Chapter 3 Scaffolding & Cooperative Learning
Both major teaching techniques topics, scaffolding and cooperative learning, have been shown to be effective for developing students' higher level thinking strategies and abilities to work independently.
Some cooperative learning techniques were presented in earlier in this text. Reciprocal teaching for reading comprehension was discussed in chapter 2 while the 6PQ method of discovery learning, pair problem solving and I DREAM of A are discussed in chapters 3, 4 and 10.
Scaffolding
Teachers can aid intellectual development in students by providing them with information and temporary support which can be gradually decreased as the students' competence increases. The goal of providing scaffolds is for students to become independent, self-regulated thinkers who are more self sufficient and less teacher dependent. Using a scaffolding approach in teaching is comparable to the scaffolding of a building which is gradually removed as its structure becomes better able to support its own weight. Scaffolds are like training wheels on a bicycle which provide temporary support while the rider learns to maintain balance. Once the bike rider is secure about maintaining balance, the training wheels are removed and the rider self-balances. Scaffolding involves providing support (models, cues, prompts, hints, partial solutions) to students to bridge the gap between what students can do on their own and what they can do with guidance from others. Teachers use scaffolding as a strategy for shifting instruction from others' (teacher's) control to student self-regulation. The teacher's role shifts from being a model or an instructor to being a manager, who gives prompts and corrective feedback.
At the beginning, the teacher (expert) completely guides the student's activity, modeling how to perform the task. The student observes the teacher and does little independent thinking during this phase, other than reading the material and observing the expert's behavior. Once internalized, the student can copy the expert's thinking/learning strategies and apply them to his/her own academic work.
Next, the student attempts to do the task with the teacher providing supportive cuing, assistance, and additional modeling, as needed. If the student has trouble using the strategies, then sometimes the teacher has to model or demonstrate again how to think about and use them. This gives the student another opportunity to observe the thinking and behavior that is appropriate for the situation. Gradually the student plays a greater teaching role and assumes more responsibility for self instruction and for teaching peers.
Scaffolding often involves the following basic components: 1. Present the new cognitive strategies, 2. Regulate difficulty during guided practice, 3. Provide varying contexts for student practice, 4. Provide feedback, 5. Increase student responsibility, and 6. Provide independent practice (Rosenshine & Meister 1992). Eventually the student learns to do all the thinking- applying the content, skills, and strategies without the teacher-expert's assistance. The teacher plays only a supportive role at this point.
Can you give your own examples of scaffolding? Compare with others and critique.
Cognitive Behavior Modification(Meichenbaum 1977) is a method of gradually changing behavior based on scaffolding instruction through five stages:
1. Cognitive Modeling: the model (teacher) performs the task while talking out loud to him/herself.
2. Overt, External Guidance: the student performs the same task under the teacher's direction.
3. Overt, Self Guidance: the student performs the task while instructing him/herself aloud.
4. Faded, Overt Self-Guidance: the student performs the task while whispering instructions to her/himself.
5. Covert Self Instruction: the student performs the task while guiding her/his performance through silent self talk, private speech, or nonverbal self-direction.
The following example shows cognitive behavior modification for scaffolding the use of self- questions while reading in order to monitor comprehension and clarify misunderstanding. The procedure starts with teacher direction and leads to student self-direction.
1. Cognitive Modeling: The teacher reads a section of the text aloud. While reading
aloud the teacher asks and answers comprehension monitoring and clarifying self-questions aloud. For example, the teacher says, "Does this all make sense to me? Well, some of it does and some doesn't. Maybe I should reread the parts that are unclear." Then the teacher rereads the unclear parts aloud and says, "That makes more sense now. I skipped over some key words when I read it the first time."
2. Overt, External Guidance: This time the student reads a different portion of the text aloud. The teacher says to the student "What question will you ask yourself to check up on your understanding?" Then the student asks and answers a self-question such as, "Is there anything in here I don't fully understand?" If the student finds there is something unclear, the teacher says, "What can you do to clarify your understanding?" The student then uses a clarification strategy, such as looking a context clues.
3. Overt, Self Guidance: The student reads another section of text aloud, asks a comprehension monitoring question aloud, and seeks clarifying information as needed. At this stage, the teacher listens actively to make sure the student asks a comprehension monitoring self-question and clarifies, if needed. If the student forgets to ask a comprehension monitoring question, or has trouble doing it, the teacher prompts or assists the student.
