Chapter 3
COOPERATIVE ROLES
3.1. The significance of cooperative roles
Cooperative learning, as we mentioned above, is based on the uniqueness, singularity and unrepeatability of our personality, that is, on our individualistic character, and organises its processes along the competencies of the individual (knowledge-experience, skill-practice, values-attitudes, and meta-competencies) to be developed. Individualisation, according to the research for example by Harold Wenglinsky{17}, is one of the important components of quality education. This component raises the question whether we are able to organise our education and teaching practice in a way which satisfies the individual development needs, wants and interests of the students.
In this respect, the cooperative roles, besides the structures based on principles, seem to be the most suitable forms. Cohen et al emphasize that it is no use integrating kids from various social status in a class if the lessons are still held in the framework of the traditional education. In such a situation the disadvantaged kids take up the social roles assigned to them within the class (weak and lazy, weak but diligent). This, however, is due to the highly inefficient and unfair structural conditions of organising learning: applying the classic frontal teaching approach the teacher organises their teaching practice in relation to the best students, therefore it is only them who are reading the teacher (while everybody else is just struggling as it is impossible to pay attention to so many kids alone). The key issue therefore is how to organise the collective learning of kids and what roles and situations our public education and the everyday teaching practice offer to them in the classroom.
The models of cooperative learning offer roles which help kids break out of their disadvantaged situation{18}. At the same time, with the help of these roles the competencies of disadvantaged kids are developed more efficiently regarding either their knowledge, personality or social competence.
The research of the past forty years have proved that besides cooperative structures, cooperative roles have similarly great importance when it comes to the smooth organisation of learning.
3.2. Cooperative role as a rule of behaviour
It is strange to speak about cooperative roles in relation to unique, unrepeatable and personalized development. In fact, what we need here is to somehow harmonize cooperation manifested in individual learning and development and providing a scene for it. Here, the role appears as a function, rules of behaviour and a model. One assumption is that peoples aptitude, with the exception of extreme examples, cannot be improved. The other is that it is especially true regarding social relations. Thirdly, psychology has already revealed that human behaviour is able to follow well-defined personal and interpersonal patterns of failure, independently from the individuals social status. If this is true then in the field of teaching practice we need communication and cooperation tools roles, for example that can be shaped, practiced and learned and also grasped by both imagination and practice. Among other things the dramatic approach of roles as it can model the most unexpected human situations in practice - can be the pedagogical tool which will find it easy to suggest tools regarding cooperation built upon much simpler principles. There are communication models, confirmed by research in the fields of psychology and education, whose principles, similarly to cooperative learning, were revealed and introduced in the 1960s and whose efficiency and fairness regarding the development of interpersonal relations, interpersonal communication and cooperation are proved by fifty years of research. These models provide important help regarding the creation of the patterns of behaviour for these roles.
In a cooperative group every member plays an equal role. The relation among the different roles is cooperative and not hierarchical. Equality is guaranteed by a rotation based on the principle of equal participation so equality is also structurally guaranteed by the fact that the roles are interchangeable among the members of the group. The roles are established along thematic/academic aims as well as along the learning, personal and social competencies to be developed. Instead of insisting on the roles defined by the various models, the cooperative teacher may, or rather, must come up with newer and newer roles to achieve his educational-development aims as precisely as possible. The names of the roles and the groups assist the identity development of the groups and individuals.
When the members of the group are assigned a new role, first they create a role card for each other in pair work or in threes. The point is that they create one anothers role card, write the name of their classmate on the card together with two features that they think their classmate possesses and that helps him to play that particular role. However, we can only count on such reflective behaviour if the members of the group know each other. (In case they are strangers everyone offers a feature for herself which they then interpret and write on one anothers card.) Reflecting on ourselves and on our partners helps kids identify themselves with the role, because it unlocks resources for each participant so that together with his partner or on their own they are able to play their assigned role. This activity also reveals interfaces upon which their confidence can rely.
In the case of more mature groups who are more congruent and have been cooperating for a longer time they can also write down what opportunities they can see for the particular individual in playing that role and they can also express what competencies he can improve by playing the assigned role. By this they assist one another towards conscious self-development as everyone will have her turn.
