It’s been my good fortune to conduct cooperative learning workshops in Trento, Udine, Monselice (Italy), in Bangkok, Hua Hin (Thailand), Helsinki, Tel Aviv, Toronto, Singapore, New Jersey, and Pasadena, California, among other places. Can you guess in which country teachers asked the following questions?

How does the teacher monitor students’ learning during group work? How much decision making should the teacher "impose" on the students? On what basis are tasks assigned for effective group work? How can we prepare students/teachers for group discussion? Is Group Investigation too time consuming? Is it possible to include Group Investigation in a syllabus-driven curriculum? How can individual work be assessed?

Correct; everywhere. It’s a striking phenomenon that in all countries teachers raise the same questions about cooperative learning in general, and about Group Investigation in particular. This overwhelming similarity leads to questions of my own regarding the adaptation of my teaching methods and of cooperative learning principles to teachers in different countries. It seems that the more similarity there is among teachers’ questions, the more flexibility is demanded of me. It doesn’t seem reasonable that the same answers would be appropriate in all countries. That would assume a uniformity among the teachers that does not exist, as well as bore me no end! Here are some of my adaptations to this situation. I imagine that many of you have had similar experiences and I’d be delighted to hear your thoughts on the matter.

First of all, a bit of clarification as to what I mean by "workshops". Generally I’m invited to teach Group Investigation to a group of teachers who have no experience with cooperative learning. I ask that there be no more than thirty participants and that there be tables and chairs that can be moved. The invitation is for two or three days, with broad hints of future workshops. These vague promises assuage my didactic guilt for not adhering to the accepted guidelines for effective teacher education, such as long term training, creating conscious connections between the workshop and the school, etc. The outline of the workshops is approved in advance, as is the schedule of work, lunch, and breaks.

The plan follows the traditional sequence of activities, beginning with a few teambuilding exchanges, like "What’s In a Name?" or "Human Treasure Hunt". There follow some "simple" and complex cooperative learning tasks, like deliberating about the motives of a character in a story, or choosing in what sequence to teach a particular set of activities. The academic content is chosen by the participants. During the last day or two of the workshop teachers conduct an investigation of Group Investigation. Built-in to the schedule is plenty of time for reflection on the personal and professional meaning of these activities. There’s always a stack of empty transparencies and newsprint on which to write and display directions for activities and summaries of what’s been learned about cooperative learning. Often the participants write them in their own language. If some material on cooperative learning exists in the language of the country, it is on hand in sufficient copies.

The first inkling of how much flexibility is demanded strikes me when I arrive on the scene and encounter anywhere from 50 to 120 teachers, in a steep lecture hall with NO moveable chairs or tables. There’s a dais and a microphone, and I’m expected to sit behind it and lecture. One workshop took place in the winter in a reconverted church with no heating, another, in the summer in a countryside shack with no air-conditioning. In Hua Hin I worked in an empty hotel ballroom, with no furniture except for the required altar to the king. The person in charge may inform me that some participants are supervisors, others principals, and most of them teachers of all grades and subjects, with varying degrees of familiarity with cooperative learning. In Bangkok there were university professors together with kindergarten teachers, and even a policeman who wanted to learn discussion skills. Sometimes we are all invited to a delicious lunch…in a building a few blocks away. This lengthens the break and helps those inclined to nod their heads sleepily in the afternoon session.

These conditions immediately put the principles of cooperative learning to the test. How can teachers experience group work when they can’t even face one another? How far can heterogeneous group composition be stretched? There’s obviously no danger of "hovering" in a steep auditorium, but there must be some way to move among the groups. How can I form groups? If groups can be formed – and they will be no matter what - who would want to hear 10 or more reports of their activities?! From the first moment the struggle begins to adjust my plans and expectations to the reality before me. I would hate to go on like Jules Verne’s Phineas Fogg and have a metaphoric cup of English tea no matter where or when, and yet I have to honor my commitment to cooperative learning.

And of course there’s the language barrier. My Italian is limited to operatic pronouncements regarding death and unrequited love. My Finnish and Thai are nonexistent, except for a few greetings that I memorize on the spot. Even English isn’t always pronounced the same and colloquialisms are, well, just that. The general routine is for me to say two sentences followed by a translator. In Italy Anna Lachin Bowe has often been the translator, and is actually a co-presenter. In Thailand the translator was a princess devoted to education, who had organized the workshops and wrote down every word I said. In addition to translating directions for "think-pair-share" or other tasks, she sometimes added many examples of local relevance, so that by the time she finished I almost forgot what I had said. But everywhere the pauses between sentences give me a chance to look at the audience and attempt to figure out if they indeed comprehend what I mean to convey. They address their comments and questions to the translator, but I try to read their body language and facial expressions. After a few hours I begin to catch a few words. In Thailand I learned that "group" in Thai is "klum", which in Hebrew means "nothing". And to my ears "Gli alunni fanno ricerca" sounds better than "Group Investigation".

