Volume 7 Issue 4  June 2003

The Value of Collaborative Processes in Education

Introduction: "Working collaboratively" and teaching "thinking skills" have become very trendy catchphrases that have become embedded in education culture over the past 10 years.  But these two phrases need to be questioned and examined, otherwise precious time, money and energy could well be wasted on nice sounding phrases. Do students benefit from working collaboratively?  Is collaborative learning pedagogy based on good research documentation?  Is collaborative learning a process which the 21st century is going to demand of our students?  Is it necessary to teach thinking skills to all students?  Is it possible to teach a generic set of thinking skills?  Is "thinking" actually necessary? In this article we hope to address some of these issues.

The 21st century is increasingly demanding a new balance between "knowing what" and "understanding how” to think.  The shift in this continuum towards "understanding how" is one of the great education trends, which have gathered momentum in the past 15 years.  The reason for this accelerated shift is that we can now “know what” by being relatively familiar with Google© search tools and how to operate them. ‘Knowing what’ does not necessarily imply understanding, and much of our teaching and assessment in the 20th century was focused on knowing what, because it was really considered to be the benchmark for being an educated person.  Being able to take what students know, and apply that to their ability to be creative was almost accepted as a given right.  In other words if students knew enough to “know what” then they would be smart enough to “understand how” and consequently have the capacity to think laterally, and be creative and innovative!

Decision Making Overload: In the past it simply was not necessary for everyone to have the ability to think; in a conscious sense.  The amount of decision-making that is required of each individual in the 21st century is dramatically greater than that of the 20^th, and certainly far greater than in previous centuries.  A person growing up in a small village 150 years ago did not have to make choices about such things as a power provider, a telephone company, a place of work, which channel to watch; even who to marry would be reduced to a limited choice of those available in the local village. 

Decision-making was often left up to the Lord of the manor or the local, kaumatua, village elder or Shaman. Increasingly, in the 21st century people are feeling overwhelmed by the numerous daily decisions they have to make without the essential skills to make those decisions effectively and efficiently. They are expected to make informed decisions on a whole range of issues no matter what their social status, academic training or work placement.  They are required to make all these decisions with virtually no training in how to make effective decisions, and how to think through the issues effectively, concisely and collaboratively.  In short their inability to cope with the number of decisions they need to make is causing many to be paralysed into inactivity. This is one of the great issues, and one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century.  It is also one of the insidious undercurrents causing mental stress in almost all our lives.

Unless we educate our young people to work through decision-making processes effectively and concisely, and boost their self esteem, they will continue to take their own lives, "opting out of the system" rather than fulfilling their true potential, and choosing gladly to let marketing companies and their peers make their decisions for them. 

A Thinking Curriculum: These are just some of the reasons why we must ensure that we not only teach our students to know what, but also to understand how, and in order to understand how, they must understand how to think.  The UK National Curriculum has identified this new balance in the opening statement of their "Learning Across the Curriculum" document.

“By using thinking skills, pupils can focus on ‘knowing how’ as well as ‘knowing what’ – learning how to learn. The following thinking skills complement the key skills and are embedded in the National Curriculum”

Information-processing skills
These enable pupils to locate and collect relevant information, to sort, classify, sequence, compare and contrast, and to analyse part/whole relationships.

Reasoning skills
These enable pupils to give reasons for opinions and actions, to draw inferences and make deductions, to use precise language to explain what they think, and to make judgements and decisions informed by reasons or evidence.

Enquiry skills
These enable pupils to ask relevant questions, to pose and define problems, to plan what to do and how to research, to predict outcomes and anticipate consequences, and to test conclusions and improve ideas.

Creative thinking skills
These enable pupils to generate and extend ideas, to suggest hypotheses, to apply imagination, and to look for alternative innovative outcomes.

Evaluation skills
These enable pupils to evaluate information, to judge the value of what they read, hear and do, to develop criteria for judging the value of their own and others’ work or ideas, and to have confidence in their judgements.

 http://www.nc.uk.net/learn_think.html

If our students are required as we are, to make informed decisions on a wide range of issues every day, the obvious implication must be that we need to teach them to be critical thinkers, that they need to be able to process information effectively, synethesise the huge range of information that is available, and be able to reason through and evaluate what they read, see, hear and do. In order to understand how to think, students must be able to think deductively and logically and have an appreciation and understanding of their own thinking (metacognition). 

The role of collaboration in “knowing how” cannot be underestimated.  Last year we presented a simplified diagram (available from http://www.i-learnt.com/Thinking_What_is_2.html) which provided an overview of the thinking process(es).  The model proposed that thinking happened when we changed some aspect of our initial worldview, and developed a new (but not necessarily improved), world view.  In order to begin this process we identified a range of thinking initiators.  Almost all of these initiators occur more readily, and are reflected on more deeply in collaborative situations.  Encouraging collaborative environments within the classroom can be achieved in many different ways.

1. Setting tasks and questions that allocate a variety of roles to individuals within a group.  The sum of the individual activities and actions contributes to the success of the group.
2. Encouraging groups to report back the sum of their actions and activities (their findings) to their peers.
3. Using effective software environments that encourage collaboration (http://www,knowledgenetworks.co.nz) .
4. Putting powerful but simple and effective communication tools into the hands of students.

Historically much of what is called "teaching thinking" has focused on procedural skills within artificial contexts or even without context at all.  To quote a recent paper from NESTA  http://www.nestafuturelab.org/reviews/ts04.htm (May 22 2003)

“In fact successful thinking skills programmes promote a variety of apparently quite different kinds of things including, strategies, habits, attitudes, emotions, motivations, aspects of character or self-identity and also engagement in dialogue and in a community of enquiry. These thinking skills are not united by any single psychological theory.” 

