Concepts of Cooperation in the Classroom

Abstract

Until the 1960s, teachers were asked to provide evaluations not only on the learning of traditional subject-matter such as mathematics, reading, and writing but also on questions of character such as obedience and honesty. After the famous 1958 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (Kohlberg 1964, 1970; Schleifer, 1976) ruled that questions of character and morality fell only within the province of parents, teachers and schools were asked to restrict themselves to academic matters. These events were crucial in stimulating Kohlberg and others to find a form of moral education that was nonindoctrinative, promoted reflection about moral issues, and did not lead to traditional forms of evaluation (Kohlberg, 1970; Schleifer and Lebuis, 1991). In 1998, forty years after the Supreme Court decision, teachers are asked once again to provide ratings in their report cards not only on academic issues, but on questions of character and morality. To be sure, they no longer assess behaviours such as \"honesty\" and \"obedience,\" but have substituted more popular behaviour-ratings such as \"cooperation\" and \"expression of feelings.\" When the five-year old granddaughter of the first author brought her report card home to her parents, they found that she had the required ratings on all items except \"cooperation.\" Here, she was judged as \"needing more work\" (the modem qualitative equivalent of a B-). The child's mother wondered what kind of cooperation was lacking, since the child is generally friendly, communicative, and plays well with others. From asking question, she learned that the teacher occasionally formed groups and placed students to work together according to their strengths and weaknesses. Simply put, the little girl did not like working in some of these organised groups, and was fearful because she had been placed with one or two of the ''tough guys'' in the class. This personal incident illustrates a very wide-spread finding-namely, that different perspectives on cooperation in education are often operative, and may, indeed, clash with one another (Daniel and Schleifer, 1996). Children and teachers may use the word \"cooperate\" but mean very different things. Teachers have in mind working in small groups which they organize. Children have been told by their parents to cooperate, meaning \"getting along and not fighting while pia ying.\" The teacher's notion of cooperation is not only different but can be experienced as unwanted, particularly when it is an imposed form of group involvement (Thorkildsen and Jordon, 1996, Daniel and Schleifer, 1996, Feamley-Sander, 1998).