Let’s say we begin with "What’s in a Name?" If the workshop takes place in an auditorium pairs turn around and speak with those behind them. Some people sit on the steps or on the dais. I take the microphone in hand and walk around like a talk show host. The teachers, generally poised with pen in hand to write down every word of the anticipated lecture, enter into lively discussions about the significance of their names. Even teachers in Italy who reportedly are less inclined to "play" get into animated discussions. The translator tells me what some people are actually talking about and I also wander around among the groups to get a sense of their involvement with the task. When we reconvene as a class to hear what’s in a name, or what the Human Treasure Hunt has dug up, the surprises begin. Even in a seemingly homogeneous group unexpected choices of names are revealed and unexpected "treasures" are discovered. Unexpected for the participants, not only for me, the outsider. As people the teachers present a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. This sets the tone for their contribution to the energy in the room and for a creative environment. The next stage of the workshop reveals that as teachers they present a more unified front.

After analyzing the activity and the cooperative elements it contains, teachers proceed to design a similar task in the content area of their choice. They regroup according to content area and have an opportunity to get to know one another a bit better. This cycle – experiential activity, reflection, analysis, and planning - is repeated throughout the 2 or 3 days.

While teachers plan implementation of what they learned in the workshop I have an opportunity to learn about the world of their schools and classrooms. With translator in tow, if necessary, I learn something about their curriculum and other constraints of their school system. Wherever I’ve worked teachers’ comments reflect the enormous pressures put on them by the school system and by society. They all seem to be driven by the need to cover as much material as possible and are firmly entrenched in the lecture method of teaching. One manifestation of this is the role of students’ questions in their classrooms. Teachers are used to asking questions to determine whether the students know the "correct" answers. Rarely are students invited to ask question about what they want to know or need to understand.

Whether they teach classes of 40 or 20, many teachers face a degree of heterogeneity that would challenge any well-meaning humanistic educator. At the onset of the workshop I get the impression that their initial training does not seem to foster a predilection for change.

Teachers familiar with one or two cooperative learning methods tend to see them as isolated techniques, with no connection between them and certainly no connection to other methods. Many assume that the goal of the workshop is to have them supplant all the techniques and methods they know with cooperative learning, which they view as one undifferentiated mass. At least the universal conditions of teachers’ work and their questions about how to apply cooperative learning facilitate my being able to figure out what they’re saying, despite the language barrier.

These observations strengthen my resolve to have the teachers experience cooperative learning as adults. They may have read about it and attended a few sporadic workshops, but few have actually experienced learning together in cooperative groups. This is the only way I know to bridge between teachers’ uniqueness as people and their commonalties as teachers. But what content to use? I look for what we all, in the particular room we’re in, have in common. For example, to demonstrate a "simple" cooperative activity in an auditorium in Trento, we listed the features of the room, then the 80 teachers broke up into groups and ranked them in order of comfort for cooperative learning. This short activity required basic discussion skills and the results were, to be sure, far from uniform. These same teachers, who came from all over the area, had received a tourist packet from the municipality. Later on this packet became the source for a lively simulation of Group Investigation.

The focus of my teaching constantly adjusts to the specific misunderstandings about cooperative learning that teachers express. How can I make the workshop as relevant to their needs as possible within my time constraints? How can I facilitate a change of attitude towards teaching methods and the integration of what they know with this "new" method? Often I put my plans aside and teach the essential elements of a cooperative task and of discussion skills: face to face interaction, listening skills, a task that calls for more than one answer and/or resource, and above all, open ended questions that generate group discussion. I do not lecture, but facilitate an experiential activity that highlights these elements, doggedly followed by reflection, analysis, and planning. One can almost hear teachers sigh in relief when the basic ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of cooperative learning are cleared up. Only then do I go on to show how different methods build on the basic elements and create useful variations.

What have I learned? Repeatedly I learn that teachers’ enthusiasm for experiencing cooperative learning supplies the energy that keeps me at it. And that it is possible to work in any setting with any number of people. The condition for success is a constant awareness of teachers’ reactions and the flexible application of cooperative learning principles. And a long lunch break!