Collaboration
When young people develop an awareness that teaching and learning
are collaborative ventures, not individually isolated activities,
they see their own work as part of a team effort and are more
inclined to give their best. This is particularly evident in
neighborhoods where many families suffer from inadequate
schooling. Many at-risk kids with high potential just won't
perform if it means "showing up" their buddies.
Teachers no longer really have the luxury of focusing on their
students solely as individuals (although they will of course
continue to acknowledge their students' individuality in any
number of ways). And, just as important, students are no longer
able to ignore their classmates and "do my own work" in
isolation. They must come to know, accept, and work with one
another.
This presents some challenges, to say the least. None of us who
are now adults spent much time as children learning collaboratively.
We got A's or B's precisely by doing our own work,
and those among our classmates who could not work well under
those conditions left school to find other places to grow up (in
the army, on the job, raising a family, etc.). But things have
changed: more children stay in school these days, and their
learning is more a matter of teamwork.
We have seen our middle schools transformed from the "junior high
school" model to one where students are grouped in clusters,
teams, or houses, and this trend appears to be extending to the
"clustering" of ninth and tenth grades. The practice of forming
temporary, interactive learning groups within the classroom
(called "cooperative learning") has spread even more widely.
Teachers are being asked as never before to collaborate across
disciplines and grade levels. The advent of national performance
standards in the various curricula, along with the movement
toward new and more authentic forms of assessment, will
accentuate that process in coming years.
(Fried, pp44-5)
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