Brittany’s blog, “No Talking to Your Neighbour!”, raises some very important issues regarding how we perceive learning as a social process.

Learning does not happen in isolation. Humans are social beings, and learn in such settings. Not allowing students to collaborate with their peers, ask one another questions, or to communicate with others beyond the four walls of their classroom does not make teachers facilitators of learning. This is a part of my philosophy and I feel very strongly about it.

 Many teachers do not plan for much group work because it is ‘too loud’ or it presents an opportunity for their to be conflict between students. 

I agree that when you put students in close contact with one another there will likely be more conflict than if they must sit and work independently without interaction. By not encouraging and facilitating collaboration, what is this teaching our students?  Does working in isolation teach them the skills of how to interact and deal with conflict if it arises? No it doesn’t.  Should teachers no longer facilitate group work if conflict does arise? I believe they should address the issues, teach problem solving solutions (giving the students the power to resolve it) and try again. Cooperative learning is not only a valuable learning tool, but can also be an opportunity to teach students life skills.

So there is the issue of potential conflict when it comes to cooperative learning, but another issue is noise level. When students express their knowledge/views and when their voices are heard, it can get loud. But how ‘loud’ is ‘loud’? Every teacher has their own interpretation of what is an acceptable noise level. My view is that as long as students are on task, use ‘undoor voices’ and don’t distract other classes, their discussions are acceptable. As I shared through a comment on Brittany’s blog, I have experienced conflict regarding this issue. My coop’s perception of what was loud was significantly different than mine, and as a result of me planning and facilitating many cooperative learning projects for our students, needless to say this did not make her happy. I was tremendously discouraged to practice group work, but because of my teaching philosophy and practices drilled into my in university, I stuck to what I believed in-That learning is a social process, and that cooperative learning is an essential part of socialization and in creating a successful community of learners.