany lies in their ability to convince with well-structured learning sessions. They present their trainings with a lot of fun and the participants get enthused. Kathy and Norm were at their best in Soest but teacher trainers from teacher training colleges are the worst kind of trainees you can imagine: You will never be able to teach or arrange anything really "new" for them. Thus many participants of the workshop criticized that cooperative learning was only a wild compilation of methods but no concept. In addition to a large extent the activities employed were well-known from other contexts. Thus a quick conclusion was drawn: Cooperative learning is nothing but old wine in new skins. Disgruntled they said that they did not need cooperative learning for their work at teacher trainings colleges because there was nothing new to it. I, however, left the meeting with some new activities for my lessons and was charmed by Kathy and Norm. But I also have to admit that I had my doubts whether cooperative learning could really be a meaningful impulse for the second phase of teacher training. Nevertheless I decided to test cooperative learning against my own instructional practice.

5. Cooperative learning scrutinized

I immediately started to include the basic elements of cooperative learning in my lesson design and made use of several activities in my own lessons at my school. Due to the social problems in consequence of the economic and social change in this part of the town you are confronted with a high unemployment rate, many single mothers, a high quota of migrants from Eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey, with many conflicts especially between these groups of migrants, and a high readiness of boys to use violence. This also means that you rarely find a strong focus on educational aims in those families.

I hoped that the lessons - if they were well-structured by cooperative learning - would give a clear orientation and security for these students living in an insecure and difficult world. And indeed the result was convincing: Especially the students at risk were clearly strengthened. I also observed a better integration of the high performance pupils. Good products and presentations led to acknowledgment and better marks. Self-confidence and the students' zest for learning were heightened. This convinced me that cooperative learning should become one important key for better learning at my school. As a member of the school leadership team I started my first advanced training for teachers at my school in December 2003. At the beginning six colleges only came to the training but a year later twenty colleges were trained periodically. I was happy to get the chance to join the first training for trainers by Kathy and Norm in Mönchengladbach in 2004, meaning I would be able to learn much more about cooperative learning. Since 2006 I have been working frequently as a teacher trainer for cooperative learning.

6. The Duisburg Model - A grass root movement

In the training for trainers in Mönchengladbach Carmen Druyen and I met. She works at Reinhard-und- Max -Mannesmann-Gymnasium, a school in the south of Duisburg. We shared the vision to build up a network of schools[4] using cooperative learning to improve lessons and to enforce school development. Carmen Druyen had also started to train a group of teachers at her school. We realized that a network would not be established by periodical teacher trainings in singular schools or by doing trainings for a group of single teachers who came from different schools. So we figured out a more sustainable training concept: Instead of delivering inspiring but singular training experiences, which were mostly forgotten after a few weeks, we insisted on building groups of school teams from different schools and school types. They were expected to meet approximately every six weeks to share their practice in cooperative learning in their lessons and they were taught new strategies and activities. Another characteristic of our concept is the lack of pressure and regimentation - the typical implementation strategy of the Ministry of Education. The participation is entirely optional. That is why we called this process a grass root movement when presenting it on the congress at Niagara University in 2007. This movement grew amazingly: In Duisburg more than a thousand teachers got familiar with the concept of cooperative learning during the last five years and more than 30 schools have started to use the impulses of cooperative learning for better instruction and school development.

Two years ago, however, we recognized that we had a problem: We had evoked such a great demand for more advanced teacher training, that we were not able to master the demand. Therefore we started to train multipliers in December 2006. The concept of multipliers was new: Teams of teachers from interested schools joined for a more intensive training. These participants were meant to support the implementation of cooperative learning at their own schools as a team. Soon it became obvious that this measure had not been enough, because we still received numerous demands for trainings from other schools. Thus we decided to start a trainers' training in February 2008. We realized the trainings in close cooperation with Kathy and Norm. In January 2009 almost 40 multipliers and 40 trainers will terminate their training and will widen and deepen the process in Duisburg.

7. Cooperative learning at the teacher training college in Oberhausen

The successful use of cooperative learning with difficult learning groups at my own school motivated me to integrate cooperative learning into my lessons at the teacher training college. If we maintain that the lessons in the teacher training college mirror the processes in the lessons at school, cooperative learning must become an integral part of teacher training at teacher training colleges: In order to be able to realize cooperative learning competently in their own instructional practice the young teachers should experience this form of well-structured group work in the lessons of the teacher training college. Moreover they would have to learn the basic elements of the concept. So I started a series of trainings in June 2005:

June 2005 - training of teacher trainers for one day

September 2005 - training of student-teachers in a week's training on methods

November 2005 - training of student-teachers for social sciences from several groups

September 2006 - more trainings for other groups

September 2006 - training of young teachers in another week's training on methods

December 2006 - more trainings for other groups

At this point the joint presentation with student-teachers added a new quality to the trainings. These student-teachers had taken part in several trainings before and then were able to train other groups of student-teachers. Eight student-teachers participated in the multipliers' training and have done periodical trainings by themselves since 2007. Since 2008 cooperative learning has become one obligatory training component for all student-teachers at the training college in Oberhausen and in other colleges like Duisburg, Krefeld or Mönchengladbach.

