First Ring | Second Ring | Third Ring | Fourth Ring | Fifth Ring

The Fifth Ring of the CL Wheel Learning

Outcomes of Cooperative Learning:
The outer (fifth) ring of the Co-operative Learning Wheel shows the kinds of learning outcomes that can be achieved by the Co-operative Learning approach. This ring identifies the vision we have for our learners and thus provides clarity of focus when making decisions about teaching practices.

Academic Gain
This is one of many critical learning outcomes of the Co-operative Learning approach. These goals are the retention, in-depth understanding and active use of knowledge. The knowledge can be divided into two types:

Conceptual Development: students’ capacity to construct personal meaning from concepts, principles, generalisations, and apply their understanding across a broad spectrum of disciplines, and

Mastery: the acquisition of skills, competencies, attitudes, values, and information. The processes involved in gaining this knowledge constitute such life-long learning competencies as information processing, complex thinking and reasoning skills, effective communication, co-operation, and habits of mind that enable continuous growth and success in life.

Effective Communicators
This is one of the life-performance roles that an effective education should cultivate. The Co-operative Learning approach provides motivation for the development of an effective interpersonal style of communication and regular practice, which enables students to develop confidence and improve their communication skills. Through CL students learn how to perform a variety of constructive group roles to ensure the emotional maintenance of the group while the task is being completed. These communication skills range from active listening, encouraging full and equal participation to giving the group direction, summarising ideas and keeping group members on task.

Skilful Leaders
This is another life-performance role that an effective education strives to achieve. The CL approach promotes a style of shared leadership where people construct meaning and knowledge together and strive toward common goals and mutual success. Both students and teachers demonstrate respect for one another when they acknowledge and affirm each other’s contributions and share responsibility for achieving learning outcomes.

Group Synergy
This is the development of a positive energy flow between people who are able to achieve results that no one individual could have achieved alone. Successful implementation of CL provides students with positive experiences where group members feel united and gratified in their mutual accomplishment. Such experiences enable them to seek and create similar collaborations beyond the classroom in the community. In the classroom, CL teachers provide opportunities for classbuilding and teambuilding to help students build their relationships and thus develop this positive energy flow of group synergy.

Pro-active Lifelong Learners
This is another life performance role that and education should promote. Because the CL approach enables educators to gradually delegate more and more authority and responsibility for learning to the students, the students develop their capacity to be active and constructive contributors and reflective learners. An outcome of Cooperative Learning is the development of students’ intrinsic motivation to continue learning and grow throughout life.

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The First Ring of the CL Wheel

Pre-requisites for high performance CL groups:

In order for students to achieve the outcomes described in the 5th ring, the CL teacher must first prepare students to learn together in groups. The CL teacher creates the conditions in the classroom that will positively influence student motivation to work together in a learning community. The pre-requisites for high performance groups are indicated in the first ring of the CL Wheel:

Process Management
· The Will to Co-operate
· The Will to Learn
· The Skill to Co-operate and
· The Skill to Learn

Process Management
In order to prepare students for learning in groups, the teacher acts as a classroom group facilitator and engages in Process Management. The CL teacher guides the separate individuals who enter the classroom toward becoming a cohesive group of people who will want to motivate themselves to learn together. The CL teacher consciously manages the group formation process.

Will to Co-operate
One of the pre-requisites for successful Co-operative Learning is inspiring in students the Will to Co-operate with others. This is developed when students establish a sense of their unique selves within the group and are accepted and appreciated by their peers. The CL teacher provides opportunities that allow students to share who they are, what they think and how they feel. By addressing basic interpersonal (social/emotional) needs students become motivated to work together.

Will to Learn
Another pre-requisite for successful Co-operative Learning is inspiring in students the Will to Learn. This is developed when students feel they are making a meaningful contribution to their own and other students’ learning. The CL teacher has to structure tasks that give students power to make a difference to the learning event.

Skill to Co-operate
Skill to Learn

The Skill to Co-operate and the Skill to Learn both require clear identification of the performance indicators of the skills they need in order to achieve the targeted outcomes. Before students are asked to work in groups they must know what the skills look and sound like. The groupwork task then provides opportunities for the students to practice, assess and improve in their performance of the skills.