4. Faded, Overt Self-Guidance: The student repeats the procedure in step three, but this time whispers while reading aloud and self questioning. The teacher listens to the whispering and tries to tell if the student asks and answers self questions. If the teacher isn't sure because the whispering made it hard to hear what the student was saying, the teacher asks the student about it when the student has finished the section of text.
5. Covert Self Instruction. The student reads a section of text silently and silently asks and answers self questions to comprehension monitor and clarify as needed. The teacher watches the student, and when the student is finished, asks what self-question was asked and what, if any, clarification occurred and how. At this point the student has become self-directed in the use of self-questions to monitor comprehension and clarify confusion.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning involves students working together towards a common goal in a teaching-learning situation. There are three basic forms of cooperative learning: tutoring (peer or cross-age), in which one student teaches another; pairs, who work and learn with each other; and small groups of students teaching and learning together. Not all groupwork is cooperative learning. When using cooperative learning approaches teachers need to make sure that all students are actively involved in the process working towards a common goal.
There are good reasons for the old saying, "The best way to learn something is to teach it." Teaching requires considerable depth of knowledge, understanding, organization and memory of important concepts and skills. Cooperative learning provides situations for students to teach each other. When students explain and teach concepts to each other, retention of these concepts improves Explaining also helps students connect their prior knowledge with new information. Contrary to some current speculation, cooperative learning is more than an educational fad.
It has been successfully used in the Netherlands since the early 1970's. Now word is out internationally that cooperative learning is a powerful instructional method for developing content knowledge and higher level thinking skills across the curriculum .
Academic work is usually much more fun and exciting to students when they work together cooperatively.
The social context and active involvement make it more motivating to learn. Research has shown that cooperative learning increases confidence in students' abilities. It improves self-esteem as well as feelings of competence in specific subjects. Research has also documented the positive effects of cooperative learning on improving social relations with students of different ethnicity and cultural backgrounds (Hartman, 1996).
It is useful to have a repertoire of teaching strategies. Even the most effective instructional technique does not work in all situations. Teachers need to have multiple techniques available to allow them to be flexible and shift as the situation requires. In addition, variety is necessary to prevent boredom. There is an increasing amount of ethnic and linguistic diversity in classrooms in the U.S.A. Cooperative learning has been demonstrated to be an especially effective method of teaching in settings characterized by such diversity. Cooperative learning can be done at almost any age and often with teachers' existing instructional materials. It helps improve achievement from elementary grades through graduate school.
Teachers should carefully observe group so they can serve as effective resources and assess performance. They should evaluate at least three aspects of group performance: 1). How students approached their tasks, e.g. What strategies were considered? Which approaches were rejected? Why? Were there any careless mistakes? Did students check and evaluate their work? 2). the ideas students generated, and 3). How well did the groups function as cooperative learners? This is called "group processing" and it is discussed later in this chapter.
What experiences have you had working in cooperative learning groups?
How would you assess your experiences with cooperative learning?
What is your opinion of how students working together and arriving at consensus on how to revise a paper can help students emotionally? What is your opinion of how can it help them intellectually?
Helps Emotionally
Helps Intellectually
Group Roles for Structuring Student Participation
If you are having trouble getting all students in a teaching group to take an active part, then it may be useful to assign each group member a specific assignment or role to fulfill. Jigsaw (Aronson etal. 1978) is a method of assigning each student responsibility for solving a particular part of the problem, structuring material and activities so students become experts on their parts, and teaching their parts to the rest of the group. Problems need to be carefully selected so that students can learn their own parts relatively independently.
Roles can be focused on specific subject matter e.g. a problem restater in mathematics, or can be more general and used across subjects e.g., an encourager of participation. The chart of group roles below is based on Johnson and Johnson's work on cooperative learning. These models are to stimulate your thinking about different ways to help students take an active role in their own learning. Experiment!
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Sample Group Roles, Reasons & Responsibilities
What ______When/Why How
Facilitator To structure and maintain Orients group to
effective group functioning task, raises issues, calls on people,
keeps group on task, pushes for
decisions, initiates ideas for solution
______
Encourager To make sure everyone Gives own ideas, asks for others'
participates and no one ideas, reacts to others' ideas, asks
dominates the discussion for reactions to others' ideas, stops
anyone from dominating ______
Checker To make sure everyone Asks: "Does anyone
understands, agrees, and have a question or
completes work in allotted want clarification?"
time "Does everyone agree?"
