Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach

Cooperative learning teams are not just a group of students who are given an assignment
and left alone to complete it. In our society, young people, as well as adults, need to learn
how to work cooperatively. For cooperative learning teams to work successfully, teachers
and students must have clear group process goals. There must be a clear structure for dem-
ocratic group decision making, and there must be a sense of shared group responsibility for
the team. InCircles of Learning (1993), David Johnson, Roger Johnson, Edythe Johnson
Holubec, and Patricia Roy suggest that the following should be built into the cooperative
learning process:

1. Teams need to depend on all of their team members to achieve the team’s goals; stu-
   dents have to work together.


2. Team members must be held collectively and individually accountable for learning by
   group members; everyone is responsible for the group.


3. Responsibilities are divided up so that all team members have the opportunity to play
   both leadership and supporting roles.


4. Teams are concerned with learning and maintaining cooperative group relations.


5. Team members need to learn how to run meetings, make decisions, organize projects,
   divide responsibilities, and evaluate progress. Teachers cannot assume that students al-
   ready have social and organizational group work skills.


6. Teams must evaluate themselves and be evaluated as teams by teachers, on both group
   process and the completed team product.

Responsibilities can be divided up among students and then rotated on a regular schedule
or when a team finishes a project. Team members will need to learn how to perform all of
these important assignments. Sometimes a student will assume more than one of these re-
sponsibilities. When team responsibilities are divided up, possible tasks include the following:

·Chairperson/facilitator—the person responsible for leading team meetings.

·Recorder—the person who keeps a record of what is said at meetings and team decisions.

·Reflector—a person assigned to listen carefully during discussions so they can be summa-

rized at the end of meetings.

·Reporter—a person who reports on the team’s problems and progress when the class

meets as a whole.

·Liaison—a person who meets with representatives of other teams to share ideas.

·Organizer—a person who makes sure that work is completed on schedule and is ready to

be presented or submitted.

·Mediator—a person who attempts to resolve internal conflicts between team members.

While students are working, teachers are busy as ex officio members of each cooperative
learning team: You may (a) stick your head in a team meeting, listen for a while, say and do
nothing, and then move on to another team; (b) ask a team a question or give it direction,
helping a team solve an especially difficult academic problem; or (c) have questions about
how a team is working together. A team may need a teacher to mediate a problem, the entire
class to get involved, or only to hear the suggestion that they reflect on what they are doing
so they can work it out by themselves.
Some teachers have expressed concern with grading policies for students working in co-
operative learning teams. Just as organization of the teams can change depending on the ac-

COMMUNITY 163