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This was a yearlong project with the goal of getting teachers in mathematics
and English in the Malaysian state of Sarawak to learn to work collaboratively
and experience cooperative learning. It involved collaboration between
the local Divisional Educational Office (the state of Sarawak is divided
into nine divisions), the local Teachers Training College (Sarawak Teacher
Training College, Miri), and local schools. Few Sarawak teachers have
received training in group work generally or in cooperative learning (CL),
in particular, although CL is now included in some courses at the local
Teacher Training College. Many local teachers resist the idea of group
work because of large classes (40-50 students), lack of familiarity with
group techniques and fear of losing control. Near the end of each workshop, each participant evaluated the session. They returned these "exit tickets" before leaving. Before the next workshop, the facilitators analysed the concerns expressed in the exit tickets to be addressed in the following workshop. We addressed these concerns with a one-page newsletter that was published and circulated from the second workshop onwards. For instance, many English teachers felt that CL would only work with more proficient students. Another concern was that CL seemed to require a great deal of preparation. In this paper we share some special approaches we used to win participants over to using CL. We provided long-term support in the form of a facilitator who became a "critical friend," and we adopted reflective rationality to promote action research. We provided opportunities for collaboration among the participants, such as planning their lessons in small groups, and sharing their thoughts, experiences, and feelings during the meetings. We respected the concept of "individuality. The workshops put emphasis on experiential learning. Participants had opportunities to experience CL as learners before using it for their students. We also provided specific examples of instructional activities for their subject areas. We gave the participants a questionnaire at the end of the year and analysed the results in depth. We also gave the participants another questionnaire asking them to estimate the percentage of CL they used in their teaching before and after they were involved in the project. Before involvement in the project, the mean was 6.7. After involvement, the mean was 46.7%. Fourteen teachers reported using groups 50% to 90% of the time. After the project ended, we visited eight schools where 17 of the participants were teaching to find out their feelings about cooperative learning after the project. All were using at least one CL technique. Many still faced many implementation difficulties but were making satisfactory progress. Many indicated their desire to continue their collaborative efforts in the coming year. In any type of in-service project, such as the one described here, participants are likely to differ in their reaction to the project and their use of the ideas dealt with in the project. Thus, we would expect that a subset of the original 26 participants will want to continue. We hope to use the Teachers Centre as a base for bringing together these same teachers. We intend to encourage these teachers to become facilitators for future in-service training on CL. Gan Teck Hock (esgan@tm.net.my) is the Head of the Mathematics Unit in Sarawak Teachers' Training College, Miri. He has conducted several previous studies on CL and the teaching of mathematics at the pre-service teacher level. His present area of interest is incorporating CL into problem solving in the teaching of mathematics.
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(a) input
on CL or action research;
