Engaged Learning:

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CHAPTER 11

• Engaged Learning
• Cooperation and Community

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Social Processes in Learning

• Positive and Negative Effects
• Peers- Students often surround themselves with
  those with shared interests and activities
• Adults- Parents Teachers serve as role models

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Collaboration Cooperation

• Collaboration- A philosophy about how to deal
  with people that respects differences, shares
  authority, and builds on the knowledge of others.
  
• Cooperation- Working together with others to
  reach a shared goal

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Cooperative Learning

• Cooperative Learning- Arrangement in which
  students work in mixed-ability groups and are
  rewarded on the basis of group success.

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Elements of Cooperative Learning

• Face to Face student interaction
• Positive independence
• Individual accountability
• Collaboration skills
• Members monitor group progress

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Misuses of Cooperative Learning

• Students rush through their work
• Unsure students support group misconceptions
• Used as social time
• One expert quickly does the work
• Students that feel like they arent needed do no
  contribute

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Designs for Cooperation

• Reciprocal Questioning Approach where groups of
  two or three students ask and answer each others
  questions after a lesson or presentation
• Students create questions and take turns
  answering them and encourages deep thinking on
  the topic
• Question stems to facilitate reciprocal
  questioning What would happen if? Or What is
  the meaning of? Or What do you think causes?

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Designs for Cooperation

• Scripted Cooperation A learning strategy in
  which two students take turns summarizing
  material and critiquing the summaries
• Can include any task or subject
• Example students read a passage, one gives a
  summary and other critiques it then students work
  together to form information, then partners
  switch roles

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Guidelines for Cooperative Learning

• Fit group size and composition to your learning
  goals
• Assign appropriate roles
• Make sure you assume a supporting role as the
  teacher
• Move around and monitor the groups
• Start small and simple until you and students
  know how to use cooperative methods

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Using Cooperative Learning Wisely

• Special needs not always best for special needs
  students especially with hard to grasp subjects
• Often have problems with social relations and
  puts them in situation to be rejected
• Often have difficulties with new concepts and can
  frustrate the student and explainer in reciprocal
  questioning and scripted cooperation

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Using Cooperative Learning Wisely

• Gifted students do not always benefit from
  cooperative learning when groups are of mixed
  ability
• Pace is often too slow, simple, or repetitious
• Fall into role of teacher or do all the work
• Allow gifted students complex tasks at different
  levels to keep interest

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Using Cooperative Learning Wisely

• ELL Students students with backgrounds of 2 or
  more languages can help students of those
  languages
• Receive more language practice
• Smaller groups may be less anxiety provoking
• Jigsaw A cooperative structure in which each
  member of a group is responsible for teaching
  other members one section of the material
• Forces students to talk, interact, and explain
  and makes everyone's contribution important

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Constructive Conflict Resolution

• Important because conflicts are inevitable and
  necessary for learning (Piagets conceptual
  change)
• Often conflicts are resolved in destructive ways
  or not at all
• Often able to correct misunderstandings if argue
  about conflicting wrong answers

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Peer Harassment

• Common form is bullying or teasing and harassment
• In a study, 60 students said we bullied while
  teachers thought only 16
• National survey found 33 of students were
  bullied moderately or frequently
• Do not tolerate teasing of someone less
  powerful/popular or racial, ethnic, or religious
  slurs

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What Can Teachers Do?

• Practice conflict management steers students
  away from lives of violence
• Dos in class be careful of others feelings, use
  humor gently and carefully, ask whether teasing
  hurts someones feelings, accept teasing if one
  teases, tell others if hurts feelings, know
  difference between friendly and malicious
  teasing, read others body language, help a
  weaker student when ridiculed

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What Can Teachers Do?

• Donts in class tease someone you dont know
  well, tease about sex, tease about body, tease
  about family, tease on a topic when asked not to,
  tease someone who is having a bad day, be thin
  skinned about teasing that is meant to be
  friendly, hide feelings about being teased
• Conflicts mostly over resources and preferences
• 90 resolved destructively or not at all

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Peer Mediation and Negotiation

• Johnsons 5 step negotiating strategy
• 1. Jointly define the conflict
• 2. Exchange positions and interests
• 3. Reverse perspectives
• 4. Invent at least three agreements that allow
  mutual gain
• 5. Reach an integrative agreement
• Have student mediators that rotate everyday
• Successful in younger and older students

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Civic Values

• Understandings and beliefs that hold the
  community together
• Learned through direct teaching, modeling,
  literature, and discussions
• Concerns Box Students can put in concerns and
  comments a class meeting ensues to talk about
  these issues
• Respect begins with the teacher

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Character Education To be or not to be

• To be families not teaching well enough, school
  violence, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol use
• Not to be concerned with narrow set of program
  strategies to achieve not actual character
  education, students do this just because
  extrinsic rewards and never fully understand,
  believe should fix structure of schools to be
  more just and caring instead of the students

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Getting Started on Community

• Ask students what it would take for class to work
  for them and tell class what it takes for class
  to work for you
• Often overlaps with one another and fosters good
  cooperation and community
• Have class meetings to discuss what is working
  and not working
• Create a classroom constitution
• Have Trouble Baskets for students so can see
  dispositions of students
• Have students give you a word they dont know
  they heard and talk to them privately about it

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Belonging

• Competitive environment based on race, gender, or
  ethnicity makes students more likely to act out
  or withdraw
• More likely to bond with schools when emphasis is
  on personal improvement and students feel
  respected and supported by teachers
• Care about students academically and personal,
  make classes interesting, be fair and honest,
  make sure students understand, ask if something
  is wrong if seem upset, notice when students are
  absent and why, and use humor in classes
• Trust and respect students and care about them as
  learners and people

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Violence In Schools

• With a trend of school shootings in the mid of
  late 1990s and early 2000s, schools and society
  have been looking for answers
• Suggested solutions for prevention of school
  violence include
• Early Identification of potential troublemakers
  by
• Student informant
• Searches of students property and web postings
• Metal detectors
• Better gun control
• Censorship of the media

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Real solutions and band aids

• The solutions that many give might help control
  the situations to an extent but not entirely
  solve them
• What many questions teachers and adults should be
  asking is
• What is it about the atmosphere of schools that
  make these students desperate, diabolical, and
  callous?
• Why do they seek revenge or a twisted notion of
  glory, by shooting their classmates?

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Real solutions and band aids

• Questions continued
• In what ways have they felt rejected, ignored,
  humiliated, or treated unfairly at school?
• Do schools care as much about developing students
  characters as well as their intellect?
• Can schools do a better job at creating
  inclusive, caring communities with positive role
  models for students?

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What we can do

• Teach acceptance and compassion
• Be firm and insistent with students to learn,
  while caring about them as well
• Studies have shown that really tough students
  respect teachers who show an interest in them
• Service learning outside the classroom can help
  promote moral and political development in
  adolescents

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• The end!