Dealing with Learning Style Conflicts in the
Cooperative Learning Classroom
Peter Gobel
Kyoto Sangyo University

Introduction

 I have been using cooperative learning techniques in Japanese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes for well over fifteen years, with varying degrees of success. Two years ago, I undertook some classroom research to help me solve a number of problems I was having in my classes: the students were doing the work and “cooperating,” but they often did the bare minimum. This bare minimum was frequently finished just before class, or by copying another student’s paper during the roll call. If students were absent one week (a common occurrence at Japanese universities), the next week they would come totally unprepared for the day’s lesson, forcing the teacher and the groups to take extra time to explain the material. This lack of responsibility was reflected in a lack of accountability regarding the teaching of the material to other students. Many of the students took a very passive attitude toward group work, choosing to simply sit and listen while others spoke.

What had started as an attempt to make the classroom more interactive and get the students to be responsible for their own (as well as others’) learning, had turned into a situation where students were split into two camps: “pro-collaboration” and “anti-collaboration,” with neither camp being satisfied with the design of the course. By interviewing the students as part of my research, I found out that most of the students were not self-directed, had negative views of their abilities and their English education history, and were anxious about communicating in English.

What the interviews highlighted was a general feeling among the interviewees that collaborative learning was, to some extent useful, and that working with other students was beneficial. This was counter-balanced by students’ comments regarding the problems they found when communicating with their peers and the resulting reliance of many students on Japanese as a problem-solving tool (something many of them felt would not be an option were they to engage in problem-solving tasks with a native speaker of English or a non-Japanese speaker).

It seems that in many cases, the students were reluctant to engage in communication strategies that they felt were “high risk.” The term “high risk” is used here to describe communication strategies that either put the onus of comprehension on the speaker or that may contribute to more detailed explanations, which in turn may lead to more communication breakdown and possible loss of face.

At the 2004 IASCE conference, I presented the results of my study into this problem, noting that previous research in this area has often failed to take into account the cultural and social factors that may affect interaction during cooperative learning activities. The results of my longitudinal study with 70 students over 28 weeks suggested that although Jigsaw and other cooperative learning activities may work well in a number of settings, the basic design of the activities often fails to recognize that many students have set learning styles which are in direct conflict with the basic precepts of cooperative learning, and that the school or classroom environment itself may interfere with the successful completion of a task. In short, students in the study were reluctant to adopt interactive learning styles and/or depend on peers for help and information. Based on observation and interviews, this reluctance was seen to be due to preferred learning styles and student beliefs of appropriate behavior in the classroom setting (Gobel, 2004, 2005). These findings support the claims of other researchers (e.g., Kimura, Nakata, & Okumura, 2001) regarding Japanese students and their preferred learning styles. What follows is an update on changes I have implemented in the course to solve a number of the problems that were uncovered by the research. 

Solutions

I attempted to overcome the obstacles mentioned above in a two-pronged fashion: by emphasizing the importance of teamwork; and by using a more step-by-step approach to the collaborative procedure, with a focus on the importance of each student’s role in the process. By doing this, I found that I was able to pay more attention to the group dynamics and the competing norms and values in my classroom.

Emphasis on Collaboration

Until recently, any emphasis on collaboration had been done at the beginning of the semester (during the first month), with maybe a few gentle reminders to students and groups during the semester. I decided to augment this by giving more regular feedback to the students regarding their collaborative efforts. This was done using rating scales completed by each group, and self-reports (included in a progress report) handed in to the teacher and later returned (with positive or encouraging comments attached) at the end of each unit. In addition, we spent class time at the beginning of the semester, and about half way through the course, looking at successful collaborations in the news and in history, discussing why they worked and how they could be used as models for the students to follow. This was done as outside reading, linked to the topics we were covering in class. For example, while covering a unit concerned with how best to use national park land, the students read an article about various small organizations working together to preserve endangered habitats (the Conservation Alliance - http://www.conservationalliance.com). The point here was to highlight the long-term benefits of collaboration – not only from a personal standpoint, but from social and political standpoints as well. The discussion based on these readings helped the students to see that they use collaboration all the time in their daily lives, and that there was no reason that this had to stop once they entered the classroom.

Teambuilding activities and student roles

Another key concept which needed emphasis was the development of collaborative skills. For collaboration to succeed, a set of collaborative skills is needed such as disagreeing politely, checking if others understand, and listening attentively. These collaborative skills are felt to promote L2 (second language) acquisition by enhancing interaction. Japanese university students seldom collaborate in the classroom the way they do in the outside world. As a result, there is much less learner autonomy in the Japanese classroom than is expected of students engaged in cooperative learning. By occasionally reviewing collaborative skill sets, and with the use of self-evaluation sheets, students were frequently reminded of the skills they should be using. This review of collaborative skills was done in tandem with mini-lessons on various communication strategies that would allow them to communicate more fluently and effectively.

