Inquiry and Cooperative Learning
Barron and Darling-Hammond state that inquiry-based learning with collaborative approaches are beneficial to individual and collective growth, and helps students to develop long-term life skills such as ability to work in teams, solve complex problems, and apply knowledge gained through one lesson to another, which are all necessary skills in today’s workplace culture. From personal industry experience, I agree with the authors that collaboration skills are essential to creating a productive work environment, and the teacher as a leader has a vital responsibility in facilitating this growth.
Looking back at the early stage of my work experience, the skillsets that initially prepared me for my internship were technical skills to complete tasks that were assigned to me. These tasks allowed me to take part in the overall design process, and be an “expert” in the learning by design approach. As my responsibilities grew, I faced more high-level problems such as “how can we teach a new user how to use this app?” Tackling this problem required multiple steps involving project and problem-based learning skills — where I had to define the problem, hypothesize, and plan the execution of this project which was unlike any project I’ve previously learnt in school. What was vital in this process was the execution using knowledge and tools I possessed, as the authors would state as the ability to “transfer the learning to new kinds of situations… to use knowledge more proficiently in performance situations.”
Another challenge I faced at work was effectively collaboration in a team setting. Barron and Darling-Hammond states that small-group learning “benefits students in social and behavioral areas… including improvement in student self-concept, social interaction, time on task, and positive feelings towards peers.” When I first joined my previous team, I experienced competitive hostility from one of my fellow team members. The tension affected our abilities to collaborate productively on projects and prevented from creating an ideal learning environment. Traditional educational settings have a tendency to naturally create a competitive environment, but in a workplace, competition hurts productivity. Encouraging students to collaborate rather than compete with another would better prepare them for the workplace.
However, collaboration has many challenges and it’s vital that the the overseer establishes a good practice among the group, or collaboration could hinder individuals from maximizing their capacity to learn. For example, the authors encourage structured student roles where individuals become an expert at one “group-worthy task” to promote equal participation. However, by being assigned as an expert, students may believe that they are only skilled at one role and get discouraged from trying to become an expert in other roles, missing out on an opportunity to develop a well-balanced set of skills or lose the need to challenge a weakness. In addition to the idea of “Complex Instruction” where teachers need to carefully design activities that require diverse talents and interdependence among group members, teachers must also foster an equal learning environment where students rotate roles and realize that the goal is not to become an expert at one task but how effective collaboration benefits from distribution of tasks and how each is equally critical to produce an outcome.
-Miki
Barron, B., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Teaching for Meaningful Learning: A Review of Research on Inquiry-Based and Cooperative Learning. Book Excerpt. George Lucas Educational Foundation.
