Cooperative Learning and the Kopp

Liverpool Football Club was founded in 1892, since then it has never been the world's most dominant footballing power. Even at the height of it's dominance in the age of the great Bill Shankly, there were other clubs and bigger names that were on the tips of footballing fans everywhere. There is, however, one thing that Liverpool is known for far and wide - the song, "You'll Never Walk Alone", but we'll come back to that a little bit later. For now, let's look at the real focus of this blog post, Cooperative Learning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV5_LQArLa0

Cooperative Learning was most famously written about by Johnson and Johnson. David and Roger helped further the work of previous theorists that essentially came to the same conclusion, a group of students working together can better accomplish a task than by working separately. From an outside prospective, this makes a considerable amount of sense, but if you've ever been forced into a group project, you'll know that there are drawbacks. I will go ahead and make the assumption that you are familiar with Johnson and Johnson's five elements of Cooperative Learning so let's look at the pros and cons of the topic, by jumping back to Liverpool Football club.

There are a number of matches that are listed when one is asked to name the greatest comeback in football history: Bayern/Manchester, Blackpool/Bolton, etc. But you can't complete that list without discussing the 2005 Champions League Final. AC Milan was stacked with one of the greatest sides known to footballing history, they had Pirlo, Maldini, Crespo, etc. Whereas Liverpool were sitting with only relatively well-known name, Steven Gerrard. However, the team had made it to the final on that exact weakness, there were no stars to be found, but Gerrard, instead all they were left with was a team. A relatively slow, but strong defensive line was paired with quick, but weak wing play. Luis Garcia's lack of height was compensated for by Jaime Carragher's towering presence on corner kicks. They were a unit, one that lacked the skill of some of the individuals on the Italian side, but a unit nonetheless. In the end, however, they were a unit that was down 3-0 at the half to one of the greatest sides in history. Silence permeated the locker room, it was over, their dreams were crushed, there was simply no coming back from this far down - but then they heard it. Drifting into the locker room from the stadium came the Liverpool faithful, often called the Kopp were singing Liverpool's hymn, "You'll Never Walk Alone". The team had forgotten to use the skills of its final member - their fans. The players knew they had to respond and make their final teammate proud - and respond they did. In the end, I won't spoil it for you, feel free to look up for yourself what happened on that fateful night in Istanbul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h390K9Fkh8g

What does ANY of that have to do with Cooperative Learning? Put very simply, the largest positive of Cooperative Learning is that it allows students to use their strengths while having some of their weaknesses covered by others. This should ideally lead to the best possible results for all. This is just like a sports team where we cover for each other's mistakes. When we as teachers create groups we must carefully consider the skills of the students we are grouping together. Strengths and weaknesses can be assessed without labelling students - allowing the only labels placed on students to be the self-created group roles. This allows students to keep straight who is doing what within the group. From an educator's perspective I love group work. It really does produce better results than students working on their own, but I will say as a student I'm not AS in love with group work, I'll let you know why to finish off today's blog.

Now that I've had a chance to talk about Liverpool Football Club and gush about Cooperative Learning, let me get into why some group work can become a pain as we begin to scale the educational ladder. I worked in a school that used the Gomez and Gomez, Dual Language model. In the DL Model there was a considerable amount of time spent planning seating arrangements to ensure quality groupings of students. This worked incredibly well in class, as students who were weaker in math received help from peers, while being able to help their peers in reading later in the day. The problem becomes apparent when this is taken up the educational scale to College. Cooperative Learning, in my humble opinion, is best done in class. Outside of school hours, group work can results in frustration due to differing work hours, differing ideas about where a project should go, etc. This is compounded when the education is now being paid out of pocket, as opposed to being paid for by property taxes. Suddenly, you are considerably less comfortable conceding a point about an assignment when, if you fail, it may mean paying for the same class again next semester.

So, what's the deal then? Like with everything, teachers must consider the context in which they use certain curricular methods. Nothing is perfect, there's no one quick fix, but Cooperative Learning is another great tool in our teaching utility belt.