Cooperative Learning: The Missing Ingredient for School Improvement
Marcy Emberger
(emberger@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu)

The experts tell us that our schools and school systems are “systems” with each part of the system affecting every other part (Senge, 1990). We have incorporated much of this theory of systems in Maryland’s 10-step school improvement process (http://mdk12.org).

Using this 10-step process, faculties work together to develop visions and goals, collect data, write detailed plans, and implement plans based on all the data they’ve collected. As they get more data, they reexamine their goals, and revise their plans. This cyclical process is considered a “recipe for success.” The recipe seems simple, but implemented at the school-wide level, it is more complex, requiring gourmet ingredients and sophisticated methods. Faculties think they understand the “recipe,” but are often disappointed in the results.

What is the recipe as implemented missing? Could it be cooperative learning? Current research seems to be pointing us in that direction. Many researchers are looking at the relationship between student achievement and the way faculties cooperate. Garmston and Wellman (1999) describe successful schools as places where faculty have learned to work together. “Teachers in successful schools are undeniably interdependent” (p. 15). Staff in successful schools practice throughout their whole school what educators know about developing learning communities in individual classrooms.

Garmston and Wellman provide five basic steps that can lead to the formation of learning communities. Faculties must:

1. develop shared values and norms
2. have a collective focus on student learning
3. work on collaborative projects
4. strive to deprivatize practice
5. use reflective dialogue.

Where does this research fit with what we are doing in our school improvement planning? Where do we need to add the cooperative learning “ingredients” to our 10-step process?

Step #1: Understanding the school improvement process
Ingredient: Go beyond simply understanding the process. Use Jigsaw activities to help each member of the faculty understand his/her role in the school improvement plan. Have each staff member develop individual goals that are clearly linked to school goals. It is a given that each member DOES have an important role! No one alone has all the skills or knowledge to get the school where it needs to go. Emphasize positive interdependence!

Step #2: Analyze the data
Ingredient: Go beyond the data that Maryland provides through the Maryland School Improvement Program. Develop grade level and department teams that are able to support each other as they collect and learn from classroom data.

Step #3: Setting priorities
Ingredient: Through group work, develop understandings of commonalities among priorities as well as an understanding of why certain priorities have been selected.
Note: When faculties set priorities, something usually has to be given up. This means a pet project or a long-standing program that someone believes in strongly. This is one of the critical places for working cooperatively.

Step #4: Clarifying the problem
Ingredient: Use think-pair-share and other cooperative learning structures to help faculty members focus on what the data say about the current level of student achievement. In grade level teams and/or in department meetings, and even in faculty dining rooms, offer students’ work (successes as well as those that weren’t so successful) and model individual accountability. Be risk takers!

Step #5: Identifying goals
Ingredient: The definition of cooperation is working together to achieve common goals. Model how to “live” the school vision and goals by sharing with colleagues in frequent face-to-face interactions how school goals have been incorporated into individual professional development plans. (If you are not already serving on your school improvement team, you can ask to serve. Once on the team, you can encourage the social skills and group processing skills that work in our classrooms.)

Step #6: Choosing strategies
Ingredient: Offer the research on collaboration to others on the school improvement team and throughout the faculty. Group processing skills can help others see how this research will benefit our schools. Offer to lead study groups or action research teams that will model collaboration.

Step #7: Implementing the plan
Ingredient: Strive to deprivatize practice by developing positive interdependence. Offer to model lessons for new teachers. Through the school improvement process, survey faculty to determine others who may be interested in starting coaching partnerships, study groups, or action research projects. Begin collaborative projects with a core group. Others will follow!

Step #8: Assessing the results
Ingredient: Practice positive interdependence by promoting the understanding that every teacher is responsible for every child, even those not in his/her classroom.

Step #9: Revising the plan
Ingredient: Use cooperative learning activities that help every faculty member evaluate what worked and why. Be willing to let go of strategies that didn’t work.

Step #10: Managing change
Ingredient: Learn and practice the skills of cognitive coaching in face-to-face interactions: pausing (providing think time in conversations for both the speaker and listener); paraphrasing (making sure you have understood the speaker by restating what you think the issues are); and probing (asking for further information to clarify the issues). This reflective dialogue develops a positive climate throughout the school.

References
Garmston, R. J., & Wellman, B. (1999). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for
developing collaborative groups. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers.
Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. New York: Doubleday.

Editors’ note: This article is reprinted from the September-October 2000 issue of the MAACIE (Mid-Atlantic Association for Cooperation in Education) Newsletter. The article describes how the school improvement process in the U.S. state of Maryland can be improved if principles and practices from cooperative learning are used to enhance the interaction of the participants. To view more articles from the newsletter and to find out more about MAACIE, visit their website or contact their co-president: Frank Lyman at (Lymanlink@AOL.com).