dc.description.abstract |
In international discourse from the turn of this century, special attention has been
drawn to democracy in education, following policy initiatives from the European
Council (2010) and the European Commission (2017) on democratic schooling and
citizenship education. Student collaboration in various forms, which is the focus of
this paper, is a key concept in definitions of democratic teaching approaches, as a
means of learning “in democracy” and “for democracy”. These influences can be
traced in Icelandic curriculum guides from 2011, where democracy and human rights
are listed as one of the six fundamental pillars of education at preschool, primary
and secondary levels. This emphasis on democratic student collaboration is, indeed,
not a new phenomenon. It can be traced to Dewey (1916) or even further back. In
the literature, a distinction has been made between cooperation and collaboration:
On the one hand, formal cooperation, often referred to as thorough planning by the
teacher where group goals and individual accountability are highlighted; on the other
hand, more informal collaboration, rather used as an umbrella phrase for various
forms of students working together. The terms collaboration, coworking and group
work are used alternately, and on an equal basis, in this paper. On this foundation,
it was presumed interesting to investigate student group work in Icelandic schools.
Thus, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the scope and organization of upper
secondary students’ collaboration in the classroom, as well as their attitudes towards
working together.
This study is part of a larger research project: Teaching and Learning in Icelandic
Upper Secondary Schools (students aged 16 to 19), aimed at obtaining a holistic
view of the Icelandic upper secondary school (see Gerdur G. Oskarsdottir et al.,
2018). The data were collected by 15 researchers in nine upper secondary schools
around the country, selected as a stratified sample from a total of 31. Firstly, this
study was based on classroom observations in 130 academic and vocational lessons of
varied length, a total of 167 hours; and secondly, on interviews with 17 student focus
groups, including 56 volunteers, 18 years or older. Data were analyzed in the light of
international policy making on democratic collaborative endeavour.
The results revealed some kinds of collaboration between two or more students in
36% of the lessons observed (47 of 130). The proportion of time for collaboration
(the number of minutes counted) was 17% of the total time observed (28 hours of
167). However, there was a difference among individual schools and school subjects.
In one of the schools, 34% of the total observed lessons was devoted to some kind
of collaboration, but only 3% in another school. Within seven categories of subjects,
group work was most often detected in the mother tongue and foreign languages,
or in over half of the lessons observed in these subjects. No difference was revealed
between beginning and further courses in this respect. The number of students in
classes or arrangement of furniture in classrooms seemed not to have been an issue. Students’ attitudes towards coworking were both positive and negative in individual
focus groups, and therefore their opinions could hardly be linked to individual schools.
Three main concerns were expressed by the students: the arrangement of students
into groups, complaining that the teachers “almost always” decided the members of
each group, too large groups resulting in free riders or freeloaders, and small talk.
Three categories of organization of student collaboration in the classrooms were
analyzed: a) collaboration or formal cooperation organized by the teacher, followed
by students working together on solving an assignment, divided into a few groups
(59% of lessons provided for some kinds of group work); b) collaboration prescribed
by the teacher, but students in individual groups almost immediately distributed the
work among themselves and then worked on it individually (26%); c) optional group
work; that is, the teacher said they could work together if they so preferred (15%).
Further investigation revealed the average size of groups as three to four students.
Usually the students chose the group to join and decided the processing of the work.
Thus, it was rare that the teachers arranged students into groups or decided the
role of individual members of groups, these being characteristic features of formal
cooperation. Free riders seemed to be a problem which was seldom addressed.
Accordingly, it can be concluded that students’ collaboration was not thoroughly
organized, and many students’ negative attitudes towards working together could be
based on that experience. Finally, it is emphasized that fundamental components of
democratic collaboration can only be learned through practice. |