The Social Family of Models

The models of teaching described in this book come from beliefs about the nature of human beings and how they learn. The social models, as the name implies, emphasize our social nature, how we learn social behavior, and how social intraction can enhance academic learning. Nearly all inventors of social models believe that a central role of education is to prepare citizens to generate integrative democratic behabior, both to enhance personal and social life and to ensure a productive democratic social order. The believe that cooperative enterprise inherently enhances our quality of live, bringing joy and sense of verve and bonhomie to us and reducing alienation and unproductive social complic . In addition, cooperative behavior is stimulating not only socially but also intellectually. Thus, tasks requiring social interaction can be designed to enhance academic learning. The development of productive social behavior and academic skills and knowledge are combined.
The social theorists have develoved many models with great potential four are techcing repertoires and four the design of entire school environments as well; the evesion the school as a productive little society, rather than a collection of individuals acquiring education independently. In a cooperative school culture, students can be taught to use other models of teaching and learning to aquire the knowledge and skills for which those models are develoved.
Many social theorists have not only built rationales for their models, but have raised serious question about the current dominant patterns of schooling. In many schools the majority of learning tasks are structured by teachers for individuals. Most intraction_the teacher directs question about what has been studied, calls on an individual who respondens, and then affirms the respone or corrects it (Sirotnik, 1893). Patterns of evaluation pit student against students. Many developers of the social models believe that individualistic patterns of schooling, combined with teacher–dominated recitation, are actually counterproductive for individuals and society by depressing learning rates, creating an unnatural and even antisocial climate, and failing to provide opportunities for young people to maxmimeze their potential and others by exercising their capacity for cooperation. People are inherently coopereative, they argue, and depressing cooperation drivers children from each other and deprives them of an infortant dimension of their competenci (see Johnson and Johnson, 1990; Sharan, 1990; Thelen, 1960).
The ideas of cooperating to learn academic conten and of preparing students for citizenship and a satisfying social life are very old. They can be found in the writing of Aristotle, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as in those of Chistian educator such as Thomas Aquinas, in the medieval priod, and John Amos Comenius in the Renaissance. The rise of the modern commercial democratic states found expression in the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in France, John Loke in England, and Thomas Jefferson snd Bejamin Franklin in America. During the priod of the development of the common school in America, Horace Mann and Henry Barnard Argued strongly for an active cooperative school.
The concept was announced forcefully by John Dewey thoughout the first half of the twentieth century. With his ideas as the the primary rationale, it found expression in the development of a number of models for schooling and in the activity of the Progressive Education Association, ushering in the current era of research and development of social models of education.
We will see themes generated during the evolution of Western civilization in the following chapters as we study the work of the contemporary developers of social models. There active communities are strongly working to improve the social models. One is led by David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota. The second is led by Robert Salvin at Johns Hopkins University. The thirh, in Israil, includes Shlomo Sharan, Rachel Hertz Lazarowitz, and several other techer-researchers. There are differences in their frames of reference, but they are respectful and and cooperative with one another and are appropriately international. Increasingly they are joined by European researchers, and elements of their work are being used and extended by collaborators in Asia.
In Chapter 12 we begin with procedures four developing partnership in learning and proceed to the contemporary versions of the classic group investigation models. In Chapter 13 we focus on values and social problem solving. Socials in quiry and role playing can be used with students of all ages, and the jurisprudential inguiry model emphasizes social policies and issues for older students.

Partner in Learning
From Dyads Group Investigation
Scenario
As the children enter Kelly Farmers fifth grade classroom in Savanah Elementary on the first day of school, they find the class roster on each desk. She smiles at them and says, “Let’s start by learning all our nemes and one of the ways we will be working together this year. You’ll notice I’ve arranged the desks in pairs, and the people sitting together will be partnership to take our class list and classify the first partnership makes. Tis will help us learn one another’s names. It is also to introduce you to one of the ways we will study spelling and several other subjects this this year. I know how to classify, but let me know you heve any problems.”
The student do know what to do, and within a few minutes they are ready to share their classification. “We put Nancy and Sally together because they end in’y.” “We put George and Jorry together because they scound the same at the beginning even though they,re spelled differently.” “We put the there ‘Kevin’s together.” A few minuts later the pair are murmuring together as they help one another learn to spell the names.
Kelly has we mean started the yar by organization for cooperative learning. She will teach them to work in dyads and triads, which can combine into grouf of four, five, or six. (Task or work groufs larger than that generally have much lower productivitiy). The partnership will change for varios activities. The student will learn to accep any members of the class as their partners and will learnthat they are to work with each other to try to ensure that everyone acyone achieves the objectives of each activity.
She bgins with pairs because that is the simplest social organization. In fact, much of the early training in cooperative activity will be counducted in grouf of two and there because the intraction is simpler than in larger groups. For the same reason she also uss fairly straightforward and familiar cognitive tasks for the initial training-it is easier for students to learn to work together when they are not mastering complex activites at the same time. For example, she change partnerships again and have the new partnership quiz each each other on simple knowledge, such as states and cavital, and tutor one another. She will change partnerships again and ask them to categorize sets of factions by size. Each student will learn how to work with any and all of the other students in the class over a variety of tasks. Later she will teach the children to respond to cognitive tasks of the more comlex information-processing models of teaching as well as more complex cooperative sets. By the end of October she expexts that they will be skillful enough that she can introduce them to gruf investigation.

