PD Module 5: Students working collaboratively

Author: The University of Nottingham

If students are to make sense of scientific and mathematical concepts, then they will need opportunities to share, discuss and work together. However, just having the students work and talk together may not be enough to evoke student interactions that will be beneficial for learning. This professional development module considers how teachers could promote high quality cooperative work in their classrooms.

Potential for PD

Research has shown that cooperative small group work has positive effects on learning, but that this is dependent on the existence of shared goals for the group and individual accountability for the attainment of these goals. It has also been seen to have a positive effect on social skills and self-esteem (Askew & Wiliam, 1995). However, cooperative work requires student’s attitudes and behaviours that are at odds the attitudes and behaviours expected during many regular instruction lessons, and the role shift can be hard to attain for both students and teachers.
Many teachers will worry about a loss of time and a loss of control. The aim of this module is that teachers will be explicit about their worries, and that they will develop a wider repertoire techniques to promote student-student interactions.

Characteristics

The basic structure of the module is that first, teachers consider the characteristics of student-student discussion that benefit learning, and they identify examples of helpful and unhelpful talk; next, they discuss their own worries about introducing collaborative discussion; they explore techniques for promoting effective student-student discussion; and they watch and discuss an example lesson on video. These experiences are then transferred to the classroom, and finally, they report back on the outcomes.

Concrete examples being addressed in this module include:

  • Given a trajectory in a v-t graph, what sport could this represent?
  • What is the strongest argument for the particulate nature of matter (choose from four options)

Doing the module with teachers will take a first session of about two hours, a week in between for the teachers to try out in their own classroom, and another half hour or so in a second session.

Processes of inquiry

The inquiry processes in this module are structured according to a modeling cycle. The major processed addressed in this module are:

  • Exploring situations
  • Interpreting and Evaluating
  • Communicating results

Materials

  • Download: PD Module Guide Pdf / Doc
  • Download: Teacher Handouts Pdf / Doc

Classroom video: "How many school teachers?" lesson

Supplementary materials

Install the software applets

These pages require a web browser with Javascript and Adobe Flash Player 9 or newer to use the video and software.
The software applets can be browsed as part of each module. If you want to install them separately on students' machines you can download the set (and more) as a Windows installer or as Mac applications. Alternatively, they are availavble in browser-based format for any system that supports Flash.

Credits


This module has been compiled for PRIMAS from professional development materials developed by the Shell Centre team at the Centre for Research in Mathematics Education, University of Nottingham. Many of these materials were originally written for the Bowland Maths project, funded by the Bowland Charitable Trust, or for the Improving Learning in Mathematics project which was funded by the Department for Education and Skills Standards Unit.

 
Last change: 15 mei 2012
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