Introduction
The centuries and millennia of education include countless pedagogical views and practices in which the ways of obtaining knowledge individually or in community are highlighted alternately. The cultural, societal or political-ideological needs of the respective societies or social groups can be found in their backgrounds.
The development of democratic societies served as a raison dêtre for the new pedagogical schools emerging in the second part of the 19th century. At the same time, wide-ranging schooling and the expansion of education in the 20th century are the facts which resulted in the social demand for the democratisation of the educational system, that is, its becoming such a tool that is able to serve as an opportunity for mobility for the members of society, regardless of their status. Sociological, social-psychological, education-sociological theories and researches provide arguments for or against its feasibility. And among theories and studies there is the daily practice of education; pupils with their successes or failures, young and old teachers with their traditional ways or innovative intentions, and families from various backgrounds, who all want the same from the school: to act as carefully as possible in the process of creating successful adults. Co-operative learning represents a pedagogical view, a paradigm together with the practical tools that complies with all three criteria of quality education outlined above. Thoughtfulness, as an important aspect of developing a quality educational environment, requires the school to utilise existing material and human resources as efficiently as possible during the organisation of education and the process of learning, the output to show de facto results, and all these must prevail in case of all students, that is, the school also must be characterised by equity. In our experience the basic principles of co-operation are are regarded as obvious and accepted by every one, moreover, everyone strives to manifest these in their daily pedagogical practice in the name of some kind of democratism. However, intention is not enough in itself when we compare our daily practice to the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of a really co-operative learning practice.
Co-operative experience, an efficient course on co-operative learning or observing a co-operative exercise introducing equity can help a lot in broadening our views.
However, the greatest task is to change our ways of thinking, to reignite our trust and confidence in children, the rediscovery of our joie de vivre and the joys of curiosity, the experience of our dormant childlike creativity.
The Handbook for learning together is primarily based on our own practical experience as teachers and teacher trainers; for instance the specific approaches to fundamental principles, the elaboration on the underlying democratic principles, the connection of competency models to co-operative learning, and the sections on roles and behavioural patterns. All these have emphatically been formed during the interpretation of dialogues conducted with Hungarian colleagues, working together, taking the instructions of relevant literature further and based on our own well-tried co-operative tools. In Hungarian discourse the terms co-operative methods and co-operative techniques also are in use. While the latter one is not used in international literature, and the term method gives a methodological emphasis to the approach, we wish to draw attention to the paradigm-shifting approach of co-operative learning by emphasising co-operative structures of learning. A new paradigm has been born, the co-operative paradigm of pedagogy{1}, which transforms pedagogy structurally, that is, at the level of organisation and everyday classroom behaviour. It changes the forms of organising learning and education radically, and it offers concrete attitudes, feasibly realisable principles and, of course, applicable organisational-methodological patterns for this change. We call these methodological patterns co-operative structures. In American literature, Kagan, the Johnsons and Elizabeth Cohen also speak of co-operative structures instead of co-operative methods. However, we wanted to keep the already widespread term co-operative methods, and, refining its meaning, to converge the two notions by alternately using them as interchangeable synonyms. Thus, we use the term co-operative structures as an equivalent synonym of co-operative methods in this book. It means that only those co-operative methods are regarded as co-operative structures, which comply with fundamental co-operative principles. From this aspect it does not matter if its users call their practice a method or a structure; the question is whether the co-operative principles prevail in it. By joining the two terms our aim was to provide stable points of orientation for the users of this handbook as for which methodological/structural solutions can be considered really co-operative in various practices and literature. It is also important in this double term to clarify that the co-operative paradigm not only means a methodological renewal (although it certainly does in a lot of fields) but a structural turn in organising learning and teaching. A turn, on the account of which we must reconsider our notions about knowledge, learning and teaching. We present the basics of this new paradigm in our handbook.
We have written such a book that helps go through the frameworks and approaches that make us aware of how to co-operate and are able to shift our practice towards an experience of efficiency, effectiveness and equity in co-operative learning.
It is more efficient, because it grants participation in learning processes for most participants during the same period. And also because this guarantee does not mean passive listening but active, or even interactive, co-operative forms of learning activating cognitive schemes chosen from a wider repertoire. That is, via the principles and tools of learning together it strongly focuses on maximally exploiting the resources of participants besides those of organising and performing acquisition.
Effectiveness is set in a new light from the perspective of co-operating learning. Stress is not on the product of group-work or on its quality, but on the quality of the individuals development. In co-operative learning groups work with the aim of achieving their goals in a way that contributes to each members individual improvement, that is, members of the group achieve their individual goals working together. Thus this form of organising learning is more effective, since it allows for the development of individual talents, while it also provides deeply ingrained knowledge. Participants in learning together approach tasks with strategic problem-solving skills, that is, they are able to approach a problem from several aspects, involving others, outlining alternatives and planning the ways leading to solutions. Thanks to co-operative learning, participating pupils improve their personal and social skills in consistence and concordance with their own learning skills, in a customised ways. That is to say, nurturing is not separated from education, but is performed for the sake of learning. Such personal skills are developed and improved consciously (such as a sense of purpose, conscience, self-confidence, etc.) which enable to individuals to increasingly be aware of themselves, both mentally-emotionally and in the terms of cognition and learning. Social skills contribute to the development of personal skills aqs well, since in co-operative learning there is an ongoing publicness of contemporaries, which provides reflection for each pupil on their activities, states and skills. The co-operation for the sake of learning is in the centre of the development of social skills. Participants reflect on their co-operative and other skills in the light of academic effectiveness explicitly, that is, they observe what kind of social skills and co-operation forms need to be improved in order for their individual achievements to improve. The versatile manifestation of achievements also becomes natural with the help of micro-group or large-group publicness continuously present during the process of learning, and also in the light of self, group or teacher feedback.
Co-operative learning is equitable, because it indeed is capable of providing every participant with the fundamental democratic right of equal access to knowledge with the help of its basic principles, attitudes, competence models, micro-group structure, co-operative roles and tools. That is to say, it does not only create the frameworks of equal opportunities, like e.g. the state brings knowledge in close proximity to everyone by general compulsory education, but it truly creates equal opportunities by transforming the practice of learning management.
Groupwork is often mentioned in connection with co-operative learning. In the models of co-operative learning micr-groups are developed, and learning mainly happens in these micro-groups. Micro-groups are defined as groups of two to six people in co-operative literature. In our handbook we alternately use the terms micro-group and small group, both of which cover these 2-6 units. By large group we mean a larger community of pupils learning together (e.g. a standard school class). Henceforth we speak of co-operation when the activity complies with the co-operative principles. That is, in comparison with the general term of collaboration, we speak of a concrete and realisable, democratic co-operation supported by practical principles.
1 ARATÓ, Ferenc (2014): On Decontruction of Education. In Hungarian Educational Research Journal 4(4)