Bot teachers have embarked on the task of building learning communities. They will teach the student to work together imforsonally but positively, to gather and analyze information, to build and test hypotheses, and to coach one another as they dvelop skills. The difference in maturity between the classes will affect the degree of sophistication of inguiry, but the basic processes will be the same.
Each of these teachers possesses a variety of strategies for educating his orher students to work productively together. On their desks are Circus of Laerning (Johnson and Johnson, 1994), Cooperative learning in the classroom (Johnson, Johnson, and Holobec, 1994). And Cooperative Learning Reasources for Teachers (Kagan, 1990). Each is studying the students, learning how effectively they cooperate, and deciding how to design the next activites to teach them to work more effectively together.
PURPOSES AND ASSUMPTIOS
The assumptions thet underlie the development of cooperative learning communities are are straightforward:
1. The synergy generated in cooperative setting generates more motivation than do individualistic, competitive environments. Integrative social grouf are, in effect, more than the sum of their parts. The feelings of connecteness produce positive energy.
2. The members of cooperative groufs learn from one another. Each learner has more helping hands than in a structure that generation isolation.
3. Intracting with one another produces cognitive as well as social complexity, cerating more intellectual activity that increases learning when contrasted with solitary study.
4. Cooperation increases positive feelings toward one another, reducing alienation and loneliness, building relationship, and providing affirmative views of other peple.
5. Cooperation increases self-esteem not only through increased learning but through the feeling of being respected and cered for by the other in the environment.
6. Students who experience tasks requiring cooperation increase their capacity to work productively together. In ather words, the more children are given the the opportunity to work together, the better they get at it, which benefits their general social skills.
7. Students, including primary school shildren, can learn from training to increase their ability to work together.
In the lasts 30 year, intrest has been renewed in research on the cooperative learning models. The more sophisticated researsh on the cooperative learning models. The more sophisticated research procedures that now exlist have enabled better test of their assumption and more precise estimate of their effects on academic, personal, and social behavior. Work by there groups of researchers is of particular interest. One is led by David and Roger Johnson of the University of Minnesota (Johnson and Johnson, 1974, 1981, 1990). Another is led by Robert Salvin (1983, 1990) of Johns Hopkins University, and the thir by Sahlomo Sharan of Tel Aviv University (1980, 1990). Using somewhat different strategies, the teams of both the Johnson and Salvin have conducted sets of investigations that closely examine the assumptions of the social famly of teaching models. Specifically, they have studied whether cooperative tasks and reward structures affect learning procedures. In some of their investigations they have examined the effects of cooperative task and rewared structures on “tradisional” learning tasks, in which students are presented with material to master.
Important for us the question of whether cooperative groups do in fact generate the energy that results in improved learning. The evidence is largely affirmative. In classrooms organized so that students work in pair and larger groups, tutor each other, and share reward, there is greater mastery of material than with the common individual-study-cum recitation pattern. Also, the shared responsibllity and intraction produce more positive feelings toward tasks and others, generate better intergroup relations, and result in better self images for students with histories of poor achievement. In other words, the results generally affirm the assumptions that underlie the use of cooperative learning methods (see Sharan, 1990).
Sharan and his colleagues have studied group investigation. The have learned much about how to make the dynamics of the model work and about its effects on cooperative behavior, intergroup relations, and lower- and higher-order achievement. We will discuss their research as we discuss group investigation later in this chapter.
An exciting use of cooperative procedures is in combination with models from other families, in an effort to combine the effects of several models. For example, Baveja, Showers, and Joyce (1985) conducted a study in which concept attainment and inductive procedures were carried out in cooperative group. The effects fulfilled the promise of the marriage of the information processing and social models, reflecting gains that were twicc those of a comparison group that received intensive individual and group tutoring over the same material. Similarly, Joyce, Murphy, Showers, and Murphy (1989) combined cooperative learning with several other models of techingto obtain dramatic (30 to 95 percent)increases in promotion rates with at –risk tudents as well as correspondingly large decreases in disruptive activity, an obvious reciprocal of increases in cooperative and integrative behavior. The application of the picture-word inductive model in the studies in Chapter 22, with substantial effects on literacy, is suffused with cooperative atmosphere and specific cooperative learning strategies.
Those teacher for whom cooperative learning is an innovation find that an endearing feacture is that ist is easy to organize students into pairs and triads. And it gets effects immediately. The combination of social support and the increase in cognitive complexcity caused by the social interaction have mild but rapid effects on the learning of content and skills. In addition, partnership in learning provide a pleasant laboratory in which to develop social skills and empathy for others. Off task and diskruptive behavior diminish substantially. Students feel good in cooperative setting, and positive feelings toward self and other are enhanced.
Another nice feacture is that the students with poorer academic histories benefit so quickly. Partnerships increase involvement, and concentration on cooperation has the side effect of reducing self –absorption and increasing responsibility for personal learning. Whereas the effect sizes on academic learning are modest but consistent, the effects on social learning and personal esteem can be considerable when comparisons are made with individualistic classroom organization (Joyce, Calhoun, Jutras, and Newlove, 2006; Joyce, Hrycauj, Calhoun, and Hrycauk, 2006).
Curiously, we heve found that some parent and teacher believe that students who are the most successful in individualistic environments will not profit from cooperative environment. Sometimes this bief is expressed as “gited students prefer to work alone”. A mass of evidence contradicts that belief (Salvin, 1991; Joyce, 1994). Perhaps a misunderstanding about the relationship between individual and cooperative study contributes to the persistence of the belief. Developing partnerships does not imply that individual effort is not required. In the scenario in Ms. Hilltepper’s classroom, all the individuals read the poems. When classifying poems together, each individual contributet ideas and studied the ideas of others. Individuals are not submerged but are enhanced by partenerships with other. Successful students are not inherently less cooperative. In highly individualistic environments they are sometimes taught disdain for less-successful students, to their detriments as students and people, both in school and in the future.

