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Chapter 4
TEACHERS’ ROLE IN ENAHCNING COOPERATIVE LEARNING


4.1. Shaping teacher’s attitude

  • A cooperative teacher does not decide what an adequate reaction or attitude is, instead, he launches supportive and cooperative learning on the basis of accepting any attitude that is real.

The possibility of applying Rogers’ model

The attitude of the teacher has a crucial impact on the quality of the practice that is based on cooperative principles. The formation of teacher’ attitude is assisted by the discoveries of social sciences and their functional, effective and efficient models. Within the framework of cooperative learning the conditions of the learner-, and learning-centred teacher’s attitude, which is based on the client-centred psychotherapy of Rogers’ model, can clearly prevail. So everything that Rogers, his disciples and the researchers, developers and experts following them have revealed in relation to the roles and concrete practices of teachers can be successfully applied in the teaching-learning process built upon cooperative structures. The greatest challenge for a teacher is to consciously acquire the revealed patterns of behaviour and to practice them in a conscious way.

Among the essential conditions for learning Rogers emphasizes the use of real problems that students can experience. When, in the course of cooperative learning, we start with the unique interests, problems and questions of the individual we are then building upon the self-realisation and self-actualisation tendencies of the individual, which they tackle problems with. Through their psychotherapy research Rogers and his fellow researchers showed that this dimension of self-realisation is available for each person, regardless how heavy and thick layer of “psychological silt” has been deposited on it.

Regarding Rogers it is important to emphasize that a cooperative teacher is able to show unconditional acceptance towards students who experience and express real problems, which means that he accepts the doubts, emotions and expectations of students in relation to the learning process, the teacher and themselves, whatever those might be. That is, she provides a chance not to know something, to determine topics alone, to solve problems, to ask questions and to have emotions against learning. This means that she accepts the actual emotional and intellectual state of the students and organises the process of development on the basis of those.

If I am a math teacher and if there is someone who hates math, I have to accept this feeling of him. Not just “bury the whole thing” but instead, help the person define his antipathy against math as precisely as possible. If someone is allowed to say that she hates math and we help her express this feeling then, generally, it soon turns out that it is not math that she hates but the failures connected to math that she has difficulty to tolerate.

If I recognize that the protesting student needs success and real learning then I should look for or come up with a game that let him into the secrets of mathematics and make it possible for him to discover – on the basis of the self-confidence he gained in the games –mathematical concepts together with us.

It is an important condition of essential learning that the teacher should be credible when accepting emotions. This means that the teacher, instead of obeying some kind of compulsion or supposed teacher’s role, is able to accomplish this in a congruent way – to use the words of Rogers. Since such a teacher experiences himself as being himself, he is not only able to accept the internal world and emotions of his students but also to feel it with empathy and to express this towards those participating in learning in a way that they also feel this empathy sincere.

Cooperative learning may also involve the communicative tools for accepting and expressing feelings, expectations, demands and needs thanks to, among others, the work of Thomas Gordon, being Roger’s disciple himself. A future cooperative teacher may get to know the tools for expressing attention and interest and showing understanding – humming and passive listening, door-opener questions, active listening, self-expression, Dewey’s model of no-loose conflict resolution, tolerance towards value differences – mainly from his works as they appear in domestic literature. It is also here from where such a teacher may learn how to use these skills and involve them into her methodology. When children study in autonomous and cooperative groups and are allowed to learn following their own problems and helping one another then we are implementing the recognition of Rogers and Gordon that learners are competent in solving their own problems{21}. Using the tools of Gordon mentioned above, however, we can also preserve this autonomy in the course of cooperative learning.

When a teacher, trying to implement cooperative learning, sees that a small group is not able to solve a problem and, in the end, approaches the group and outlines the solution, she violates this particular autonomy. The message of her behaviour is that in reality they are unable to achieve the task without her, the “teacher”.

In practice we follow the principle that the members of small groups should first turn to their fellows and to the other members of the group with their questions. If we insist on this, we can implement Roger’s principle of acceptance in cooperative learning.

In the beginning small groups feel a bit strange and unusual that their teacher does not answer their questions but rather, make them turn to the other groups. Or, the teacher listens to their problems carefully without suggesting any solutions or providing any resources for their solution. Searching for solutions feverishly and solving problems together within such real cooperation shape the learning large group into some sort of natural and fertile student community.

The needs and wants of the learning individuals form the basis of cooperative learning. So teachers not only have to simply accept the emotions of their students, but also need to establish an environment in the course of cooperative learning where such feelings, expectations and needs can increasingly be freely expressed, making essential learning possible for all of us.

