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COLLABORATIVE APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION

A discussion paper by Dr Dave Littlewood

'What is collaborative learning?,' 'Why engage in it?,' and 'What has it got to do with studying philosophy anyway?'. These notes are intended to provide only an initial line of response to these kinds of questions, with the aim of eventually gaining insight into, and developing helpful guidance on, the roles and limits of collaborative approaches in philosophical enquiry. As such, feedback and other forms of interaction are especially welcome - indications as to whether these notes were at all helpful, why or why not, and suggestions as to how they could be improved; clarifications needed, further issues to be addressed and additional points for inclusion, and so on. After all, consistency would seem to require, and other factors seem to recommend that, as we seek to develop a greater understanding of, and a wider range of strategies for, collaborative learning in philosophy, we should seek to do so in and through collaboration with each other.
What is collaborative learning?
The term 'collaborative learning' comes from the educational (or 'learning studies') research literature and, unsurprisingly, it refers to forms of learning in which the learners collaborate with each other: those who engage in it are co-labourers or co-workers in learning - they work, and so learn, together. Related terms, sometimes (confusingly) presented as equivalent, are 'group learning' and 'co-operative learning'.
The ideas at work in the collaborative model of learning are often clarified by means of a contrast with those that inform 'the transmissive model' of learning. (The transmissive model is sometimes said to be 'the traditional model,' and when it is collaborative learning is said to be 'progressive' - but this alternative terminology would seem to be carrying rather a lot of additional, unnecessary and, perhaps, unhelpful baggage.) The contrast is, perhaps, clearest when the pictures are kept simple, for which reason this account will try to avoid some of the complexities. This does not mean that responses should be equally simple; perhaps you might ask yourself:

Does this brief rehearsal of the transmissive model present a more or less familiar picture?

If so, how might you draw on your experiences of education to build on the account provided?

Does the transmissive model actually have a more positive role to play than this kind of (currently orthodox) account suggests - if not as the whole of education, then as a legitimate part of it? (If not, what are university lectures for?)

What collaborative learning is not - a sketch of the transmissive model.
On the transmissive model knowledge or information is pretty much the core theme, and the objectives of educational practice are grasped in terms of the transmission of information from those who have it to those who do not. In a school, for example, this would mean that the teacher transmits and the pupils receive. Individual pupils can then be tested to see whether and what they have learnt: what they have received, stored and can recall, and whether they have understood it. Communication between pupils tends to be strictly limited, often it will be seen as 'messing about' - a needless distraction from learning; under test conditions it is cheating. Further those pupils who seek to challenge the content of the transmitted message, for example, by appeal to personal experience can as a result of this be identified as uncooperative, or worse.

Thus, it is said, the transmissive model of education sponsors an abstract, authoritarian, information-centred and essentially competitive approach to teaching and learning. Further, by assuming that teachers have certain items of knowledge in their possession, and that it is the task of education to 'get these across' to pupils, this perspective is held to buy into a certain kind of position on the character of knowledge, as well as on the kinds of processes that serve education. In particular, it is held to view knowledge as the kind of thing that can appropriately be divided into units, packaged and then delivered, safe and sound, to largely passive recipients.

Is this an accurate portrait of knowledge?

Is this a helpful image of learning?

Is formal education like this?

Should formal education be like this?

Some common themes in ideas of collaborative learning.
Ideas of collaborative learning vary - especially at the level of fine detail. Nonetheless, there are a number of recurrent themes and by noting some of these it is possible to put together a fairly general overview without begging too many questions. The core theme, as already indicated, is that of learning by working together with others, and this is usually understood in terms of groups.
Whereas the transmissive model is associated with passivity of the part of the learners, on the collaborative model learners are understood to be both active and interactive. That is, learning is not envisaged simply as a process of receiving information, but as a process that crucially involves activity on the part of learners, and useful channels for this can be opened through group learners engaging each with other.

Is learning an active process?

What sorts of activities might it involve?

Are interactions among learners likely to enhance any of these?

A second recurrent theme is, perhaps, implicit in the idea of group members as co-workers, it is a tendency to the absence of enduring hierarchical relations among group members. Thus collaborative learning is said to involve 'peer-to-peer interaction' and to be a 'more democratic' approach to learning. Note though, that this does not mean that no member of the group has greater expertise in a given area, nor that all group members always occupy identical or exactly equivalent roles. What it does appear to involve is a recognition that every member of the group has the potential to contribute something to the process, and that group members might find themselves occupying different and complementary roles at various points in the process.

Can you think of characteristic roles that learners might usefully adopt, or even just find themselves in, when working collaboratively?

Are there any such roles that seem especially appropriate to philosophical learning?

Beyond the regular recurrence of both of themes there is considerable diversity in the usage of the term 'collaborative learning,' it means different things to different people. Partly as a result of this, confusion can result from different parties treating different terms as equivalent to, or interchangeable with, 'collaborative learning'. It is, perhaps, more helpful to identify and distinguish some of the different ideas at stake, without championing one kind of usage over the others.
Here, then, within a very broad framework of collaborative learning, we distinguish the following strands of interest a) co-operative learning, b) individual learning, c) group learning and d) learning to be a group.

