Week 8: Key terms

Collaborative learning encompasses and synthesises a number of trajectories and principles (already touched on in other modules) which have contributed to an ongoing paradigm shift in approaches to teaching in the last half-century.

Table 1. Comparison of old and new paradigms of teaching

Factor	Old paradigm of teaching	New paradigm of teaching
Knowledge	Transferred from teacher to students	Jointly constructed by students and teachers
Students	Passive vessel to be filled by teacher’s knowledge	Active constructor, discoverer, transformer of own knowledge
Teacher purpose	Classify and sort students	Develop students’ knowledge, skills and attributes
Relationships	Impersonal relationships among students and between teachers and students	Personal transaction among students, and between teachers and students
Way of working	Competitive/individualistic	Collaborative learning in the classroom, and collaborative teams among teachers
Assumption	Any expert can teach	Teaching is complex and requires considerable training

Source: Adapted from Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (1991). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Co.

As you engage with the literature around collaborative learning, you’re likely to find references to other terms, such as cooperative learning, peer learning, group learning activities, peer-to-peer learning, team-based learning, and perhaps even others. There’s quite a lot of arcane academic debate about subtle differences between the meanings of these terms, but much of the time they also seem to be used interchangeably. Which is what we’ve done for this introductory module; you can pursue the terminological nuances as required as your teaching vocation develops in the future.

For present purposes, we’ll take our cue from the video below from Doug Shaw, Director and Founder of What Goes Around Limited, together with this definition from David Boud:

“students learning with and from each other as fellow learners without any implied authority to any individual, based on the tenet that students learn a great deal by explaining their ideas to others and by participating in activities in which they can learn from their peers” (Boud, 2001, p. 3).