In order to ensure that these thinking skills are transferable to new and different contexts it is imperative that students carry out thinking tasks in authentic contexts. We “think” with the help of tools using various strategies, and through interaction with other people. Students need to be able to "use" all these tools effectively but they have to be taught how.

The process of reflection can come via metacognition, or more often than not, it comes from saying what is known, and having it reflected by another person.  This is often what happens in collaborative projects.  Collaborative projects require good oral language and a good understanding of social nuance and culture.  In many cases this cannot be taught extrinsically but, when taught intrinsically students can be made aware of particular social and learning strategies, and encouraged to be empathetic through practicing the art of “seeing things from other people’s perspectives".

To quote Rupert Wegerif  from  “Designing Technology to Promote Thinking” (essential reading)  http://www.nestafuturelab.org/reviews/ts01.htm  [May 23 2003]

“The research evidence seems to suggest that transferable thinking skills will not result unless activities are embedded in teaching and learning dialogues, either with a teacher or with other students. In other words the activity, however creative or fun, needs to be framed in such a way that learning goals are made explicit and bridges are built between contexts.”

To make the contexts as authentic as possible it is important that the information that is being accessed is “primary source information” rather than secondary.  Primary source information is information accessed from its original source rather than through an intermediary news service, television, book or web site.  Accessing primary source information has been traditionally very difficult but with web based resources and communication tools it can now be done relatively easily. 

For example, if an earthquake were to strike a small village in Turkey such as Bakirkoy, imagine the impact if teachers and students could speak first-hand to the students who have experienced the earthquake (assuming they still have an Internet connection!).  In order to find the students in this village, teachers can use e-Pals http://www.epals.com

An Example:

We searched for the village name and asked for someone who had a knowledge of  the English language. The result of this search is below:

Not only does this service return the desired result, but by clicking on the contact button

An e-mail program is set up and addressed to the intended recipient.

There are in fact 130 schools in Turkey registered with e-Pals. This web site is possibly one of the most powerful collaborative internet tools for teachers.  No matter where an event might take place there is almost certainly a school nearby.  The e-Pals web site also has the capability to translate your comments and requests from English into seven different languages.                Incredibly this is a free service.

Students accessing primary source information become personally involved, and by proxy take ownership of the process and the responsibility for any outcome that may be achieved.  By removing any intermediary, the responsibility and ownership is transferred from the teacher/intermediary to the students: this is the power of primary source communication.

Once students have developed the capability of communicating with their peers from around the world they can proceed to develop a news service that can be provided on-line either as a web site, a daily “live” news service, or a broadcast service provided they have a network of televisions and a video server/hub in the school.  All of these high level tasks require a wide range of skills, and are compatible with the demands of 21st century communities.

Boys & Collaboration: The education of boys is another area on which this issue has considerable impact.  Over the past 20 years there has been a considerable shift in the manner and type of assessment activities that students have been asked to carry out.  The statistical results of this shift show that boys are no longer achieving the same percentile academic success as girls. There have been many conferences dealing with the issues of "failing boys” but most have resulted in considerable confusion.  The issue of boys "failing" is really about their learning styles and their competitive instincts.  The new style of assessment is much more focused on the capacity to read the question effectively and to create a considerable written response.  In the past boys were able to answer questions succinctly, without the use of too much language and in general the answers they were presenting were based primarily on recall of known facts.  Boys are far more competitive, in general, than girls, and so working in groups often results in conflict and a competition for who is in charge.  There are those that suggest that this reflects genetically the competition for a mate.  Whether or not that is the case, the now well-documented consensus suggests that boys do not perform as well in group- based assessments as girls. 

The issue now facing those responsible for the education of boys is that in rich information environments and a working world that emphasises innovation, group work and good communication are absolutely essential.  We could revert to assessment tasks that would facilitate an increase in boys’ apparent “success” but this does not empower them for the 21st century working or social environment.  In the past boys sat very comfortably in production based workplaces where teamwork and collaboration was in general non-essential.  Boys did particularly well here as they were "competing" with each other to complete tasks.  With the near extinction of this type of work boys are now faced with having to re-orient their skill sets, and learn to work together in teams and collaborative groups.  Changing assessment tasks to better suit boys is not going to solve the issue. 

Collaboration and teamwork are now essential in almost all occupations, and there are considerable and obvious social advantages in empowering boys with this skill set.  I have no doubt that these changes will not come particularly naturally, and it will take some considerable resolve to change this culture, but just as the agrarian and the industrial revolutions changed the way in which we worked and operated as communities, the knowledge/information revolution is about to repeat the process. We will struggle with some elements of it as we redefine social norms and expectations, and the issue regarding the success of boys will be one which will cause continuing social debate and angst for some time to come.

In summary: Engagement in collaborative learning is one of the recognised elements that encourage transferable thinking skills.  The capacity of individuals to work in teams and collaborative groups allows good reflective practice which in turn encourages the development of new ideas, possibly resulting in innovation.  The 21st century, with it’s plethora of very inexpensive forms of global communication and access to information, enables these teams and talent groups to function successfully without having to reside in a common location. 

Distributed groups relying on discrete skill/talent sets are now commonplace, and once again this hinges on new sets of communication skills and a considerable increase in the amount of communication that now takes place. The stark reality is that in 2003 it takes less than one day to make the same volume of phone calls as were made throughout the world in the whole of 1984,and this does not include chat, instant messaging, e-mail and list group discussions!  We are in the middle of the most spectacular social and workplace revolutions ever.  The big question is: Will our education system propel this revolution or be dragged along by it?