In addition I had the vision that the integration of cooperative learning into the work of the teacher training college would strengthen the process of implementation of cooperative learning at the schools in Duisburg and in Oberhausen if the professional teacher training could be linked with the teacher training at the regional teacher training colleges. In the last two years you really can observe a dynamic process as a result of implementation of cooperative learning in both systems. Schools and teacher training colleges with their specific qualities of training teacher candidates complement each other and the result is a complex process of improving instruction and school development.

8. The German tradition of group work

When training German teachers you are frequently confronted with the statement that there has been a long educational tradition of group work in Germany as well. And indeed since decades teachers have tried to realize substantial social goals[5] by group work like education for tolerance, democratic or humanitarian competences. In the context of research about group dynamics[6] the rather diffuse preliminary work of the fifties and the sixties were structured by Ernst Meyer[7] in the seventies. At that time some comprehensive schools also developed a special model of cooperation: The "Team-Kleingruppen-Modell"[8], which long term teams of pupils and independent teams of teachers have been characteristic of. Then teachers put high expectations in social learning by group work. In the nineties the scientific discourse about group work was reopened, deepened and qualified. For example Herbert Gudjons[9] presented an analytical and critical review of the former concepts of group work. He also developed important criteria for successful group work and elaborated interesting examples.

But scientific discussion and the reality in schools proved to be at cross purposes. Many teachers do recognize group work as an important social form or method to realize social competences. But often group work does not work. Thus you can often see the following picture of group work: After complex and imprecise instructions groups of five or six pupils start working on their tasks by talking about God and the world. A lot of time is wasted until two or three pupils finally start to do the work. The other group members do not feel responsible for the group process and the task. Usually the members of the group decide who will present the results and most probably you will always see the same pupils present the results. The other pupils who are not interested in the work can withdraw completely from this unstructured form of group work. In general the results of the active pupils are not entirely bad but now a chaotic phase of presentations of the results takes place, in which almost nobody listens to the speakers. So a lot of teachers feel helpless in spite of knowing the value of group work and its theoretical, methodical and conceptual considerations.

While the teachers are frustrated and do not know, how to realize better group work, the pupils learn that group work is an ineffective waste of time by negative experiences. It is a characteristic result of this hardly effective form of group work that many pupils react with strong resistance, if requested to do group work. These are the reasons why I prefer saying: Better no group work at all than bad group work!

The helplessness of many teachers to give good instructions for effective group work stands in contrast to numerous publications on the topic. One of the reasons for this contradiction is that neither in the teacher training at the universities nor in the teacher training colleges[10] the required instructional competences are conveyed by modelling and showing examples of qualified group work in the past.

There was another undesirable development that made group work fail: Many schools introduced separate lessons in which pupils were taught methods apart from any contents. The pupils` motivation often died down after a few lessons. Only if methods can be connected with contents effectively, pupils will accept them and take them seriously.

9. Cooperative learning - One important key for better lessons and better schools

The concept of cooperative learning was developed in the USA[11] and in Canada[12] and with a lot of benefits for pupils and teachers. It has been eight years that the implementation of cooperative learning in German[13] schools has set new accents to strengthen the responsibility of the pupils for their learning. More and more teachers and pupils become acquainted with this well-structured form of effective group work, which leads to better lessons and schools as cooperating systems. The pupils' subject-tied learning is integrated into the learning of social, communicative and methodical competences. Cooperative learning means that pupils support each other in their work. Together they achieve good results and process their work. This takes place by face to face interaction in well-structured partner or group work. With the help of numerous activities and various communication strategies a high activation level of learning leads to lasting success within the cognitive range. Problem solving competences and social behaviour are equally developed and lead frequently to a more positive self-image of the pupils. The basis for successful work in groups is a good social climate with positive interdependence among the group members. Thus cooperative learning can be characterized as a pupil-activating didactical approach.

According to the principles of cooperative learning the role of the teacher changes: Teachers have to acquire a broad repertoire of diverse methods or activities to realize the aims of cooperative learning. They must also train the ability to perceive cognitive, creative and social conditions and the different learning styles of the pupils. To plan and prepare cooperative lessons means a lot of preparation for the teacher. But at the same time many teachers discover that, in the context of cooperative learning, instruction and learning lead to a more relaxed way of giving lessons. Teachers feel better in a productive learning climate. Especially in large groups of pupils teachers get a good chance to observe the pupils individually and to take care of them while the other pupils are busy with their tasks.

The concept of cooperative learning stands for more than better lessons. Schools must be turned into cooperating learning systems. Thus cooperative learning changes the structure of professional learning communities. The individual teacher as well as schools as a system can derive a lot of benefits from cooperative learning. Nevertheless representatives of cooperative learning do not postulate cooperative learning as a universal remedy for all the problems at schools. Instead they underline the importance of various forms of social learning, strategies, activities, instruction principles or learning arrangements.

