Begin with the Teacher

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Begin with the Teacher

• Professional Development for Teacher Learning
  and Cooperative Learning
• Celeste M. Brody

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Understand how teachers learn CL

• Coach
• Assist
• Support
• Teach
• Research with The Teacher

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I am a teacher ..
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Teaching is a relational craft

• Cooperative learning sets the standard for
  relational pedagogy
• CL serves multiple educational goals

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Two element standard for what is essential to
cooperative learning

• Positive interdependence
• Individual accountability
• Tremendous variability in how these are expressed
  in CL

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Cooperative Learning is a System which
Re-structures Classroom and School

• Relationships
• Management
• Teachers Role
• Student Outcomes

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Programs and Approaches in Cooperation that
provide teachers with the community view

• Allow teachers to move more easily into
  cooperative learning
• Sustain cooperative learning efforts

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Understand how Teachers Naturally Adapt
Cooperative Learning

• Within the Framework of their Beliefs

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Teacher Beliefs are Personal Practical Theories
of Teaching

• Authority
• The Nature of Knowledge and Knowing
• The Teachers Role
• Conceptions of Cooperative Learning

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Beliefs about Authority

• Control in the classroom rests solely with the
  teacher?
• Authority is shared with students?
• Authority is co-constructed between students and
  teachers?

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The Nature of Knowledge and Knowing.

• Is knowledge fixed or given?
• Cover curriculum directed through textbooks?
• Is knowledge/knowing is dynamic changing?
• Is knowledge knowing a result of a community of
  co-learners?

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Teachers Role.

• Performer?
• Facilitator?
• Something else?

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Conceptions of cooperative learning

• Is it a technique? Is it a tool?
• Is it a vehicle for problem solving?
• A philosophy?
• Some combination of the above?

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Beliefs.

• Often unconscious
• Guide actions in face of dilemmas
• Change through reflection and professional
  development
• Change through wedge of dissatisfaction

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Listen to your beliefs for making decisions..

• How did you first learn CL?
• What keeps you going with it?
• How have you adapted what you learned?
• Is what you are doing CL?

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Listen to your beliefs for making decisions

• Tasks you assign to CL groups?
• What do you see happening when groups go well?
• Not well?

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Listen to your beliefs for making decisions.

• .A memorable problem with CL that you solved?
• ..Advice to another interested in starting CL?

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Interview a partner.

• Two minutes each..
• How did you first learn cooperative learning?
  What drew you to it?

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Insights?..

• Wedge of Dissatisfaction

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Educational Shift in Beliefs From Transmission to
Transactional Models

• Cooperative learning is best sustained by
  beliefs
• --students are actively involved in learning
• --authority for knowledge is shared
• --teacher is facilitator
• --CL fosters problem-solving

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Build collaborative school cultures with and
through teachers that support the change process
and foster continuous learning

• --Carol Rolheiser Laurie Stevahn, 1998

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Live cooperative learning

• Collaborative planning
• Faculty and Department meetings
• Peer Coaching
• Action Research

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Professional Development for Teachers..

• Experience programs that foster the skills of
  community building
• Stay with an approach for 3-5 years with support

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Professional Development for Teachers

• Introduce new programs
• --How do programs interface?
• --How do beliefs coincide with program?
• --What is the timeline for improving student
  learning?
• --What kind of organization are we creating?

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Approach Teacher Learning from the Heart

• Meaningful and enduring change cannot happen
  without individuals convening in community to
  speak to those potent hopes and concerns that
  live in the center of our hearts and minds.
• -Sam Intrator, Teaching with Fire, 2003

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Teaching is Heart-Work

• Heart-work
• Relationship
• Deep Change
• Cooperation