The sources of learning provided in a cooperative environment are opportunities and not requirements that we enforce upon our students.

In my group, mentioned earlier – whose members do not read books and written texts –, for example, there was not only one compulsory reading, but at least 160 literary works that were suitable for their age group. I felt that it was important that everybody finds at least one book that she would willingly want to read, and that I have also read, so that we could discuss it for certain.

Providing freedom this way resulted in a situation that everybody truly read at least one novel, what is more, they asked me to suggest books from the list for them. Kids also suggested books to one another and had long conversations with me and with each other about what they had read. There were even kids who brought books from home and, although the school had a library, established a little library in his dorm room for his friends. Children started to “function” as a real community of book-lovers.

The teacher should be an expert of her field to an extent that in the case of even the most trivial interest or disinterest, she should be able to establish a learning environment where such student attitudes may be thematized as problems that someone can freely experience and where kids receive resources and suggestions with which they can solve and process the emerging problems.


4.2. New teacher’s roles: monitoring, intervention, correction

In general, every teacher recognizes that planning is of key importance regarding the establishment of cooperative learning structures. We hope that, on the basis of the previous chapters, compiling the first groups, personalising and harmonizing the aims of cooperation and competence development, devising the roles, providing the adequate resources and considering the concrete structures to be implemented appear, for the reader, too, as the important tasks of the teacher.

When implementing cooperative learning structures, what the teacher does, is mainly monitoring, that is, he leaves the learning autonomy of the groups intact and does not directly intervene into learning, doing it only indirectly, through the preparation-organisation of learning and the provision of resources.

Through monitoring he first examines whether the cooperative principles prevail in the small groups, that is, whether everyone has the opportunity to take part in cooperative learning – following his personal expectations, needs and wants and development plan – and to contribute to common knowledge. Through monitoring the teacher pays attention to detect whether the devised academic aims and learning tasks are indeed in place and whether those truly assist the groups and the development of their members throughout the given process.

When monitoring we do not only follow the development of personal and group competencies, but also take care that the publicity of knowledge and learning be maintained step by step.

In the framework of cooperative learning, intervention means that the teacher interferes the learning process only when she sees that the principle of equal opportunity or cooperation is violated. That is, when she wants to improve personal and/or social competencies and when she provides further resources for the sake of successful cooperative learning.

The following situation may easily happen: I notice that during the written Round Robin – when the different written works of the groups are sent around to the small groups – one member of a group of four near the window, who is otherwise their Timekeeper, is regularly left out of processing the texts because it is always the other three members of the group who read and discuss them.

In such a case, intervening through simple verbal instruction, I can tell all the small groups that the text they get from the other groups should always be read by the Timekeeper. This way I can react to the lack of cooperation immediately and efficiently and I do it with integrating the left out group member on the basis of structural and constructive interdependence.

Because if he is the one who reads the texts the others are “obliged” to turn to him.

It is even better if the cooperative teacher does not only react on the level of instruction, as in the example above, but intervenes in a way that sets an example. In the case of a quarrelling micro group, she does not say why it is not allowed to have a quarrel, but shows how a decision can be made without quarrelling. This way she improves cooperation not through moralization, but by introducing learnable cooperative patterns of behaviour and continuously setting personal examples.

We can talk about cooperative correction if unpredictable and unexpected needs and wants emerge in the course of cooperative learning. Within cooperative learning structures, the steps of knowledge construction – for the sake of successful cooperative learning – must constantly be public for every participant, including the teacher, too. Therefore we have to structure our cooperative learning in a way that the organisers and the participants of the training can monitor the steps of acquisition till the very end. This way they can immediately react – on the basis of the above principles - to the needs and wants they recognize.

In such cases we need to strive for cooperative correction, that is, we should apply a method, step, etc. to satisfy the recognized need or the emerged demand which is conformity with the cooperative principles.

In the process of cooperative learning, besides monitoring, the teacher intervenes by setting an example if cooperation needs developing and applies cooperative correction to adjust the cooperative activity to the emerged learning and professional needs and wants.

A new dimension of assessing and evaluating learning and knowledge is born this way. In the course of learning based on their common expectation and recognised needs, those who take part in cooperative learning (students and teachers), thanks to the continuous publicity of small and large groups, structure and develop their cooperative learning with the help of authentic feedback. They do this without having to moralize, classify or punish each other for the sake of learning in connection with the assessment and evaluation of the learners’ performance.