Although teamwork and responsibility were stressed at the beginning of the course, more emphasis needed to be placed on the positive aspects of teamwork. Quick games (i.e. Forward Snowball, Numbered Heads Together, or Round Robin) as warm-ups and follow-ups were used as tools to focus on intergroup relations. I found that the games lightened the mood in class and gave the students a respite from the academic demands I was making on them.

Finally, it became clear to me that student roles in the cooperative groups needed to be chosen with more care, and that the roles themselves needed to be more clearly defined. I had given everyone a procedure to follow, but that procedure was described from the group perspective rather than from the individual perspective. I reassessed the roles I had assigned to the students, paying attention not only to their academic abilities, but their ‘informal roles’ in the classroom as leaders, followers, facilitators, and so forth. I then reassigned the groups based on these observations (initially assigning the Leader role to a more outgoing student, for example), and assigned each student a role that was clearly written on a 3x5 card (Fig. 1). The students then performed the duties of that role for the entire activity. In subsequent activities (once the students clearly understood how the group work progressed) roles were changed, so that each student, at some time during the course played, had a chance to play every role.

Fig. 1 Example of student role card.

In general, the roles I assigned in each group were: leader, who initiates discussions and moves the work along; time keeper/task monitor, who monitors the time left and keeps everyone on task; summarizer, who summarizes the main points of the discussion or work that was done; recorder/reporter, who writes up what the group has decided or produced and announces it to the class. At the beginning of each activity, the students would then reaffirm their roles in the task by reading their roles out loud from the card, thus reminding everyone who was responsible for what. This is important because if every group member is going to be a “full-fledged” member of the group, they and their role need to be recognized by all the other group members. For the extroverts in the group, this was never really a problem, but the shyer students, or those that preferred individual learning, needed some encouragement. By giving each student specific tasks in the group activity, I hoped to reinforce certain collaborative skills and associate them with certain roles. The idea was to create a kind of scaffolding that would give students a chance to become comfortable with the roles and the language necessary to perform those roles. In addition, it was hoped that the role cards would allow students to more easily identify themselves (their roles) in the discussion and/or group work, thus giving them permission to participate in ways that would enable the group to run a reasonable discussion in the time allowed

 Reaffirming every student’s role in the cooperative activity at the beginning of each class not only clarifies who is doing what, but also refreshes their communication strategies (listed at the bottom of each duty). As Lam and Wong (2000) point out, a combination of teamwork and communication strategy training is necessary for effective use of communication strategies. It is the peer support and cooperation that sustain clarification and genuine interaction. I feel that the individual and group accountability I created with the role cards did exactly that.

Certainly the assigning of roles seemed to increase the efficiency of the discussions and group work that was assigned. There was much less hemming and hawing when it came time to give opinions, and use of time became more efficient (remember, one of the roles I assigned was as time-keeper/task monitor). In addition, since the collaboration strategies were constantly being reviewed, by the end of the semester, I found the students using them in a more natural manner. This is not to say that they were seamlessly cooperating, nor that roles were quickly adopted. One of my jobs during group work was to observe how the students were working as a group, how the roles were being performed, and look for any mismatch that could be easily addressed. Sometimes this amounted to simply having students switch roles (turning a former leader into a time-keeper/task monitor, for example).

 Working to broaden the students’ learning horizons in this way has been a slow, cyclical process, but it seems to be working. The activities are all little steps in introducing my students, who come to the classroom with very rigid learning styles, to different ways of learning and to a very different learning environment, one that is, to a large degree, constructed by them.

 References

Gobel, P. (2004). That’s not the way we do it: The effects of cultural and social factors on cooperative learning. Paper presented at the 2004 IASCE Conference.

 Gobel, P. (2005). That’s not the way we do it: Conflicts between culture, training, environment and cooperative learning. Available online: http://www.iasce.net/Conference2004/24June/Gobel/Gobel,%20IASCE%202004.doc.

 Kimura, Y., Nakata, Y., & Okumura, T. (2001). Language learning motivation of EFL learners in Japan – A cross-sectional analysis of various learning milieus. JALT Journal, 23(1), 47-68.

 Lam, W., & Wong, J. (2000). The effects of strategy training on developing discussion skills in an ESL classroom. ELT Journal, 54(3), 245-255.