From the perspective of group identity the expert groups may choose a name for themselves on the basis of, for example, a specific theme given to them in the form of a jigsaw. As in the case of the expert micro groups of the 8-9 year old age group participating in a project on domestic animals: running horses, brave dogs, lazy cats, happy mice, etc.
The other side of the role approaches from personal competence development: this is the personal and personalized side of the role.
Johnny Bart does not really like books, they only watch TV at home so he does not even understand what books are good for. In this case it goes without saying that he becomes the Task Master who is given the task to find beautiful pictures in the books borrowed from the library then collect information pictures, texts and data on the basis of the table of content.
It is evident that the tasks of the individual coincide with the competencies to be developed; let us call this particular case the making friends with books learning competence. The various levels of making friends with books may appear at the same time.
Similarly to our Johnny, Eve and Rob are also Task Masters but in different groups. Johnny Bart is flipping through the book about horses to collect pictures his grandfather also keeps horses. Eve is reading the captions already: grey her favourite colour is grey and collecting different kinds of cats. Rob is copying a sentence he considers important from the book on dogs he likes keeping dogs at home. Is he possibly collecting arguments?
We can see that they are doing the making friends with books activity at different levels. These levels are built upon one another. After all, we also start familiarizing ourselves with a book by flipping it through...
In one of his articles Kagan highlights the importance of cooperative structures as opposed to the roles applied in conscious competence development{19}. According to Kagan, it is the structure, the organisational method which has utmost importance regarding the implementation of cooperative principles. This is true, but the roles also have structural significance. However, this does not mean that the kids get homogenized in roles forced upon them. On the contrary, the models of cooperative learning are always about the cooperation of autonomous children. The roles help to preserve the autonomy of those participating in the learning activities, because cooperative learning accommodates and accepts those, at times very different, individuals who take part in learning. By choosing or getting a particular role in a group he gets a chance to consciously collect the tools, patterns of behaviour, practices and theories needed to for his role during his studies, because all he has to do is to follow the tasks and character of his role. As the role provides the framework for improving the participants own performance, it also makes reflection much easier, because it is within the boundaries of the roles played where the skills are reflected on therefore, it is not the whole personality that is constantly put in the pillory, as is the case of an oral report in front of the blackboard. It is easier for a kid who feels perhaps uncomfortable in a given role to express her feelings and comments as a reaction to a given role than to express them spontaneously with no structured cooperation in small groups, not to mention the situation when she has to answer the teachers question, standing in front of the blackboard: Just how many times did you read the text at home?
During traditional group work where equal participation is not the point because all the teacher says to the small group is:Do the task together it can easily happen that two of its members who communicate well and use proactive strategies disregard the others assigning them the role of the silent listener. It may happen that the others do not even recognize what roles they are forced into owing to the spontaneously developed power relations because in the frontal teaching situation they are used to listening to others.
3.3. Cooperative role as structural tool
At the same time, the consciously undertaken cooperative roles are structural tools. On the one hand they differentiate, organise and build the activities of the group in a way that produces interdependence: everyone has a different role but one that completes the roles of others. On the other hand they organise the learned and experienced patterns of behaviour, including the Kagan structures, along the various roles for example the Encourager collects the cooperative tools and group structures guaranteeing equal participation (e.g. word-whirl, window, etc.). The use of cooperative roles provides significant help in both establishing the structures inside the group and compiling the repertoire of cooperative tools used by the participants.
Playing the roles and making them function inside the group make it possible that practicing the wide variety of tools each group member and small group are able to organise their cooperative strategy and methods in an autonomous way paying due attention to the implementation of cooperative principles.
It seems that it is the role which provides a structural framework for developing the personal, social and learning skills and which guarantees equal opportunities for each participant in a way that accommodates the whole personality.