(a) Co-operative learning.
Taking the two themes identified above to constitute the common ground, co-operative learning is (here said to be) one form that collaborative learning can take. In this form, the group's task or project is divided into independent subtasks and these are then distributed to different members (or subgroups). Absent this specification collaborative learning is understood to involve (ideally) all group members in a concerted engagement with a task or problem. Here the task might yet be complex and participants might still take up different roles, but these will not be such as to warrant the name 'independent subtask'.
Note that a particular collaborative project could easily include co-operative phases without this requiring that the whole project is conducted in this mode. Note also that it is entirely possible that such a project might emerge, for example, from an exchange in which different parties discover that they (already) have understandings of distinct but related issues that are potentially the parts of a bigger picture. In such a case the next phase might be co-operative, perhaps each person gives an initial account of that part of the picture most familiar to them, after which the project might become more generally collaborative, as the group try to see whether and, if so, how the 'pieces' fit together.

(b) Individual learning.
Moving on to a rather different level now, a number of works on collaborative learning place a strong emphasis on individual learning. That is, there are characterisations of collaborative learning in which the practice of working together in groups is addressed and valued primarily or wholly in terms of what the involved individuals learn as result. For example, the Najaden team stipulate that 'collaborative learning' refers to the "acquisition by individuals of knowledge, skills, or attitudes occurring as the result of group interaction," or "individual learning as a result of group process," for short. (Kaye 1992, p.168, and p.4)
While this successfully identifies one important area for attention, the attempt to capture collaborative learning in this way requires that one be prepared to dedicate its use solely to this area. For this reason it seems more appropriate to identify individual learning as one area of interest in and for collaborative learning, while acknowledging that there are, or at least might be, others - which brings us to group learning.

(c) Group learning.
A contrasting, but arguably complementary, strand of interest is sometimes represented by the term 'group learning'. Here this term is reserved for the idea that in some way or another "a set of people" might learn "more than the sum of all their individual learning" - that is, that in some way the group learns, or is a bearer of learning.
The Najaden group's move to dedicate the use of 'collaborative learning' to "individual learning as a result of group process" is advanced via their claim that "only individuals can learn" (Kaye 1992, p.4). Gundry begins to explain the thinking behind this, saying of group learning that "since no-one has identified the mechanism that accommodates this extra learning, it does not seem a helpful concept" (Kaye 1992, p.169).

How strong is this as an objection to the idea of group learning?
How might one begin to distinguish between what (if anything) is learnt by a group and what (if anything) is learnt by its members as individuals?
Do you think that groups can learn? If so, how might you account for it?

(d) Learning to be a group.
The term 'group learning' has a second use within the literature, in which it refers to the "processes by which individuals can learn to be or act as a group". Bannon and Schmidt offer an informal account in which grouphood is said to be manifest among set of people "when the individuals in it perceive themselves as 'we' ". (Gundry 1991, p.169.) Both to distinguish this from the above use, and because it seems so much clearer to put it this way, we refer to this simply as 'learning to be a group'.
To the extent that this idea has import for collaborative learning it indicates a level and a kind of learning, involved in such approaches, which might have considerable bearing on the outcome of any given attempt at collaborative study. Here we would seem to be dealing with the cultivation of a practical grasp of activities and practices which might enable the individuals in a given set of people to work well together and, perhaps, to "perceive themselves as 'we' ".
This allows us to say that co-operative learning is a particular mode within collaborative learning, that 'individual learning' and 'group learning' are terms concerned with the distribution and the 'mechanisms' of learning through collaboration, and that 'learning to be a group' refers to the processes and activities which lead to the emergence of (collaborative) groups.

Why engage in collaborative learning?
The weight of argument and evidence from educational research (or, as it sometimes now called, learning studies) currently supports the fuller adoption and integration of collaborative strategies for learning into the wider curriculum, at all levels. There are two broad and distinct kinds of rationale on offer:

1. collaborative approaches are held to better embody the kinds of activities that are involved in developing a deeper understanding of any given topic, they have value for learning about 'x'
2. collaborative learning is held to foster the development of certain transferable skills and understandings, it promotes personal growth in a range of abilities of general value.

As the authors of the CSALT Networked Learning handbook have noted, for once educationalists and employers hold broadly compatible views about the character and aims of good education. A further point, seemingly worth noting, is that one trait of group discussion manifests in a tendency for the discussion to drift from the more concrete to the more abstract over time. For the purposes of philosophical study this tendency might prove a powerful resource, and this thought, in turn, appears to suggest that working in groups and beginning with actual examples might provide a basis for simultaneous induction into (doing) philosophy and 'learning to be a group'.

Bibliography
CSALT (2001) Effective networked learning in higher education: notes and guidelines. (Lancaster: Centre for Studies in Advanced Learning Technologies web site).
Kaye, A. (1992) (ed.) Collaborative learning through computer conferencing: the Najaden papers. (Berlin: Springer Verlag).