Applying Spencer Kaga And Collaborative Learning
Spencer Kagan is a well-known author who has studied the application of collaborative learning. This kind of teamwork is different from the way teachers today transfer knowledge in most schools and colleges. In fact, it is a new method of group learning that helps students develop important personal growth skills.
After conducting comprehensive research, Kagan made a proposal for well-known collaborative learning. He organized collaborative methods in a more flexible and efficient way. It helps people learn complex and general topics through dynamic processes. Kagan published an article in Kagan Online Magazine in which he explained this method as like a game that made people learn while entertaining them. Let’s take a closer look at this.
Principles of collaborative learning
When Spencer Kagan designed the structures of his collaborative learning proposal, he thought of four basic principles that we should always keep in mind if we want to implement it. In fact, they are fundamental elements of this type of learning.
- Positive interdependence : This is achieved by fulfilling an obligation to perform individually designated tasks. The whole group must also agree on the answers and methods they want to use to achieve a particular goal.
- Individual Responsibility : The actions of each group member directly affect the group as a whole. This effect can, of course, be positive or negative. Each member is responsible for performing his or her own task in terms of the outcome of the entire group.
- Equal participation : All members of the group should have an equal opportunity to participate in the activity. In this principle, it is really important that the tasks are distributed evenly. One member should not have more jobs than the others.
- Parallel interaction: All participants need to communicate with each other. So they need to share their opinions, share their feelings about the job and make joint decisions. If there is no interaction, the group can break up, which in turn can prevent the goal from being achieved.
Thus, collaborative learning allows students to:
- To develop teamwork skills.
- To improve problem-solving skills.
- To improve the ability to defend a particular perspective.
- To learn to listen to others and respect their ideas as well as to express their own.
Benefits of collaborative learning
Collaborative learning allows the use of different games (structures) to work together in the classroom with certain principles and clear goals. They can all be used in different lessons, such as math or language lessons. This means that collaborative learning can work even for subjects where you least expected it to work.
A very important fact related to collaborative learning is that it can be used to teach a variety of students. Most schools and colleges use a traditional education system that is targeted at only one type of student. What about more creative students? Or students who have difficulty remembering certain information? The structures created by Spencer Kagan are useful in such cases, as they allow learning to be a little more holistic.
The need to introduce collaborative learning
Some teachers may think that teaching based on collaborative learning can be annoying. In reality, however, it involves less preparation and the results are more effective. Although many educational institutions already have a certain method of teaching, we believe it is important to introduce some of Kagan’s structures and encourage educational institutions to experiment with them. That way, they will be able to see for themselves whether it produces good results or not.
As we said earlier, “traditional” education is the most common way in schools, despite its inefficiency. Traditional education does not encourage students to learn, it bores them. It makes the student ask themselves in the middle of the class, “Why are we studying this? What is the purpose of this? ”. In addition, it promotes unhealthy competition between students.
One thing is for sure: by being the best in the whole class, just remembering everything by heart to get the teacher’s attention prevents the development of the skills explained by Kagan. In short, educators should keep in mind that students need to be able to work, progress, learn, and act in as productive a way as they can, and therefore they should use the methods that work best for them.