The structures themselves do not guarantee conscious efforts towards skills development for everyone. Since if someone takes part in a Kagan structure e.g. preparing the window together it does not yet mean that she will do her best to achieve equal participation. At the same time, without concrete cooperative tools and cooperative Kagan - structures the cooperative roles will not guarantee the emergence of cooperative principles inside the groups. If there is no cooperative tool in the hands of the participants that they can consciously apply, the window for example in the hands of the Encourager to summarize what the various individuals collected, then there is no guarantee that everybody is able to take an equal part in the learning activity. It is therefore important to note that cooperative roles offer a great chance to consciously apply cooperative tools, to establish and organise cooperative systems-structures. However we need to provide the participants with accessible sources that make it possible for them to learn how to use these tools. One of the explicit aims of improving our children is to teach them concrete cooperative structures/methods that they can immediately apply so that they have cooperative tools that they can directly resort to to enhance collective learning in an autonomous way.
3.4. Cooperative role as the complex development
tool of personal and social competence
Well-chosen roles
It is through roles that we can insert the various individual forms of competence development into the processes of learning-cooperation.
Let us take, as an example, the Encourager who pays attention to the principle of equal participation within the group by encouraging everyone to take active part and not letting anyone dominate.
The Encourager is also given tools in the course of cooperative learning. He gets communication tools inside the group, such as door openers:Whats your opinion about this? or Would you elaborate on what you mean?
A structure that explicitly guarantees equal participation is for example the Rally Robin through which everybody, one after each other, has an equal opportunity to voice his opinion. A similar tool is the Window which contains the opinion of everybody. If the Encourager applies these tools the she is able to ensure equal participation in her small group structurally. Thus one can play the role symbolized by encouragement with the help of an increasing number of tools which means the he can play this role better and better. This process goes on till these tools are interiorised through practice: so the fact that she is cooperative and pays attention to her partners appears as her attribute. In problem-solving scenarios she then routinely guards equal participation and applies structures ensuring equal participation unconsciously when organising the cooperation of a small group.
We can shape roles along the competencies assisting cooperation and learning, while the competencies themselves we may come to know through the behaviour of people possessing adequate cooperative attributes and through the well-established psychological, pedagogical and social practice. Cooperative roles, skills and attributes mutually shape and determine one another. Competency-based development which was frequently referred to in the past decade in Hungary may also become fixed if it does not take the individualizing tendency of quality education into consideration. The framing and articulation of the competencies to be improved must always originate from the individual and not exclusively from those explored and accepted by the literature so far.
That is why we took the liberty to write about the making friends with books competence above. In the art of pedagogy in the process of cooperative learning the roles and competencies are unfolding mutually. We need teachers creativity so that we can provide each individual with a development framework suited for him.
It is the cooperative principles that provide a framework for my creativity as a teacher in devising and shaping the various roles. If the cooperative principles prevail through playing the roles, then I cannot be that wrong.
Although roles are needed in each group it is important to state that roles are needed as long as the competencies or group of competencies attached to them are not interiorised.
Such is the case when our Jonny Bart takes out a book at home, which he borrowed from the library, because he does not have anything to read at home. After that it is no longer necessary to make him open the books during class: he can do it on his own at home.
Roles are rotated and eroded. After a year or two of cooperative learning it is unnecessary to have a Note Keeper, because everyone takes notes on her own paying attention to the others at the same time as they already become masters of common note taking or recording common rules. Thus, instead of the Note Keeper other roles appear, such as the Philologist for example at the secondary school level, who compiles the literature and is able to arrange, select and analyse the chosen texts and sources and examine them critically. Or there can be any other role deemed to be necessary.
After a while, when the most fundamental personal, social and learning skills are elaborated and interiorised we can talk about projects developed and devised by autonomous students.
3.5. Cooperative role as a tool of instruction
We have seen that through the tasks given to its owner we can shape the role similarly to the way a character is shaped in the theatres as the play progresses. As the director of cooperative learning we can also use these roles as a tool of instruction. What is more, their use makes simultaneous instruction possible.
