Designing and Evaluating Programs for Professional Development

Teachers will need to be engaged in sustained and intensive professional development. Consequently, they must generate strong collegial support systems for their development, and devote substantial time to planning changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment in mathematics. The administrator's role in facilitating teachers designing meaningful experience is critical. Professional development experiences such as the Cooperative Learning Panel Discussion should be supported by administrators. The panel, composed of teachers with varying experiences and comfort levels with using cooperative-learning group instruction in their classrooms, addressed a set of questions to be used in the Cooperative Learning Panel Discussion.

Cooperative Learning Panel Discussion

Questions:

General Myths

How do you respond to the following "myths" related to cooperative learning?

• Schools should emphasize competition and individual learning in school because it's a "dog-eat-dog" world and people will need those skills, primarily, to be successful in the "real-world".
• High-achieving students are penalized by working in heterogenious cooperative learning groups.
• Using cooperative learning groups is simple and most teachers have been doing it for a long time.

Experience

How often would you recommend the use of cooperative learning group instruction? How long does it take to develop a "positive classroom climate"? How do you rationalize the time spent in the first couple of months on emphasizing the development of social/collaborative skills? What kinds of "academic goals" or content topics are appropriate for cooperative learning group instruction?

Nitty Gritty

How would you describe the ways in which you have composed your small groups? How are your students' desks arranged in the classroom? What are the most successful ways that you have structured for positive interdependence?

• How did you decide what roles to use?
• What roles have you used and what was each of their purposes?

What are the most successful ways in which you have structured for individual accountability? How do you structure your reward system within a lesson? How do you handle individual students that are behavior problems and are "bringing the group down"? How do you select social skills for lessons? How do you introduce, reinforce and practice social skills with students? How do you monitor the groups? What types of small group evaluation forms do you use? How would you describe the structure of a "typical" small group cooperative learning lesson? How would you describe your actions and attitudes throughout a "typical" lesson? How are your lessons developmentally sequenced? With which cooperative learning methods are you familiar? How would you compare the varying methods?

Impact

What transfers have you seen children make from cooperative learning lessons in the classroom to the "real-world"? What have parents described as things that the children have transferred to the "home-front"? How does cooperative learning link to other staff development and curriculum development thrusts in which your school and district has been involved?

Professional Development

How do you as a teacher acquire the skills needed for implementing cooperative learning? How would you describe your school-building climate related to cooperative learning? How has your school staff development progressed over the past few years? What type of support group do you have? In what ways have you worked with colleagues? In what ways have parents been involved? What "roadblocks" have you overcome? How do you continue to grow in your facility with cooperative learning group instruction?

Summary

What other information would you like to share related to your experiences? What additional questions do we have from the participants here today? Note: For each of the "categories", questions from the "viewing audience" can be asked.