Читать книгу Student Learning Communities - Нэнси Фрей - Страница 27

David Johnson and Roger Johnson's (1990) seminal work on cooperative learning has influenced a generation of teachers seeking to further the learning and social growth of their students. The principles of cooperative learning are critical if the work is to be productive, and the first principle is clearly understood positive interdependence. The task or project must be designed so that the participation of every member is necessary for the completion of work, and no one in the group can get by with doing no work at all. In addition, the job or task should capitalize on the variation among group members to maximize individual strengths. Johnson and Johnson explained that this interdependence comes in several forms:

 Goal interdependence, or a "sink or swim" approach that requires that everyone in the group learns

 Resource interdependence, distributing materials in such a way that no individual member has everything needed to complete the task

 Reward interdependence, ensuring that each member earns an equal share (e.g., a group grade)

 Role interdependence, where all members understand their role in partial completion of the task.

Keep in mind that getting everyone involved and contributing is not the same thing as achieving a positive result. We're reminded of A Million Penguins, a "wiki-novel" project sponsored by Penguin Publishing and De Montfort University in Leicester, England. Over a five-week period, nearly 1,500 people collaboratively wrote and edited a novel that has been widely described as terrible. (Our favorite sentence from the first paragraph: "Crashing tides sounded groans of discontent.") Researchers on the project noted that this project drew a crowd but never created a community (Mason & Thomas, 2008). Collaboration is necessary, but it's not enough in itself; SLCs should also produce results and achieve learning outcomes.