“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller

The ability to collaborate with others in the pursuit of a shared outcome is a desirable skill, if not an essential quality, which schools have a responsibility to foster in their pupils. Not only do collaborative approaches to learning encourage the development of open-mindedness, critical thinking and communication skills, but evidence also shows that collaborative learning has the potential to improve academic learning outcomes.  

Like all classroom strategies, design and delivery is as important as the concept itself. If groups are just placed together with little attention to the nature of the process, then the positive effects will be limited. Often in groups, we experience what is known as the Ringlemann Effect; the phenomena in which each group member believes that every other member is doing the hard work, and therefore nothing is achieved. To help mitigate against this, educational researcher Robert Slavin recommends teachers ensure the presence of two key factors in all collaborative learning experiences: shared goals and individual accountability. Teachers should communicate a common goal at the start of the activity and structure the group to ensure each member has a defined role to play. For example, a teacher may inform the class that one member of each group will feed back at the end of the lesson, but decide which group member that is to be, closer to the time. This way, everyone in the group is fully accountable and, therefore, more likely to be proactive in their engagement with the activity.

This Summer Term at Bedford Girls’ School, teachers are developing strategies which support the effective delivery of collaborative learning within lessons. To help facilitate this, they are working in teams to plan specific activities, observe outcomes and collectively evaluate the impact of these. Deborah Eyre relates this to the idea of ‘structured tinkering’ in which teachers develop their practice in “a systematic way” and therefore “have a greater appreciation of whether the interventions were effective….creating a classroom that is responsive and self-regulating”. This type of reflective practice is essential to ensuring that, while strategies based on research are faithfully adopted, they are also intelligently adapted to meet the specific needs of pupils and the context of the broader learning environment.

With the careful integration of collaborative learning experiences for both pupils and teachers at Bedford Girls’ School, we hope to realise the full potential of this powerful approach to learning as we continue to develop.