Chapter 1, page 15
Collaborative learning can enhance the other educational goals we have discussed: engagement (Phyllis C.
Blumenfeld et al., 2006), understanding (Webb et al., 2002), self-regulated learning (Chinn, in press-b; A.
King, 2002), and transfer (J. S. Krajcik & Blumenfeld, 2006).
Learning to collaborate is also a worthy goal in its own right. Learning to collaborate is valuable
because effective collaboration is important in the real world (e.g., Parker, 2008). In almost every
organization and profession, knowing how to collaborate effectively in teams is essential to success. A
surgical team must work well together, or lives will be lost. Effective teams are vital to corporations: an
automobile design team must be able to work effectively in order to build a well-engineered, cost-effective,
marketable auto. Teachers, administrators, and parents must work effectively together to improve schools.
The ability to work well collaboratively is important in nearly every aspect of real life (Hackman, 1989).
In most organizations, groups are also knowledge creators (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006; Senge,
2006). An engineering team learns from its mistakes and shares this knowledge so that others do not make
the same mistakes again; in this way, the team has generated knowledge that the entire organization can
use. A team of teachers work together to generate and test ideas about how to help children having
difficulty learning to read, and then they share these ideas with other teachers and schools in the district. A
nursing home team works collaboratively to learn much more about Alzheimer’s disease so that they can
develop more effective services for their patients; they incorporate their findings in a manual that all future
workers will follow. In all of these examples, groups of individuals are generating new knowledge and
using their newfound knowledge to help accomplish the goals of their organizations.
Learning scientists Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter (2006) have emphasized that students
in classrooms can work together to create knowledge in much the same way that adults work together to
create knowledge. By teaching students to work together to create knowledge, teachers are preparing
students for the collaborative work of creating knowledge that they will need to do as adults. Scardamalia
and Bereiter do not expect students to create knowledge that is new to the world (such as a brand new
scientific discovery) but rather to create knowledge that is new to the students themselves. In their
program, called Knowledge Forum, students post ideas on topics the class is studying onto a computer-
based network of ideas. For example, one student may post a note on why civilizations fall (Scardamalia
& Bereiter, 2006). Other students elaborate on this idea, providing evidence and elaboration, whereas
others critique it, pointing out its shortcomings. Some of the students’ discussions are online; others are
face to face. Gradually, as students explore these ideas more fully, they come to a broad consensus on
some of the reasons why civilizations fail. This consensus represents the group’s knowledge. The students
arrive at this knowledge through a social process of proposing ideas and then collectively evaluating these
ideas. This process is very similar to the process followed by social scientists who explore similar issues
by writing journals articles, critiquing each others work, and discussing ideas in conferences.
Figure 1.4 presents another example of the use of Knowledge Forum. In this example, 9 and 10-
year olds have explicitly identified new knowledge their class has generated on natural and artificial light
(Zhang, Scardamalia, Lamon, Messina, & Reeve, 2007). In this way, Scardamalia and Bereiter aim to
create communities of students that collectively create knowledge.
Thus, we have seen that learning to collaborate is valuable for two reasons. First, it is valuable in
its own right, because learning to collaborate prepares students to be team members and knowledge
creators in the modern world. Second, it is valuable because collaboration can enhance the learning of
individual students. We will explore collaboration and collaborative learning in Chapter 15 of this text. In
addition, collaborative learning methods will appear in many of the other chapters in this text, as well.