10. Impulses for the second phase of teacher training

Teacher trainings in teacher training colleges deal with the theoretical basis of learning processes as well as reflected practice at school. All these factors influence the various instructional competences. Learning processes focused at the individual person train abilities already acquired and extend the individual competences. On the basis of their specific learning biographies student-teachers are supposed to be supported in finding their own way of good instruction and in developing their individual instructional styles. Moreover teacher training should aim at the training of emotional and social competences to develop the personalities of the future teachers.

Before presenting some impulses of cooperative learning some possible problems shall be pointed out. Especially in the beginning of teacher training some student-teachers use cooperative learning as a method quarry. Sometimes we observe student-teachers use spectacular methods like jigsaw without even minding the fundamental principles of cooperative learning. Thus a few isolated methods of cooperative learning are used without achieving responsibility or positive personal interdependence. The basis of this kind of planning and performing a lesson is determined by the method and not by content or teaching goals. The results are method-dominated patchwork lessons without a clear content. The pupils are activated, but the results of the learning process are merely superficial. At this stage some student-teachers must introduced into the value and concept of the five basis elements of cooperative learning.

Cooperative learning can give a lot of important impulses to improve the lessons in teacher training colleges as well as the structure of teacher training colleges:

Development of instructional competences

The teacher training at teachers colleges is supposed to mirror the learning processes in schools. There is the room to learn new social, methodical and communicative learning strategies. Most of the student-teachers are open for new activities and use them for innovation at their own schools. The acquisition of the concept and the experiences with cooperative strategies and activities in teacher training colleges help them to improve the quality of group work. Very quickly they integrate cooperative activities like Roles, Numbered Heads, Placemat or Mini Jigsaw into their instructional repertoire. Ant they use these activities as a basis for other strategies of teaching such as independent work, learning stations or project work. Thus the training of cooperative learning can be an important contribution for future teachers to develop instructional skills.

[2] The German concept of "Lehrerausbildung" includes as well the more humanistic dimension of "teacher education" as the more formal training to a job.

[3] See Barrie Bennet/ Carol Rolheiser: Beyond Monet - The artful science of instructional integration, Toronto 2001

[4] We already presented the process of implementation the concept of cooperative learning in Duisburg on the occasion of the congress at Niagara University 2007. See Carmen Druyen/ Thomas Kremers: In der Wurzel steckt die Kraft, Eine Graswurzelbewegung etabliert Kooperatives Lernen an Duisburger Schulen, Grundschule Heft 4, April 2008, S. 50-52. So I will present the "Duisburg Model" in this article only briefly.

[5] See Wolfgang Klafki, Lernen in Gruppen. Ein Prinzip demokratischer und humaner Bildung in allen Schulen. In: Pädagogogik1/1992, S. 6-11.

[6] See Horst E. Richter, Die Gruppe, Hoffnung auf einen neuen Weg, sich selbst und andere zu befreien, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1972

[7] See Ernst Meyer: Die Gruppe im Lehr- und Lernprozess, Frankfurt/Main 1970.

[8] See Wolfgang Keim (Hrsg.): Team-Kleingruppenmodell Köln-Holweide, Theorie und Praxis, Frankfurt am Main 1996. Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Gesamtschule (Hrsg.): Das Team-Kleingruppenmodell, Aurich 1989, 4. Aufl.

[9] See Herbert Gudjons (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gruppenunterricht, Weinheim Basel 1993

[10] Already in the eighties Helmut Peiniger pointed to the importance of team work in teacher training: Lehrerausbildung im Team, Frankfurt am Main/Bern/New York

[11] See as some representatives of cooperative learning Spencer Kagan: Cooperativ Learning, San Clemente 1985. Paul J. Vermette: Making Cooperative Learning Work, Upper Saddle River 1998. Johnson, David W./ Johnson, Roger T./ Holubec, Edythe: Kooperatives Lernen - Kooperative Schule, Mülheim 2005.

[12] See Green, Norm und Kathy: Kooperatives Lernen im Klassenraum und im Kollegium, Seelze-Velber 2005

[13] Since 2004 there are more and more German publications about cooperative learning:

Weidner, Margit: Kooperatives Lernen im Unterricht, Seelze-Velber 2003.

Miehe, Kirsten/ Miehe, Sven-Olaf: Praxishandbuch Cooperative Learning, Meezen 2004.

Bochmann, Reinhard/ Kirchmann, Ruth: Kooperatives Lernen in der Grundschule, Zusammen arbeiten - Aktive Kinder lernen mehr, Essen 2006

Brüning, Ludger/ Saum, Tobias: Erfolgreich unterrichten durch Kooperatives Lernen - Strategien zur Schüleraktivierung, Essen 2006.

[14] Although Heinz Klippert has written a lot of important books about method learning, communication and team work his concept often has been realized by an additive and technical manner. See fore example: Teamentwicklung im Klassenraum, Weinheim/Basel 1998.