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Marcus Raja (mgraja@pc.jaring.my ) is the Deputy Divisional Education Officer for the Miri and Bintulu Divisions in Sarawak. Before this, he has been a secondary school English teacher, a teacher trainer preparing teachers to teach English for primary schools and a school principal. Fond Memories of Elizabeth Cohen Editor's Note: Elizabeth Cohen retired this fall from her long tenure
at Stanford University. Her ground-breaking use of sociological theory
in applied classroom research has had a significant impact on the understanding
of how groups work. Her use of expectation-states theory treats status
as an outside characteristic applied by others rather than a personal
attribute. This idea allowed Liz and other researchers to design interventions
that would have a positive impact on student behavior, particularly as
it related to how students treat each other seeking to equalize participation
and engagement in group work tasks. Every time I think of Liz Cohen I smile with warmth, respect, and admiration
for this wonderful colleague and dear friend. It has been a great pleasure
to know and work with Liz since July 1982 at the conference of the International
Association for the Study of Cooperation (IASCE) at Brigham Young University.
I have had the opportunity to be with Liz in professional meetings around
the globe, and here are a few impressions that stand out. It struck me that Liz never views herself as a guru, and she does not view her students as disciples. Yet, there was a truth in that doctoral student's statement. Liz's eminent stature in her field does not arise from her position or from any authoritarian power; rather it stems from her depth of knowledge, incisive thinking, intellectual clarity and deeply held positive values for humanity. It is a privilege to study with a person of such wisdom. In my two terms as President of the IASCE, Liz was one of the rock-solid Board members upon whom all of us could reliably count. Actually, I have only one small regret about Liz --she would never run for the office of President of the IASCE. She would have been elected in a flash, and that title would have reflected her eminence in the field of cooperation in education. In characteristic fashion, she cared much more about the mission than about the title. Throughout her numerous terms as a member of the Executive Board, she worked with great effectiveness to improve the functioning of the Board and the governance of our association. In the history of group work and cooperative learning, Liz's contributions stand out in several areas. She generalized the principles and practices of the Finding Out/Descubrimiento model of math and science learning into the Complex Instruction Model. This model, with its fundamental concepts of multiple ability tasks and status treatments, has become one of the major models of cooperative group work in education, with a solid research base contributed by Liz and her colleagues and students. Liz's work with multiple ability tasks and status treatments has changed the course of cooperative learning, making it truly possible to implement cooperative learning effectively in heterogeneous classrooms. Her major review paper on "Talking and Working Together: Conditions for Learning in Complex Instruction" (with R.A. Lotan and N. Holthius, 1995. In Restructuring Schools: Promising Practices and Policespp. 157-174, New York: Plenum Books) is a gem, as is her now-classic text Designing Groupwork (Teachers College Press, 1994) Among her many publications, these two works stand out as "must" reading for anyone |