Why Collaborate with Students?
Why should educators consider collaborating with students? There are multiple rationales. Collaborating with students (a) facilitates the 21st century goals of education of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity; (b) exemplifies democratic schooling; (c) increases student self determination; (d) has the potential to increase academic and social competence of students and facilitate school reform; and (e) represents an untapped resource in times of limited fiscal and human resources.
There is a theoretical basis for student collaboration. Constructivist theory (Vygotsky, 1987) and cognitive psychology (Palinscar & Brown, 1984) support student collaboration, both noting increased student performance when students scaffold learning for one another through reciprocal teaching and interaction with peers somewhat more masterful in content or procedures. As for research-based rationales, many positive social, communication, and academic achievement outcomes have been reported in the research on peer tutoring, partner learning, reciprocal teaching, and cooperative group learning – four variations of students serving as collaborators in instruction. For example, when students with disabilities have served as reciprocal tutors/tutees, they have shown higher achievement as compared to when they were only recipients of tutoring (Elbaum, Moody, Vaughn, Schumm, & Hughes, 2001). They also experience increased self- esteem as a result of being in the teacher role (Elbaum et al., 2001). Educational researchers have identified one variation of student instructional collaboration - cooperative group learning - as one of the top nine best educational practices correlated with increasing student achievement on standardized tests (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollack, 2001). Additionally, when children serve in teaching roles they increase their own mastery of the content as well as learning valuable communication skills.
Equity in Student Collaboration
With regard to students engaging as instructors of others as members of cooperative groups and as partner learners, it is critical to recognize that any student – a students with learning challenges or special educational needs - can learn to serve as an instructor of others as well as learn as tutees from peers. It is especially important for students who are considered gifted or talented that they serve as tutees, lest they become typecast as tutors only. They can benefit from being tutored and receiving a challenging education filled with diverse activities and opportunities, particularly in cross-aged and cross-grade groupings as occurs in differentiated instructional arrangements during intervention times in schools practicing Response to Intervention (Villa & Thousand, 2011) Tier 1 and Tier 2 differentiation for all students in the school – those who need intensive remediation and those who need exciting extension or enrichment experiences!
Reflecting Upon Your Own Experience as a Student Collaborator
We invite you to reflect on your own personal experience as a youth and student, collaborating with your teachers. To what extent did you participate in experiences that allowed you to take on collaborative instructional, advocacy, and creative decision-making roles? As you take the 14-item Student Collaboration Quiz below, think about how your experiences as a student might have influenced your teaching practices and the collaborative opportunities you make available to students today? How might the collaborative practices suggested in the quiz facilitate student growth in academic, communication, and social/emotional domains? Think about administering this quiz to the students in your school. How do they answer? To what degree are you or your school’s educators currently collaborating with students? What goals might you set to better tap into this readily available and under utilized resource of the students themselves?
To learn more about how to implement the student collaboration strategies discussed in this article and referred to in the quiz, please see the authors’ 2010 book, Collaborating with Students in Instruction and Decision Making: The Untapped Resource.
STUDENT COLLABORATION QUIZ
Directions: Please circle the rating that best fits your own experience as a student.
1. How often were you expected to support the academic and social learning of other students as well as be accountable for your own learning by working in cooperative groups?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
2. Were you, as a student, given the opportunity and training to serve as an instructor for a peer?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
3. Were you, as a student, given the opportunity to receive instruction from a trained peer?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
4. How often were you involved in a discussion of the teaching act with an instructor?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
5. Were you, as a student given the opportunity to co-teach a class with an adult?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
6. How often were you taught creative problem solving strategies and given an opportunity to employ them to solve academic or behavioral challenges?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
7. How often were you asked to evaluate your own learning?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
8. How often were you given the opportunity to assist in determining the educational outcomes for you and your classmates?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
9. How often were you given the opportunity to advocate for the educational interests of a classmate or asked to assist in determining modifications and accommodations to curriculum?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
10. How often were you asked to provide your teachers with feedback as to the effectiveness and appropriateness of their instruction and classroom management?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
11. Were you, as a student, given the opportunity and training to serve as a mediator of conflict between peers?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
12. How often were you, as a student, encouraged to bring a support person to a difficult meeting to provide you with moral support?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
13. How often were you provided the opportunity to lead or facilitate meetings addressing your academic progress and/or future (e.g., Developing Personal Learning Plans, Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences, an IEP meeting)?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
14. How often did you participate as an equal with teachers, administrators, and community members on school committees (e.g., curriculum committee, discipline committee, hiring committee, school board)?
Never Rarely Sometimes Often Very Often
Richard A. Villa, EdD, has worked with thousands of teachers and administrators throughout North America and internationally in developing administrative and instructional support systems for educating all students within general education settings.
Jacqueline S. Thousand, PhD, is a professor in the College of Education at California State University San Marcos, where she co-coordinates the special education professional preparation and master’s programs.
Ann I. Nevin, PhD, is Professor Emerita at Arizona State University and faculty affiliate of Chapman University in Orange, California.
Together they have published several books on inclusive education, differentiated instruction, collaborative planning, and co-teaching. Their latest book is Collaborating with Students in Instruction and Decision Making (Corwin).