I apply simultaneous instruction for example when I tell the Task Masters to choose ten pictures of their liking from the books on their table. At the same time the Notaries should record as much information about the animal their group is named after as they can imagine (attributes, data, behaviour, etc.). The Encouragers should design a coat-of-arms about that particular animal which can also symbolize their group, while the Time Keepers should recall the running horses, the brave dogs etc. and think it over in what ways their group is similar to these running horses and brave dogs.
We can see that here we addressed four different kinds of activities and fields of competence at the same time in a way that we established the principle of interdependence through individualized tasks for the whole group. Each group works out a different theme (horses, dogs, cats, mice) and within the group they develop different competencies through the different tasks (using the book, assessing knowledge, iconic-symbolic-anatomic representation and heraldic knowledge, symbolic writing and comprehension, emotional intelligence). All these through four simple sentences of instruction.
We can therefore state that there are as many cooperative roles as there are competencies and fields of competencies to be developed. I can assign individualized tasks by giving clear instructions consisting of one or two points to as many kids as the number of kids who have a personalized role. Therefore we should use our creative energy to define the roles and to instruct the kids through these roles as precisely as we can.
The above examples clearly show that roles have utmost importance in both implementing cooperative principles and guaranteeing individual development and individualisation. Besides being able to instruct the groups simultaneously we can guarantee the implementation of certain principles with their help in a way that they provide framework for personalized tasks. If we consider the place of the roles in cooperative learning from the perspective of the principles, we can state the following:
- The application of the roles advances equal participation and access in small groups, as everyone has a personalised role.
- With their help we can shape and form the simultaneous interactions because along the roles each and every participant can be instructed and moved at the same time.
- The international literature also considers the complementary roles as one of the important tools of constructive interdependence. In our example, the whole of the domestic animals learnt becomes clear to everyone through the organised cooperation of various roles within the group each and every group elaborate different sides of the same topic in a different way and to get to know the whole picture you need the work of every small group.
- Roles help to make the limits of personal responsibility and accountability clear and put them into coherent form. In our example Johnny is making an album from the digitalized version of the pictures he chose another step towards books - and thanks to Eve we get to know some grey cats and we shall hear only good things about the dogs from Rob.
- The roles, however, reveal the tasks the individuals undertook together with their responsibilities and functions within the groups, not only for the players but also for the other group members and for the big group, too contributing to the establishment of cooperative publicity created step by step.
- We have already shown the feature of cooperative roles in advancing competency-based development.
It is evident that a well-devised role also solves the problems related to the instruction and mobilization of those taking part in learning and, similarly to the structures implemented through cooperative learning, guide them towards the spirit of the fundamental principles. On the basis of the above we state that without cooperative and equal roles we cannot really talk about efficient cooperative learning.
The dramaturgy of roles
We can make the most of cooperative roles in cooperative learning by using tools for skills development and personalised tasks in a cooperative framework.
Devising the roles is a sort of dramaturgical task. We need to see the future activities of the small group and of its members and also that of the big group step by step. We need to transform this envisaged dramaturgy onto understandable levels.
The first level{20} is naming the role.
This can be a telling name such as Encourager who encourages the group members to participate; or Note Keeper who directs the note taking activity of the group, etc.
The next level is the character of the role. This is nothing else but a general task description, the description of the dramaturgical function it has in the cooperation.
The Encouragers ensure equal participation within the small and the big groups, too: they encourage everyone to equally participate in the work and also pay attention to the equal participation of the small groups. The Notaries take care of note taking so that everyone takes notes. Both when they need to take notes individually and when they have to take notes or make a presentation together. The character of the Task Master can be described by the sentence: Everybody, search. Her role is to make it clear what the task to be accomplished is (everybody should find the task), and what solutions are possible (everybody should find solutions).
The score or play script of the role contains those concrete communication tools that the players can use successfully.
In the case of the Encourager, for example:
Question to everyone: What do you think about this? Everyone should say her opinion one after another.
Recalling: Every opinion is very important, lets listen to him, too. or!
Addressing: What is your opinion about that?
The Encouragers may use.
Door openers, too: Could You say a bit more about this? Its important what you want to say, go on!etc.
The concrete cooperative structures and methods can be called the repertoire of the role.