We can speak about unique knowledge constructions from the perspective of essential learning, too. Everybody develops a different and distinctive picture about the world, so in this respect, the knowledge of the teacher can “never be put into the children’s heads”. The teacher’s own knowledge and authentic presence, however, as a resource – in the form of information, patterns of behaviour, mentality, questions and practices helping cooperation – may assist the essential learning of cooperative learners and their partners (let them be either kids or adults).

It was especially the personal presence of the teacher and an authentic interest in his own professional field that has led to essential learning – even in systems that pigeonhole everyone through categorization –, if not for everyone and not for the majority of people but for those kids who were interested. If the teacher is not interested in assisting essential learning, if she does not consider it important to be sincerely aware of herself and of her professional interests, then she reaches the same approach through a series of failures and successes collected throughout the years – or she may leave the profession.


4.3. Attitudes facilitating cooperative learning

Sharing or collecting information?

In the following we shall consider the already mentioned most important attitudes needed for cooperative learning structures. Here, attitude refers to the opinion, approach and complex perceptions a teacher has regarding learning and teaching, which also implies assessment and emotional components{22}. It is one attitude to consider the role of the teacher as primarily an information provider, and it is a different attitude to think that the skills to collect and analyse information have priority. In the first case we consider the personal qualities of the teacher and her performance as a lecturer as a merit, while in the second case, we value the progress those participating in learning make in collecting and analysing information.

In a sense this change of attitude can also be the key to cooperative learning structures. Although cooperative structures themselves imply the guarantee for the implementation of cooperative situations, the increased density of interpersonal relations (see simultaneous interactions) in a classroom can frequently lead to situations to be solved in small groups (e.g. one of the groups do not understand the task or a conflict arises because someone is not approved of, etc.). To solve such questions, you need some sort of cooperative attitude toolkit, which can make the functioning and success of cooperative structures valid, especially in such situations. The list below is not exhaustive, here we intended to outline a comprehensive set of cooperative attitudes that can easily be translated into practice.

Knowledge is the collective creation of mankind

This approach views human knowledge as the collectively created tradition of mankind. It does not involve the nature of knowledge, whether it is secret or public, scientific of religious, etc. Instead, it strives to remain open towards accessible and emerging knowledge and, for the sake of developing the cooperative learning community, to make such knowledge accessible for the individuals. Such knowledge or learning is one’s native tongue and cultural heritage. The language and culture one brings from home, the various individual attainments and proficiencies are all building stones of learning, whether we pay attention to it during teaching and learning, or not. This cooperative approach, which focuses on collective creation, calls our attention to the fact, that in the case cooperative learning structures we, if possible, need to structure the processes of learning in a way that would incorporate individual knowledge and attainment as well as the cultural values represented by individuals. What is more, in the course of learning these values should be built upon. For a cooperative teacher the diversity of knowledge in his class is like a “goldmine”, because using cooperative structures, this cultural and knowledge diversity can be metamorphosed into a cooperative learning polyphony.

Access to knowledge is the fundamental right of everyone

The principle of sovereignty declares that the power of the state shall be exercise by the people. One of the instruments to achieve this is universal and secret suffrage. If, on the basis of this, we assume that through their autonomous and conscious decisions people are able to exercise the power assigned to them by the principle of sovereignty, then we need to guarantee that everyone should have equal opportunity to participate in the processes of learning. If everyone may have access to, for example, the common knowledge taught in schools, then he will make his individual and conscious decisions – that might concern the community – in a more reasonable way. It is therefore necessary to make the access to knowledge intended to be known by every individual a fundamental right for all of us. This attitude believes that in the field of education – especially in public education – it is essential to examine if, as a result of the various teaching activities, everyone has had adequate access to common knowledge and if they are able to orient in an autonomous way and successfully follow their well-founded individual plans in the right directions (general knowledge, professional knowledge in line with his individual interest, qualifications, etc.). This means that we do not investigate how the teacher and some “good students” get on with the “material”, but whether everyone progresses according to their individual aptitude, knowledge and ideas.

Access to knowledge should be guaranteed for everyone

If we apply concrete and practical cooperative principles we can represent this approach effectively, efficiently and in an equitable way. The flexible and open structures, the simultaneous interaction involving everyone, the equal participation, the personal responsibility and accountability, the continuous cooperative publicity of groups, the conscious development of personal and social competencies and cognitive-learning competencies set out a clear and practical framework for the teaching activity defined step-by-step. In this respect we might also say that a cooperative teacher structures the publicity of knowledge accessible by everyone through his teaching process.