Reminds group of
time and amount
of work remaining
______
Praiser To recognize positive Says: "That's a good
contributions from group idea". "You're doing a
members and make them good job as checker".
feel good about their
participation
______
Recorder/Reporter To preserve group's ideas, Writes down ideas
and present group's work contributed, writes up
to the teacher and/or work to be turned in,
the rest of the class gives oral reports
______
Observer To improve individual and Takes notes on how
group performance of roles group members perform
roles, gives feedback
based on observations
______
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Training Students in Cooperative Skills
Johnson and Johnson are well known for their contributions to cooperative learning. They emphasizes face-to-face interaction as students work in heterogeneous groups with individual accountability on tasks that require positive interdependence. They believe that students need to be taught cooperative skills so that the groups function effectively. Their guidelines for training students' cooperative skills are:
1. Make sure students see the need for the skill.
2. Make sure they understand what the skill is and when it is used.
3. Provide opportunities to practice and master the skill.
4. Give students feedback on their use of the skills and adequate time for skill development.
5. Make sure students practice the skill until it is internalized.
6. Have students process (evaluate) their use of the skills.
In order for students to develop and use skills effectively, they need to know what the skills are, and when, why and how to use them. Finish the following chart and compare you ideas with others.
Strategic Knowledge about Cooperative Skills
What When/Why How
Asking for clarification When recognizing something "What does...mean?"
is unclear and it is worthwhile "Does it mean...?"
getting it clarified
______
Providing clarification
______
Paraphrasing
______
Coming to consensus
______
Providing encouragement
______
Criticizing an idea,
not the person
who presented it
______
Johnson and Johnson's work on cooperative learning has important implications for teaching, especially for tutors working with teaching groups. In both cooperative learning and teaching groups, students help each other with academic work. The tutor has to make decisions, plan instruction, monitor students' performance, evaluate students' progress and provide feedback. Johnson, Johnson & Holubec's (1986) "The Teacher's Role in Cooperation" follows for useful suggestions for managing teaching. They characterize the information below as some of the" Essential Elements of Cooperative Learning Groups".
The Teacher's Role in Cooperation
Planning I:Make Decisions
Specify Academic and Collaborative Objectives. What academic and/or collaborative skills do you want students to learn or practice in their groups? Start with something easy.
Decide on Group Size. Students often lack collaborative skills, so start with groups of two or three students; later advance cautiously to fours.
Assign Students to Groups. Heterogeneous groups are the most powerful, so mix abilities, sexes, cultural backgrounds, and task orientations. Assign students to groups randomly or select groups yourself.
Arrange the Room. The closer the students are to each other, the better they can communicate. Group members should be "knee to knee and eye to eye."
Plan Materials. Materials can send a "sink or swim together" message to students if you give only one paper to the group or give each member part of the material to learn and then teach the group.
Assign Roles. Students are more likely to work together if each one has a job which contributes to the task. You can assign work roles such as Reader, Recorder, Calculator, Checker, Reporter, and Materials Handler or skill roles such as Encourager of Participation, Praiser, and Checker for Understanding.
Planning II: Set the Lesson
Explain the Academic Task. Prepare students by teaching them any material they need to know, then make certain they clearly understand what they are to do in the groups. This might include explaining lesson objectives, defining concepts, explaining procedures, giving examples, and asking questions.
Structure Positive Interdependence. Students must feel that they need each other to complete the group's task, that they "sink or swim together." Some ways to create this are by establishing mutual goals (students must learn the material and make certain group members learn the material), joint rewards (if all group members achieve above a certain percentage on the test, each will receive bonus points), shared materials and information, and assigned roles.
Structure Individual Accountability. Each student must feel responsible for learning the material and helping the group. Some ways to ensure this feeling include frequent oral quizzing of group members picked at random, giving individual tests, having everyone in the group write (pick one paper at random to grade), or having students do work first to bring to the group.
Structure Intergroup Cooperation. Having groups check with and help other groups and giving rewards or praise when all class members do well can extend the benefits of cooperation to the whole class.