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The Second Ring of the CL Wheel

The Principles of Co-operative Learning
Designing Groupwork Task

Co-operative Learning is different from traditional group work because it clearly structures for five principles. These principles ensure equal and active participation and continuous improvement in learning and communication processes.

GOALS FOR GROUP PROCESSING
Goals: The first CL principle appropriately begins with a view of the desired outcomes, namely the learning goals for a particular groupwork task. Both the teacher and students must know where they are headed (the desired learning outcomes) and how they will know when they get there (e.g. the assessment criteria and performance indicators). This information helps students and teacher to stay focused.

Group Processing: Processing refers to the act of looking back on a sequence of events that lead to an end result. Group processing occurs when we ask a group of students to reflect together to determine what is helping them learn together as well as what is hindering them from achieving the assessment criteria. In this way students can build on successes and set improvement goals for the next time.

To empower students to take responsibility for achieving the learning goals, opportunities must be provided that allow students to observe the learning and communication process and to give each other constructive feedback.

Observation by the students of the various learning processes enables them to achieve the cognitive and social learning outcomes. Students need to develop their capacity to observe for the performance indicators present in their own work and interaction patterns, and that of their peers.

Feedback on contributions to achieving the group learning goals and interpersonal styles of communication empowers students to improve their capacity to learn and communicate effectively. The CL teacher enables students to give and receive constructive feedback and opportunities to immediately act on the feedback to improve in their performance.

INDIVIDUAL AND MUTUAL ACCOUNTABILITY
The CL principle of Individual and Mutual Accountability helps teachers design tasks so that students cannot do the work for others or avoid doing their fair share of the work. For a CL group to be successful every member needs to learn the material, help with and understand the assignment. The groupwork task must be designed so that the whole group can take responsibility for all its members achieving their goals. In addition, the accountability principle requires each member to publicly demonstrate that s/he has contributed to the learning goals in the following ways:

• Listening – students show evidence that they have listened and
  • understood the group discussion
• Participation – students show evidence that they have participated
  • and contributed to the group product
• Achievement – students show evidence that they have attained
  • the targeted learning outcomes.

POSITIVE INTERDEPENDENCE
The CL principle of Positive Interdependence is present within team sports: the success of one member on the team depends on the success of the others. The same is true for successful Co-operative Learning groups: each student must believe that they “sink or swim together.” The critical aspect of the learning task is that no one student can do the task alone.

Positive Interdependence exists when students perceive that they are linked to each other in a way where they cannot succeed unless their group mates also succeed. The CL teacher designs the task so that there are mutual goals (individual goals that support the group goals) and two or more of the following other types of interdependence:

Joint rewards: students recognise the mutual benefit for working together to accomplish learning goals together.

Shared resources: When materials and information are distributed among the students they recognise that they.need to work together to gain access to all that is required by the learning task.

Task division: the activity is designed so that students have different job functions, all of which are needed to.achieve learning outcome. This ensures positive interdependence where no one student can do the task alone.

Group Roles: students are assigned different group roles that address the social/emotional and task needs of the.group. Each student has a specific role and therefore the group needs his/her contribution. This ensures that no.one person can do the task alone.

PROMOTIVE INTERACTION
The CL principle of Promotive Interaction aims to help students bring out the best in each other. In order for students to work together in a mutually beneficial way, they must enable each other’s success by sharing resources and helping, supporting, encouraging and acknowledging each other’s efforts to learn. The CL teacher focuses students’ attention on the kind of interaction that is required to successfully perform the learning task.

Pair Work: the CL teacher creates numerous opportunities where students work in groups of two where 50% of students are actively engaged at any one time. Only through regular and consistent practice can students develop their ability to perform cognitive, language and social skills effectively.

Groupwork: Group size should be no larger than four students. The smaller the group, the greater the opportunity for students to participate actively and equally, be accountable for learning and improve in their ability to learn and communicate.

SOCIAL AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS
The CL principle of Social and Leadership Skills addresses the need for educators to consciously teach interpersonal and small group skills. For people to communicate effectively they must know what the skills look and sound like, the benefits of using the skills and then practice them.