Learning should originate from the individual wishing to learn

If someone has no wish to learn, if no essential interest or curiosity emerges regarding the topic, then it is very difficult to ensure essential learning for her. Getting to know the students and helping them voice their intentions and doubts may give us ideas regarding how to raise or follow the various individual interests. The self-realisation tendency of Rogers can involve the individuals who take part in learning only by progressing towards and solving problems that are considered essential. This attitude calls the attention to the fact that the students stand in the centre of learning and that the most important activity is to get to know them in an objective and efficient way. Judging against the “master”-centred approach of pedagogy (e.g. sage, guru, etc.), the attention is not focused on the teacher but on the student and therefore the attention of the students is also focused mainly on one another and on themselves.

Everyone operates an individual and complex knowledge construction

Although human knowledge is common, the knowledge of each individual is quite different. The structure, defining principles, forms and ways of expression of an individual’s knowledge are influenced by several factors, however this time, we are not interested in the complexity of this concept of knowledge construction. The practical message of the attitude we outlined is rather that we must see the following clearly: everyone’s knowledge is different and it stays like this forever. The aim of cooperative learning is therefore not the homogenization of individual knowledge but the integration of them into the tradition of human learning. For the acquisition and use of scientific knowledge (social sciences, humanities, science, etc.), the levels of requirements can be defined, however, it is a different question who achieves these levels and how, and also in what direction he sets out from there. Not to mention the fact that in the case of learning art, aesthetics and philosophy, besides the effects that can be described by scientific tools, we can also talk about progress that can be better grasped through a discourse envisaged outside the scope of science (e.g. aesthetics). For a cooperative teacher the most important task is to explore the individual ways and to assist those efficiently and effectively so that everyone may reach the general level of requirements, the general development of their abilities in an autonomous way.

Empathy also needs to be expressed through cooperative learning

It is vital that the participants of cooperative learning (teachers, students) should not only get to know the knowledge, interests and states of mind of one another, but also recognize and feel each other’s emotions and scruples. Our emotional life, personal and social skills may have a crucial impact on our future career. It is not enough just to recognize the feelings of others, we need to express these recognitions towards our peers with empathy. If someone sees that her partner empathizes with her keeping a sincere eye on how she feels, then, as a result of such reflections, she is able to define her feelings and react to them more precisely. The recognition, expression, comprehension and regulation of emotions has become an independent scientific field within psychology (researching emotional intelligence) and provides ample evidence that it is the state of emotional intelligence of people which has a crucial contribution to happiness in life.

The organisers and the participants of learning should be understanding

If our starting point is the individual, we need to learn to accept what we learn of others. What counts is not forcing our students to adopt a suitable attitude but to get to know and understand the real attitude of them so that we can adjust our teaching practice in a cooperative way. This attitude is not guided by the nature of the relationship the teacher has with learning or with his subject – actually, we can expect a teacher to be on the level of a “candidate master” –, instead, the teacher turns his attention to understanding what he learned of his students and accept those as their actual condition so he can structure the processes of cooperative learning according to the real situation.

Behavioural congruence is most effective in cooperative situations

The words of empathy become truly sincere and the participants of cooperative learning will feel accepted only when “the mouth says what the head and the heart feels” (Imre Montágh). This is congruence. That is, students believe that someone is truly understanding and has empathy only if that person herself is credible and accepts her own feelings, doubts and lack of knowledge the same way that she expects her students to act. We saw at Rogers that this meant that the person realises her feelings and acts in accordance with her recognized emotional state of mind. In the beginning congruent behaviour may be a question of one’s conscious decision even if he does not possess congruent patterns of behaviour. This time we begin to pay conscious attention to our emotional messages. As long as we do not recognize our own feelings, we cannot be truly empathic, since as long as we do not recognize the feelings we have, say repressed anger, there is not much chance to recognize those of others. Congruence is a skill which can be practiced consciously but in the beginning we need to acquire the attitude of “striving for congruence”. Berne calls the mutually congruent interactions “game-free intimacy”. When, for example, someone does not play the “ideal teacher” and is able to enter a learning situation without any play-acting. To reach congruence Rogers provides the necessary conditions, as we have discussed above, while Gordon elaborates the techniques to be used in practice. It is especially from the perspective of congruence that Gordon talks about stating responsibility in connection with, for example, the I-statement, explaining that through an I-statement the teacher takes responsibility for his feelings (e.g. for his anxiety over the lack of success), that are otherwise kept in secret.