INCREASING THE EFFICENCY OF PARTNERSHIPS: TRAINING FOR COOPERATION
For reasons not entirely clear to us, the initial reaction of some peple to the proposition that students be organized to study together is one of concern that they will not know how to work together productively. In fact, partenerships over simple tasks are not very demanding of social skills. Most students are quite capable of cooperating when they are clear about what has been asked of them. However, developing more efficient ways of working together is clearly important, and there are some guidelines for helping students become more practiced and efficient. These guidelines pertain to group size, complexity, and practice.
Our initial illustrations are of simple dyadic, partenerships with clear cognitive tasks. The reason is that the pair, or dyad, is the simplest form of social organization. One way to help students learn to work cooperatively is to provide practice in the simpler settings of twos and these. Essentially, we regulate complexity through the tasks we give the sizes of groups we form. If students are unaccustomed to cooperative work, it makes sense to use the smallesr groups with simple or familiar tasks for them to gain the experience needed to work in larger groups. Task groups larger than six persons are clumsy and require skilled leadership, whichstudents cannot provide without experience or training. Partenerships of two. There, or four are the most commonly employed. Practice results in increased efficiency. If we begin learning with partners and simply provide practice for a few weeks, we will find that the students become increasingly productive.

Training for Efficiency
There are also methods for taining the students for more efficient cooperation and “positive interdenpendence” (see Kagan, 1990; Johnson and Johnson, 1999). Simple hand signals can be used to get the attention of busy groups. One common procedure is to establish that when the instructor raises his orher hand, anyone who notices is to give attention to the instructor and raise his or her hand also. Other students notice and raise their hands, and soon the entire instructional group is attending. This type of procedure is nice because it works while avonding shouting above the hubbub of the busy partnerships and teaches the students to participate in the mangments process.
Kagan (1990) has developed several procedures for teaching students to work together for goals and to ensure that all students participate equally in group tasks. An example is what he calls “numbered heads”. Suppose that the students are working in partnerships of three. Each member¬__ for example, “Number twos”. The number two persons in all groups raise their hands. They are resvonsible for speaking for their groups. The instructor calls on one of them. All other persons are responsible for listening and checking the answer of the persons who report. For example, if the resvonse is “seven” the other students are responsible for checking that response against their own. “How many agree? Disagree?” The procedure is designed to ensure that some individuals do not become the “learners” and “spokespersons” for their groups while others are carried along for the ride.
Also, for certain appropriate tasks, pretests may be given. An example might be a list of words to learn to spell. After the pretests a number of tasks might be given to help students study the word. Then an interval might be provided for the students to tutor one another, followed by a posttest. Each group would then calculate its gain scores (the numbers correct on the posttest minus the number correct on the pretest), giving all members a stake in everyune’s learning. Also, cooperative learning aside, the procedure makes clear that learning expressed as gain is the pupuse of the exercise. When only posstest are used, it is not clear whether anyone has actually learned__ students can receive high marks for a score no higher than they would have achieved in a pretest.
Sets of training tasks can help students learn to partner more effectively, to increase their stake in one another, and to work assiduously for learning by all.

