Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Reciprocal Learning

Apparently this is one of two main underpins of educator's current fetish with 'cooperative learning'.

The idea boils down to the belief that the act of explaining something to a 'novice' forces the ' expert" to re-evaluate and re-organize their own thoughts, form stronger links with other concepts etc in addition to helping the novice.

Personally, I think the whole thing is a crock - if it were true then I would expect most elementary educators would be experts at teaching elementsry Maths by now - and they are not.

Cooperative learning is being thrown out as an obstacle to my DD receiving individualized differentiated instruction and I am getting really ticked off just thinking about it - [rant off]

One a more rational note. Have any parents here encountered this and what strategies other than pulling out of public education entirely helped you to successfully navigate through these particular foggy and shoal infested waters?

Yes, unfortunately no matter what they call it, "cooperative learning" or " tutoring", it is often treated as a viable option for "differentiation" for gifted pupils. Other threads/posts have discussed that some gifted and/or high achieving children enjoy tutoring others... but it may best be done on a voluntary basis... not as a regular feature of "gifted programming", in which these gifted and/or high achieving pupils are not being exposed to new intellectually/academically challenging material during the regular school day but are essentially treated as slaves, performing the role of tutors for other classmates, without pay.

At one point, effective advocacy resulted in a child receiving other learning activities in the classroom during the regular school day. However, with the widespread acceptance of common core and it's ultimate goal of equal outcomes for all, this has become more difficult.

if I am unclear on a concept then explaining it to a friend can help me clarify my thoughts so I think the idea is not totally without merit.

I don't think that applies to children who understand a maths concept teaching classmates though. I also don't think groupwork in a junior classrooms bears any relation to group work in adult life with the exception of some clubs (the ones that collapse and split regularly).

Agreed on the child versus adult thing - originally the studies were focussed on how masters teach apprentices - a minimum of 14 years old.

I don't see this being feasible for my DD - she is naturally helpful and kids were actively getting turned off her right after her skip because, at an age where age itself has implications for social standing in a school, they could not stomach a kid a year younger 'telling them all about it".

I just don't see this approach providing an optimal learning environment for my DD, at all.

I have encountered in my professional training some studies that showed that if you teach material to someone else, your retention of that material is much better than if you merely study it. (Sorry, I do not have the references handy.)

However: this can't be the only (or principal) strategy employed, because exposure to new material is obviously necessary. It would be a question of proportion. I'd say that occasionally having to present one's knowledge to others solidifies that knowledge-- but it does not facilitate new learning.

I wouldn't want my child working as a tutor daily while s/he should be learning new material, but it could be OK with me if used appropriately.

Like all tools, this one can be used or misused.

I think the teacher needs to realize that your daughter is a student, not a coworker there to lighten her load. I was made to tutor after skipping, and it only served to widen the perceived social gap between me and my classmates from both perspectives. It fed distrust in my teachers, making me feel like a second class citizen, because I plainly saw that they felt my right to learn was considerably lower than that of the other students, and that they had taken zero consideration of the negative social implications for me.

Now, that said, in an environment of like-ability students, I can see there being tremendous value in plenary sessions where students present their research to others, including at the elementary level. I don't think there is enough meat to elementary subjects the way they are usually taught for group discovery to be a meaningful learning method for young gifted learners.

This is how it works with my ds.

There are 5 of them in the same grade and in the same class. They have a morning math class where they work as a group all the time. They may take an old AMC8 test or Mathcounts test and then bounce solutions off each other when they are done.

There is a math contest this weekend and they are all attending. After they complete the test they will get together in a group and go over the whole test with no prompting. We will probably have to pry them away. It works very well.

ETA: When my ds went to the local public school his teachers would use him sometimes as a tutor/mentor to some of the kids until he put a stop to it.

For what it's worth, I learned a lot of math this way.



Wouldn't they be experts at doing elementary math if it were true? And I think most of them actually are probably pretty good at that part, even if their teaching skills are not improving.

I agree that it should not be an obstacle to properly differentiated instruction, though.

I agree that reciprocal learning is a thing. The most extreme example is something I see on a semi-regular basis at work, where someone will be working on something unrelated to anything I'm expert in, come to a dead end, and stop by to bounce ideas off of me... and literally, that's all they're doing, as they have to explain the situation from the ground up. I nod and make "uh-huh" noises, and somewhere in the course of explaining it they come to a conclusion, say, "Cool! Thanks!!" and rush off to fix their problem. Ummm... you're welcome? I've been on the other side of that one-way conversation, too.

Personally, I've never advocated for individualized differentiation for my DD10, primarily because she's such an extrovert, and that approach would be so isolating. My advocacy has always been centered around the notion of getting DD placed in a new group setting with kids more similar in ability level. So if that's an option for you, that's the approach I would take, as it satisfies your concerns, as well as your school's.

If there is no such group, and you're forced into a binary proposition (no differentiation versus individualized differentiation), then my approach would be to:

1) Describe the costs/benefits of no differentiation versus individual learning.
2) Demonstrate how your DD's mastery is at a point where any improvement through teaching would be negligible.

Agreed.

While many parents of gifted or high achieving children may not wish for tutoring/cooperative learning to be the mainstay of a gifted program, and would prefer that gifted and high achieving children receive regular instruction at their challenge level including exposure to new material during the regular school day, unfortunately an increasing number of families are experiencing that under common core, the exposure to new material may be limited for these kids, and not deemed necessary but counterproductive to achieving uniform outcomes.

Sadly, more families are finding their options may be limited to after-schooling to provide their children with some amount of challenge, although this may be at the expense of other activities.