Learning-centred flexibility

In the processes of cooperative learning structures learning is always in the centre. Along the cooperative principles and attitudes and according to the needs and recognized wants of the participants we can shape the tools of development and the cooperative structures in a flexible way. It is especially important to understand that even if we are one of the organisers of learning, we do not always have to find out everything. It is not our teaching or learning that is in the centre, but instead, the learning activity of the cooperative community of learners. The community produces a great deal of creativity in the course of cooperative learning and it is practical to build upon this when we implement flexible cooperative corrections. If we take the ideas of the participants into consideration they will be increasingly autonomous in organising their own learning, because they can test their ideas in practice. The most crucial question for the teacher structuring learning in any established teaching situation is the following: How can we all learn from this?

Autonomy in learning

If we manage to harmonise the personal, social and learning competencies of the participants according to cooperative principles and improve them for the sake of cooperation, then, in the course of our cooperative learning, autonomous and cooperative learning communities are born consisting of people who are able to learn on their own. It is practical to immediately bear in mind the autonomy achieved in learning and consider it as a vital value. It is not the pace, the degree and the level of requirements that matter, as these are only tools to achieve our aims. In the processes of academic knowledge acquisition the emphasis is placed on establishing and cultivating the ability to develop on your own. For the sake of this we should regard the small groups as autonomous and independent, who are also able to organise their work. It may be, however, that in the beginning they are not yet able to cooperate in an efficient and equitable way, but if we find this out together, we can already help them develop the necessary skills, so that they can achieve independence in their own learning as soon as possible. On the other hand, this independence, this tendency of self-realization is given in every person as it was proved by the research of Rogers as early as in the 1960s. However, this tendency of self-actualization must be rid of the “psychological silt deposited on it” so that the individual can develop himself within his community.

Attitude expecting the achievement of a more cooperative situation

Cooperative learning structures originate from the fact, proved by psychological research, that the competencies assisting our cooperation can be developed successfully till the end of our life. Thus, a cooperative teacher approaches any non-cooperative learning situation with an attitude which assumes the clear possibility of achieving a more cooperative situation. That is, the cooperative attitude is not about hoping but approaching the teaching situation by considering the question of how it can be made more cooperative. Teachers may use these attitudes and cooperative principles and roles as guidance.


4.4. Towards cooperative schools

Structuring and implementing cooperative learning – regardless what school system we consider – is an exhausting task. If the environment is not truly understanding, we can structure our learning however we want, the participants will only get superficial knowledge. It also exhausts one’s energy when we are surrounded by cooperating partners who carry out their chosen activities with joy, but it can be even more exhausting if someone carries out his work as a teacher just playing some kind of “teacher’s role” without any real interest.

In a cooperative faculty the whole system of organising their institution is built upon cooperative principles. The cooperative small groups of tasks and common decisions make it impossible for the teachers “to burn out”.

Unfortunately, our experiences show, that although most of the teachers believe it is possible to introduce cooperative learning in class, they think it can be adapted to the school, as an institution, only with great difficulty. The hierarchical institutional structure is sometimes stronger than that of the classroom. Behind this we can find the assumption that someone must keep the situation under control, as this is serious business.

These fears are clear and understandable. However, we should not forget that while the groups of colleagues are not able to cooperate in an effective, efficient and equitable way, someone must help them. In the beginning this can be a teacher, the headmaster then the group members themselves. Within the established form of cooperative institutional structures the initiating teacher/headmistress appears as a co-organiser. Cooperative institutional structures seek to achieve a situation where it is not the position a colleague holds in the organisation that provides authority, but the attitude and expertise of those assisting essential development.

The faculties and the employees of the institution should learn to cooperate so that they can increasingly be present in the life of their institution, and so that the workplace they developed together may accommodate their individual ideas, too. Having cooperative learning and institutional structures is a matter of decision indeed, however, the successes we have later on motivate us to go further.

At the beginning, when I, as a cooperative trainer, began to work and research together with my colleague, I was afraid what would happen to my own personality. It was difficult to get used to the fact that there was somebody who always knew when I had not done something or when I had not been accurate. However, this influenced us in a way that we became increasingly sincere in telling one another what we wanted to take on from our common work and what we undertook purely because of loyalty. What we were aware of what we were unaware of.

Later, such distributions – even the tasks undertook on the basis of loyalty – always produced creative individual solutions, quite possibly as a result of accepting each other.

And since there was always someone I could share my thoughts with, the ideas immediately started to develop and mature. According to Rogers the need for sharing goes together with creativity.



    21 Here we could also quote Freinet, Steiner, Montessori, Neil, Kilpatrik, Berne, etc.

    22 Aronson also has the same definition in his seminal work: A társas lény (Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1978. 104. oldal, bővített kiadás, Osiris, Budapest, 2008.)