Power and Control: Re-examining the Collaborative Approach to Student Learning

col•lab•o•rate vi [LL collaboratus, pp. of collaborare to work together, fr. L com- + laborare to labor] (1871) 1: to work jointly with others or together esp. in an intellectual endeavor 2: to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and esp. an occupying force 3: to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected — col•lab•o•ra•tion n — col•lab•o•ra•tive adj — col•lab•o•ra•tor n

 As educators in the contemporary classroom, we are still faced with traditional hurdles to student learning such as undermotivation and issues of classroom management. We are also keenly aware of more current issues such as racial and cultural polarization. Once the "infallible masters" whose expectations were the goals for students to reach and whose style and manner were the ideal for students to imitate, we find ourselves facing in the classroom students of different colors, classes, genders, cultures, and languages. As professionals in the field, we must then address certain questions: How do I overcome the hurdles that impede the learning of my students? How can I get students excited about what they are doing? How can I get them to work together? The answers to these questions implicate deep, strong beliefs held within the structure of the American educational establishment. This is so because to break through the barriers mentioned above requires a redistribution of power in the classroom, from a staunch reverence of the teacher's discourse and an atmosphere of competition among students to an environment where the teacher acts as facilitator and students work collaboratively to attain learning objectives.

Inquiring into the relationships among language, ideology, and power, many theorists and teachers contend that the teacher’s authority is the product of the ideology of the dominant class and that the teacher’s discourse is an embodiment of the dominant class’s ideology and its power. Consequently, they advocate transforming the unequal power relations in the classroom by empowering students, that is, by developing a political consciousness in students through dialogic methods. In the traditional classroom, students have a tendency to be turned into "sponges of knowledge" because of the privilege given the teacher’s discourse. In this environment, we can witness the act of teaching becoming a political act. Students are silenced and true dialog and inquiry are stifled. If the classroom is to reflect the American belief that "all men are created equal," then a transformation of the classroom must occur wherein classroom dialog reflects a more equal relationship between teacher and student, leading to a more democratic and emancipatory education. In this refined environment, the teacher’s authority becomes entwined in an approach aimed at the political goal of social justice and equality. A classroom that actively applies collaborative learning to the curriculum aims to provide students with an atmosphere of equality where true inquiry and critical thinking happen through dialog. In its insistence on the teacher playing the role of a facilitator and collaborator in the classroom, collaborative learning not only challenges the traditional assumption of the teacher as the truth-holder and knowledge-transmitter but also attempts to create a condition in the classroom in which the teacher’s authority gives way to the authority of students’ collaborative groups – the community of knowledgeable peers.

One aspect of school generally accepted without thought is the recurring demand that the student ignore those who are around him. Yet except for the first few days of school, a classroom is not an ad hoc gathering of strangers. It is a group whose members have come to know each other quite well, to the point of friendship in many cases. Instead of stifling natural tendencies to socialize by assigning independent tasks, teachers can use student talk to their advantage in the collaborative classroom by constructing tasks requiring group work. Effective use of the collaborative environment means that the teacher constructs projects where students are given assigned individual tasks that contribute to the achievement of the group as a whole, and goals for group work are based on "real life" issues. Jay Halio, in his 1990 article "Team Learning" from Shakespeare Quarterly noted that he incorporated collaborative learning into two different graduate level seminars, and stressed that the success of one group versus the relative failure of another seemed to depend on the students’ belief that what they were doing was worthwhile. For their article "The Power of Collaborative Learning" (1988), Carol Giles observed collaborative efforts at work in Marc VanDover’s classroom. Through her observation, Giles discovered that students react best when given a problem in a realistic context – a "real problem" to solve. Given an opportunity to solve a problem that was relevant to the students inspired them to engage in the process of finding the answer together.

Giles’ observations also revealed that a true collaborative atmosphere is not immediately accomplished – it comes with time. When VanDover’s students came to see that their input meant something and that every person had an effect on the direction of the learning, the collaborative atmosphere blossomed. Once the collaborative atmosphere has been established, benefits become apparent. By providing students with the opportunity to empower themselves, they are allowed to take control of their own learning, thereby making learning more meaningful and effective. Because cooperation is emphasized instead of the more traditional focus on competition among students, as in "The Bell Curve", more students find the motivation to succeed. This is especially encouraging when considering research findings that reveal high achievement in classrooms where collaborative learning is emphasized not only among mainstream students, but among minority students as well (see Coehlo, 1994). School officials interviewed for a 1993 Newsweek article on the effects of team learning also pointed out that their students did just as well on standard tests as students in regular classrooms, but have the advantage of learning to work as a team.

Critics are quick to point out that the collaborative classroom may make students feel better about themselves and result in higher academic achievement for some, but they wonder about the practical applications of such a "team-oriented" atmosphere in a country where a prevalent norm is individual accomplishment. Deference to "equal opportunity" can be seen in the traditional classroom in the form of individual assignments – everyone is given the same assignment and is graded in the same way, which is "equal." However, teachers are not faced with thirty genetically cloned humanoids, and I have not been informed that an aim of pre-college education is to cull "low" students from the college-bound. In each classroom we find instead a number of individuals who do not share the same learning styles or values. The collaborative classroom does not call for an abandonment of individual assignments, as each student will often have to accomplish specific goals, and it provides students with a support network. The support network offers help for those who are less comfortable or familiar with specific tasks, and provides "experts" on those tasks the opportunity to reinforce and strengthen their own learning.

Group communication is a key tool to possess in order to effectively deal with society, and good communication skills are a stepping stone to success. The collaborative classroom is not devoid of its problems, such as refusal of one group member to do his part, but such problems must be dismissed when we are reminded that frequently in group situations throughout life there are those who try to ride the coattails of other group members. The sooner the hard worker learns this fact the better she will be able to effectively deal with it in the future, as collaborative group learning is a mirror for the larger society and an essential lesson for life. The capacity to hold a job involves not only adequate physical capacities (in part the outcome of biological maturation), but also the appropriate intellectual and psychological skills to cope with the demands of work. The requirements of job-holding are multifarious; however, most occupations require, among other things, that individuals take personal responsibility for the completion and quality of their work and individual accountability for its shortcomings, and that they perform their tasks to the best of their ability. The collaborative classroom incorporates group goals whereby team members work interdependently to earn teacher recognition or other forms of success, and requires that group success hinges upon the individual contribution and learning of all members.

Collaborative learning attempts to change the traditional teacher-student relationship in the classroom through polycentralization. In collaborative classrooms, the students study in groups and teachers act as guides rather than policemen or lecturers. Contrary to the old teacher-centered approach, students in the collaborative classroom are actively involved in their own education, no longer competing against one another, but striving to help one another learn. Teachers of the collaborative classroom must relieve themselves of old conceptions of discipline and structure and accept a new academic freedom. In fact, teachers are encouraged to participate in activities with the students, thereby shortening the distance between the teacher’s expectations and students’ academic performance. The collaborative classroom reduces reliance on the teacher’s discourse, transforming the oppressive traditional classroom into a site of struggle for social justice and equality. This transformation establishes greater opportunity for success across all students by offering potential for improvement of academic achievement, social skills, and self-esteem in a non-competitive environment.

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Author's note: Footnotes for this paper did not translate from WORD97 into HTML format.