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Below is the latest in the series of Forum members' "calling cards" that describe the development of cooperative learning in their respective countries. As in most countries heard from till now, CL in Israel received its initial push at the university level. Forum coordinators are IASCE Board members Yael Sharan (yaelshar@zahav.net.il) and Kathryn Markovchick (kathrynm@maine.edu). In the next issue, they hope to bring you stories about how CL developed in Spain and in Germany. Cooperative Learning in Israel Prof. Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz Israel is a country of over six million people, with one and a half million school children. The school system is divided into three major sectors: the Israeli Arab sector, the Jewish religious sector, and the third and largest - the Jewish secular sector. The two Jewish sectors have had a steady influx of immigrants for the past 50 years, and have a more heterogeneous population than the Arab sector. All are under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education. With time, the Ministry relaxed its hold on curricula and teaching methods, which made it easier for CL to make a significant difference. In the late 60s, there were several fledgling attempts to initiate cooperative learning in a few secular school districts, but the publication of the book Small Group Teaching by Shlomo and Yael Sharan in 1973 gave the movement the exposure it needed. As Shlomo Sharan was at Tel Aviv University, the development of cooperative learning was spearheaded by a research team he led. The first study was an exciting project in conjunction with the Israeli Educational Television Center. It focused on a Group Investigation (GI) project in elementary schools and the gradual development of the requisite cooperative skills. All the stages were video taped, and workshops for teachers were designed to accompany the tapes. Shlomo Sharan, several of his students, and I designed and researched the project; Yael Sharan and I were on the team that trained the teachers and designed the workshops. This was also a first because each of the participating schools had its own workshop. Thus, a school-based approach was used, with varying degrees of implementation. Two books came out of the project, which helped spread the word to teacher training colleges throughout the country. The by now well-known effects of cooperative learning in the elementary level were then adapted to the junior high school. The second project, in the 80s, introduced GI to the Junior High School (JHS), which at the time was highly tracked by academic level and ethnicity. The study, funded by the Ford Foundation, was the first in Israel to untrack and integrate different academic levels and, as a result, different ethnic groups of students at the JHS level. Between these two projects, in 1979, an international conference of researchers and educators in "small group teaching" was held in Tel Aviv. At the end of the conference, the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education was established. The next IASCE conference took place at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, another in Regina, Saskatchewan… until the last one in 2002 in Manchester and the next one in 2004 in Singapore! In Israel, CL continued to make a significant impact on the educational system. In the 80s and 90s, field projects flourished in all sectors, headed by researchers at several universities, dedicated to advancing CL in the schools. Researchers and educators published about 20 books and over one hundred papers in Hebrew and in English on CL. Some projects were in conjunction with American researchers, among them Robert Slavin and Elizabeth Cohen. CL methods were widely used in pre- and in-service programs. In a national survey on methods used by teachers in Israel, over 70% of the teachers reported knowing and using CL methods. Till the present, some degree of cooperative learning is included in all sectors, especially at the elementary level. The cooperative learning team at Haifa University has worked in very diverse schools in all sectors to train, implement, test, and refine our CL work. We have by now schools that have worked with us over 10 years. In recent years we have been involved in implementing an Israeli version of Success for All (SFA) for the early grades, and "ALASH," a literacy program for the higher grades. These two projects have established CL methods in over 100 Israeli Arab and Jewish schools. This work is accompanied by research conducted by graduate students and the project’s Arab and Jewish staff. Another project which introduced and developed CL methods in Israeli Arab schools was run for 12 years by the Center for Educational Technology, together with the Israel Educational Television Center. At Bar Ilan University, the Institute for Integration developed cooperative learning curricula in several content areas for the elementary and JHS levels in all sectors of the educational system. Between 1984 and 1994 the study of CL expanded to new content areas and contexts. Reuven Lazarowitz conducted many studies of cooperation in the learning and teaching of Biology. Different contexts for CL were studied, such as the kibbutz and the city. Nationality was studied in relation to cooperation and coexistence between Arabs and Jews in schools and universities. Ethnicity was studied in relation to inter-group school integration of Jews of Sepharadic and Ashkenazi origins. CL and gender have also been studied, indicating that CL promotes girls’ participation and feeling of relevance in the classroom. In 1987, I began an affiliation with researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Texas at El Paso, and the University of California at Santa Barbara on cross-cultural CL with Anglo and Mexican-American students in literacy and bilingual development. During this time, I developed my conceptual model of the "six mirrors" of the classroom, widely used in research in Israel and the US. In reflecting about where to go with CL in Israel and elsewhere, I've come to the realization that CL principles can empower larger systems than I thought before. A colleague and I have developed models for large-scale and long-term research-based projects in the hope that they affect people in mixed and multicultural communities in Israel and in El Paso, Texas. Based on a model that integrates Cooperation, Investigation, Literacy and Community (CILC), we strive to effect change in communities and empower them to cooperate and coexist even in these difficult times of conflict.
Faculty of Education
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