Such is the Rally Robin which can be used efficiently by the Encourager, when, under his direction, everyone voices her opinion, collection and solution, etc. one after another. Similarly useful is the Window, when the members of the small group work together in a way that everyones information is put into the window that they draw together. What is more, they can also indicate similar opinions, collected data and solutions, etc.
The concrete cooperative principles connected to the given role provide the basis of character development. We may regard this the level of dramaturgy.
For the Encourager as we have seen above equal participation may be the basic principle. For the Time Keeper, responsible for the efficient use of available time, it is simultaneous interaction. For the Note Keeper, responsible for taking notes, it is constructive interdependence (e.g. the use of legible writing). For the Task Master as a result of keeping the task which relates to everyone it is the principle of personal responsibility and accountability which becomes the guiding line.
Cooperative roles maybe created by the groups themselves, too. This is useful because we may enhance the cooperative autonomy of the small groups in this way.
In an experienced cooperative group I would start the process of creating such roles by making kids, experienced in cooperative work, collect various attributions:
Everyone name two of his attributions that could be useful from the perspective of cooperation. Find also two other attributions that are important to be able to comprehend what you read. Name a few attributions that you think needs improving so that you can understand the texts better.
If the members of the group know one another, they can make interviews in pairs. One of them lists the features that characterizes his partner and record those that the other one agrees with. They then change roles and the one who has been described lists the features of her partner. In the case of individual work the Rally Robin could be used when the attributions would be written down onto a common page according to the questions.
Following the paired interview the characteristic features are introduced to the other group members in the form of paired introduction and this is how the competence map of the group is drafted.
After that the groups are given the eight tasks that should otherwise be accomplished together in the course of their learning. On the basis of their strengths and the skills to be improved the small groups have to select which task may enhance their improvement: Decide which skills of yours needs improvement. Decide which task can be connected to a skill to be developed so it could assist the improvement of your classmate. Everyone should have two different tasks. Give a telling name to those responsible for the tasks assigned.
Afterwards it is worth discussing how the useful cooperative features they collected may help to improve the targeted skills and the practice of the chosen role.
On the basis of the above it is evident that the dramaturgy of the cooperative roles may provide the cooperative groups with a structural tool organised at various levels. Through the roles a real inclusion, the real incorporation of those participating in the learning activities, can be achieved as these roles are mainly meant to assist the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of cooperation (e.g. the Encourager takes care of not letting anyone lag behind or dominate, the Note Keeper makes sure that everyone really and not only seemingly takes notes, while the Task Master helps the group keep on carrying out the task... etc.).
Practicing the cooperative roles the participants, with the help of the cooperative principles, structures and methods, will sooner or later be able to organise their cooperative learning in an autonomous way. The fact that the participants practice and analyse cooperative roles and we/they do not only directly analyse their spontaneous learning behaviour makes reflective competence development possible in an efficient, effective and equitable way in the framework of cooperative learning.
17 Besides individualisation, Harold Wenglinsky emphasizes the use of higher cognitive and thought schemas, cooperative learning and authentic feedback as the characteristic features of quality education in his research report How teaching matters Bringing the classroom back into discussion of teacher quality. Education Testing Service. Princeton, 2000. In relation to the higher cognitive and thought schemas used by Wenglinsky it is important to note that the literature on psychology and cooperative learning questions the hierarchic approach of cognitive skills and instead speak about the widest possible use of schemas and forms suitable to improve and grasp cognitive skills. For example Spencer Kagan in his work: Rethinking thinking. (Kagan Online Magazine, 2005. http://www.kaganonline.com/KaganClub/index.html.)
18 The significance of roles is emphasized by the Johnson brothers and Kagan alsop devotes a separate section to it in hos book Cooperative Learning.
19 Kagan (Structures and Learning Together What is the diff erence? (Kagan Online Magazine. Summer, 2001.) compares his own views with the teaching of the Johnson bothers about cooperative learning. He contrasts the two schools along the Kagan structures and the concious competence development of the Johnsons.
20 Here the first levels only means order of the description.