Social Skills can be taught while students are doing their math, science or geography with little time off the regular curriculum. As a result of direct instruction students become aware of what the targeted social skill looks and sounds like, that is, the performance indicators of the skill.

Assigning Social Roles provides students with focused practice so that they can develop their capacity to perform targeted social skills. These roles refer to functions that relate to achieving the task. They include such functions as keeping themselves on task (Timekeeper), coach each other (Coach), summarise contributions (Summariser). The roles also refer to functions that relate to maintaining the social/emotional needs of the group, such as encourage equal participation (Encourager), acknowledge contributions (Acknowledger), monitor and adjust their own noise level (Quiet Captain), and give direction to how they work together (GateKeeper).

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The Third Ring of the CL Wheel

Elements of Task Design for the CL Principles
The third ring on the CL Wheel identifies how teachers can design the groupwork task for each principle. They have been described in the previous section.

The Fourth Ring of the CL Wheel

Elements of Lesson Design
Purpose for assigning groupwork task

The Fourth Ring focuses educators on the desired impact that they would like the groupwork task to have on the students and classroom learning community. Knowing the purpose for assigning groupwork, teachers are able to make decisions about what to ask students to think about and do while in their Co-operative Learning Groups.

Classbuilding: Activities are designed so that the whole class has an opportunity to meet in the “community circle” and/or to mingle with different members in the class. Classbuilding can serve as a social warm-up as well as a “mental warm-up” to introduce the subject matter and/or the social skills needed to perform the main collaborative task.

Teambuilding: Activities are designed so that group members, (pairs, groups of 3 or 4,) have an opportunity to get to know one another better, build a group identity and develop mutual support, while their minds also warm-up to the subject matter and social skills required for the main collaborative task.

Motivation of Social Skill Acquisition. The CL teacher provides opportunities for students to discover what the targeted social skill is and the benefits of performing the skill. As a result students gain clarity of focus on the kinds of social skills they will need in order to work on the assigned groupwork task set for the day or on-going project.

Practice of social skills. The CL teacher carefully designs the learning task in order to provide students with practice in the targeted social skill.

In the Skilful Leaders segment of the CL Wheel, a style of leadership is promoted that demonstrates respect for each person’s capacity:

Acknowledge and Affirm – CL teachers practice a style of leadership that demonstrates respect for the learner. They seek to draw out from students their perceptions, thinking, and understanding. This affirms and acknowledges who the students are and what they bring to the learning experience. In addition, when CL teachers design tasks where students present themselves and share their ideas and thinking processes, they are helping students develop habits where they acknowledge and affirm their peers.

Share Responsibility – CL teachers demonstrate their respect for students’ capacity when they give them opportunities to take responsibility, make decisions, and act on those decisions. By giving students meaningful choices and observing their process in making their choices, teachers can positively influence and develop students’ decision-making ability.

Mastery: One of the desired learning outcomes of every lesson: students’ development of proficiency in thinking and language processes and skills as well as learning important information.

Conceptual Development: One of the desired learning outcomes of every lesson: the gaining of in-depth understanding of the ‘big’ ideas, principles, generalities which students can then apply to a broad range of disciplines and use to create new knowledge.

The CL classroom seeks to equip students with knowledge and competencies they need in order to be self-directed, reflective and inquisitive learners for life. This occurs when students practice pro-active roles during their classroom learning experiences.

Contributors is one kind of role our students need to experience regularly so that it becomes a habit in how the student leads his/her life. When implementing groupwork, CL teachers invite students to make real and significant choices and contributions to the whole learning endeavour. This develops the habit of being a pro-active learner.

Reflective Learners is another kind of role that our students need to practice regularly so that they develop it as a habit of mind for continuous learning and growth. This helps students to develop a belief in themselves and respect for their own feelings and thoughts.

Putting it all together

The Co-operative Learning Wheel synthesises the theory, principles and practices for designing and implementing successful groupwork. Developing an optimal learning environment and using CL as an important teaching tool to achieve many critical outcomes at once takes time and perseverance. Being kind to yourself, taking small baby steps and working with colleagues will help you to succeed in using Co-operative Learning effectively in your classroom.

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