IASCE Forum – Cooperative Learning in Hong Kong

In this issue of the IASCE Forum, Gertrude Tinker Sachs and Dean Tjosvold write about how cooperative learning was introduced in Hong Kong. One avenue was through teachers of English at the primary and secondary levels. This is described in the article below. The other was at the university level through the work of the Hong Kong Cooperative Learning Center. Dean Tjosvold describes this in a separate article.

Cooperative Learning in Hong Kong Primary and Secondary Schools

Gertrude Tinker Sachs

The adoption of cooperative learning (CL) in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools is still in its infancy. CL is introduced to prospective teachers in teacher education institutions and is touted by Education Department curricula documents as a positive approach for learning. Yet, like most interactive teaching approaches, its adoption at the school and classroom level is, for the most part, lost in the maelstrom of the everyday busyness of meeting the demands of already overcrowded curricula. In order to be accommodated, CL, by its very nature, requires preplanning, some physical space to move around, and some flexibility in the teacher’s timetable. In addition, and more importantly, like any new pedagogical initiative, with CL, the teacher needs to develop familiarity and expertise in the various techniques through consistent use over an extended period of time. The nature of teaching and learning in most Hong Kong’s schools and classrooms greatly limits the effective large-scale adoption of this way of teaching and learning. 

However, a few Hong Kong government funded projects have made inroads in bringing CL to teachers of English as a second/foreign language. In a two-year project on CL and task-based learning, teachers of English from three secondary schools found that implementing CL tasks was quite challenging. The teachers had been exposed to CL through group workshops and had worked collaboratively with researchers to develop task-based lesson plans. However, teachers felt that time to plan was inadequate, the curriculum too crowded to accommodate CL task-based activities and that it took too long to prepare the students for the activities during the lesson. Despite the difficulties, the teachers recognised that when their students participated in CL activities, they exhibited high levels of engagement and interest and had more opportunities to use English than in their regular lessons (Tinker Sachs, Candlin, Rose and Shum 2003).

Similarly, teachers of English from three primary schools in Hong Kong participated in a three-year project. Like the secondary teachers they also had very positive things to say about the positive impact of CL on their students’ use of English and level of engagement in the class which differed substantially from that found in the typical traditional classroom setting. 

However, primary school teachers shared the same dilemmas as their secondary counterparts. They found that the heavily packed curriculum did not allow for adequate opportunities to practice CL over a prolonged period of time, although all the teachers greatly benefited from the professional development opportunities provided by the project team and the expertise of Dr. George Jacobs and Professor Dianne Larsen-Freeman (Tinker Sachs, 2003).

The positive benefits of CL have also been found in the teacher education classroom. Pre-service teachers of English also participated in the above mentioned projects and experienced CL first hand through their teacher education course activities. Their positive response to CL motivated many of them to voluntarily carry out CL during their practice teaching and to investigate aspects of CL in their BA in Teaching English as a Second language (BATESL) final year projects (Tinker Sachs, 2002).

In all the aforementioned projects, the primary and secondary students were excited by this way of learning. They liked being able to ask each other for help, they liked talking in class, although they sometimes talked in Cantonese (the native language of most people in Hong Kong), and most of all, they found CL an interesting way to learn and practice English. But these projects still represent merely a tip of the iceberg in depicting what could happen when teachers incorporate interactive approaches to support their ways of teaching. 

Incorporating CL on a larger scale requires more teachers, school administrators and teacher educators to have detailed knowledge of and prolonged contact with the infinite possibilities of CL in their schools and classes. When this is done, CL will not be viewed as a burdensome “add-on” but seen as an easily integrated part of the everyday busyness of teaching and learning. Despite the problems, the previously mentioned projects all confirm the positive impact that CL has on teaching and learning: high levels of interest and engagement as well as increased opportunities to use the target language. CL can blossom and grow where it is planted, if it can be given enough space to breathe, ample sunshine to help it flourish and adequate amounts of water to help it grow and spread; but who will be the gardeners?

References

Tinker Sachs, G. (June 2002). The cycle of teaching and learning: Cooperative learning in the university teacher education classroom. Paper presented at the conference of the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Tinker Sachs, G. (Ed.). (2003). Fostering the development of EFL cooperative contexts. Teachers’ CL resource book. City University of Hong Kong: Quality Education Fund Project No. 4482/1998.

Tinker Sachs, G., Candlin, C., Rose, K. & Shum, S. (2003). Developing cooperative learning in the EFL/ESL secondary classroom. RELC Journal, 34(3), 338-371.

Gertrude Tinker Sachs, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor MSIT Department, Language and Literacy Unit, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. She can be reached at gtinkersachs@gsu.edu.