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| The book begins with a very brief chapter by David Kluge on what CL is, relevant research, and prominent models of CL. Next, the Johnsons discuss what makes CL work. This coverage of key components of CL will be familiar to readers of their many excellent books. One part that was, however, new to me is their discussion of CL in different cultures. After stating that research on CL has been conducted in many cultures, they add (pp. 34-35): | ||
| The critical research, however, has yet to be conducted. It seems reasonable that different cultures have different definitions of (a) what is cooperative and competitive, and (b) where each is appropriate .... There is a need for considerably more research to establish the cultural nuances of how cooperative efforts are conducted. | ||
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Shuji Sugie has a long track record of scholarship on the development of CL in Japan. His chapter 3, "Cooperative learning in Japan: History and present situation of research and implementation," can be seen as an update of a 1990 article he wrote for Cooperative Learning, the predecessor of the IASCE Newsletter. Unfortunately, much of the work of Sugie and his colleagues, including their Bazu (Buzz Learning) method, is little known outside Japan. Chapter 12 of the book contains Inoue Tetsuro's description of how he uses Buzz Learning to teach English to Japanese junior high school students. In Chapter 4, William Acton and Corrine Cope describe how their difficulties in teaching English conversation skills to Japanese college students led them to implement what they call Cooperative Attending Skills Training. The goal of this training is to help learners "take a proactive role in interactions, gaining at least some real control over the topic, course, and purpose of a conversation" (p. 50). Chapter 5 contains a very interesting evaluation by Soo-im Lee of the application of CL at a private language school. She concludes that more preparation is needed among students, teachers, and administrators if CL is to realize its potential. In Chapter 6, Amy Yamashiro and John McLaughlin describe how they use Jigsaw II and 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth to involve their Japanese high school and university students in an English language simulated NGO forum on the environment. The next chapter consists of Patricia Thornton's description of how she teaches English language reading to her female Japanese junior college using such CL techniques as Talking Tokens, Group Investigation, Jigsaw, and RoundTable. Chapters 8-11 offer descriptions of a wide variety of CL activities for the teaching of English language. These activities involve projects, oral fluency tasks, group skills, and writing. Chapters 13 and 14 focus on evaluation. CL entails new ways of teaching, raising issues about how assessment may also need to change. In Chapter 13 David and Roger Johnson return to discuss five key assessment issues: the purpose of the assessment, the assessment focus, the setting where the assessment takes place, the stakes involved in the assessment, and assessment stakeholders. In the book's last chapter, Jane Joritz- Nakagawa providesus a case study of one new means of assessment, as she describes a cooperative performance test she developed to measure Japanese university students' proficiency in English conversation. In Chapter 2, the Johnsons called for more work on how CL operates in different cultures. This volume helps answer that call. Hopefully, scholars usingCL in other cultures will continue to produce similar work, as morevoices emerge to add their unique insights into how we can create more cooperative classrooms and a more cooperative world.
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