Training for Interdependence
In addition to practice and training for more efficient cooperative behavior, procedures for helping students become truly interdependent are available. The least complex involve relection on the group process and discussion about ways of working together mots effectively. The more complex involve the provision of tasks that require interdependent behavior. For example, there are card games in which success depends on “Charades” and “Pictionary” are place of another. There are also procedures for rotating tasks so that each person moves from subordinate to superordinate tasks and where members take turns as coordinators.
The Johnson (1999) have demonstrated that sets of these can increase interdependence, empathy, and role –taking ability and that students can become quite expert atanalyzing group dynamic and learning to create group climate tat foster mutuality and collective responsibility. The role-playing model of teching, discussed in the next chapter, is designed to help students analyze their values and to work together to develop interactive frames of reference.

Division of Labor: Specialization
A variety of procedures has been developed to hlp students how to help one another by dividing labor. Essentially, tasks are presented in such a way that division of labor increases efficiency. The underlying rationale is that dividing labor increases group conhesion as the team works to learn information or skills while ensuring that all members have both responsibility for learning and an important role in the group. Imagine, for example, that a class is studying Africa and is organizied into groups of four. Four countries are chosen for study. One member of each team migh be designated a “country specialist”. The contry specialists from all teams would gather together and study their assigned nation and become the tutors for their original groups, responsible for summarizing information and presenting it to the class, the group will divide responsibility for creating mnemonics for aspects of the data. Or teams could take responsibility for parts of the information to be learned.
A procedure known as jigsaw (Aronson, Blaney, Stephen, Sikes, and Snapp 1978; Salvin, 1983) has been worked out to develop formal organizations for divisions of labor. It is highly structure and appropriate as an introduction to division of labor processes. Whereas individualistic classroom organization allows individuals to exercise their best-developed skilla, division of labor procedures require students to rotate roles, developing their skills in all areas.

Cooperative Goal Structures
Some devalopers organize temas to compete against one another while other emphasize cooperative goals and minimize competition. Johnson and Johnson (1990) have analyzed the research and argue that the evidence favors cooperative goal structures, but Salvin (1983) argues that competition between teams benefits learning. The fundamental question is whether students are oriented toward competing with one another or with a goal. Recently several of our colleagues have organized whole classes to work cooperatively toward a goal. For example, the science department of a high school began the year in chemistry by organizing the students to master the essencial feactures of the Table of Elements. In teams, they built mnemonics that were used by all teams. Within two weeks, all students knew the table backwaed and forward, and that information served as the structural organizer (see Chapter 9 ) for the entire course. In a group of fifth-grade classes the exploration of social studies began with memorization of the states, large cities, river and mountain systems, and other basic information about the geography of the united states. Class score were computed (for example, 50 states times 30 students is 1,500 items). The goal wass for the class ass a whole to achieve a perpect score. The classes reached scores over 1.450 within a week, leaving individuals with very few items to master to to reach a perpec score for the class.

Motivation: From Extrinsic to Intrinsic?
The issue about how much to emphasize cooperative or individualistic goal structures relates to conception of motivation. Sharan (1990) has argued that cooperative learning increases learning party because it causes motivational orientation to move from the external to the internal. In other words, when students cooperate over learning tasks, they become more interested in learning for intrinsic satisfaction and become less dependent on praise from teacher or other authorities. The internal motivation is more powerful than the external, resulting in increased learning rates and retention of information and skills.
The frame of reference of the cooperative learning community is a diect to the principle that many schools have relied on to guide their use of test and rewards for students achievement. Unquestionably, one of the fundamental purposes of general education is to increase internal motivation to learn and to encourage students to generate learning for the sheer satisfaction in growing. If cooperative learning procedures (among other) succeed partly because they contribute to this goal, then the testing and reward structures that prevail in most school environment may actually retard learning. As we turn to group investigation a powerful model that radically changes the learning environment- consider how different are the tasks, cooperative structures and principles of motivation we observe in many contemporary schools.