Reviewer: George Jacobs

Kagan, Miguel & Kagan, Spencer. 1992. Advanced cooperative learning: Playing with elements. San Juan Capistrano, CA: Kagan Cooperative Learning.

This book builds on the Structural Approach to CL which is associated with the work of Spencer Kagan and his colleagues. Structures are generic, content-free techniques for organizing instruction. Books published by Kagan et al. include a growing number of well over 60 CL structures. Some of the best known are Numbered Heads Together and Think-Pair-Share. (Briefly, in Numbered Heads Together, the teacher asks the class a question, group members put their heads together to come up with an answer and an explanation for that answer, the teacher calls a number, and the student with that number gives and explains their group’s answer. In Think-Pair-Share, the teacher poses a question, each student works alone to think of an answer, students discuss their answers with a partner, and individuals share their pairs’ or partner’s answer with the rest of the class.) And, of course, structures do not have to involve CL. For instance, Whole Class Discussion is a classroom structure in which the teacher poses questions and calls on individual students to give their responses to the class.

Teachers add content to a structure to create an activity. For example, Numbered Heads Together could be combined with mathematics content, social studies content, or any other subject matter content to create classroom activities. In turn, activities are combined to construct lessons and units. One of the key benefits of CL structures is that they are designed to encourage key CL indicators: positive interdependence, individual accountability, and equal participation. (The former two indicators are in everyone’s definition of CL, while equal participation and simultaneous interaction - discussed in chapter 5 - are on the Kagan’s list, but less often on others’. Thus, structures make CL easier to implement; rather than designing an activity from scratch, teachers choose an appropriate structure, plug in the content they want to teach, and they've got a CL component to their lesson.

In "Advanced Cooperative Learning", Kagan and Kagan analyze structures by breaking them down into elements, which they define as "the simplest unit of classroom behavior" (p: 2:1). Elements are composed of Actors, Actions, and sometimes Recipients. Possible actors include individuals, pairs, teams, teachers, and class. Among the many possible actions are check, interview, question, compare, categorize, respond, draw, cheer, rotate, compliment, and read aloud. Possible recipients are teammates, teacher, class, and partner. For example, in the final step of Numbered Heads Together, the member of the group whose number is called by the teacher shares their group’s answer with the whole class. So, the actor is Individual, the action is Share, and the Recipient is the Class. Each structure can be analyzed in this way.

Understanding about elements, according to Kagan and Kagan, enables us to better understand what is happening when we use CL. With this knowledge, we can adapt structures to fit particular situations and goals. For instance, sometimes when I use Think-Pair-Share, I wonder if students are really thinking. So, I add a Write element, and it becomes Think-Write-Pair-Share. Or, if I want to have more student-student interaction and less whole class interaction, I can replace the Share element and insert a Square element, in which two pairs discuss with one another. Of course, when manipulating elements, we need to bear in mind CL principles.

Several of the chapters in the book follow a workbook format with activities and answer keys for readers to check their ability to apply the concepts being described. For instance, in chapter 7 on modifying structures, worksheets - with answer keys - ask readers to substitute, resequence, and insert elements, as well as to modify structures to deal with particular problems. I found the worksheets helpful in checking to see if I was "on the same page" as the authors.

We can also create new structures - chapter 8. For instance, last week I was observing a secondary school literature class in which students were in groups of four divided into pairs. Each pair in the foursome had different questions. They answered their questions and then changed partners and shared their answers with their new partner. So, that CL structure could be called Pair - Switch Partners - Present. Maybe that’s already in someone’s book, and it’s nothing earth-shaking, but it’s nice to give it a name and put it in my tool box of CL structures. Another example of what to me was a new CL structure was one that I saw Spencer Kagan use last April at a conference in Malaysia. Designed to operationalize Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, he calls the structure Team-Pair-Solo. First, students do a task in a group of four, then a similar task in a pair, and finally another similar task alone without help from anyone. The book comes with a set of element cards which we can use to modify and create CL structures.

The book’s final chapter (#9) explains and illustrates how knowledge of elements can be used in lesson planning. A sample science lesson on surface tension is presented and a lesson planning form for creating new lesson is provided. The lesson also highlights the teaching of thinking skills.

I found this book useful in getting me to think more about how I use CL and in encouraging me to be more creative in organizing student-student interaction. The book is called "Advanced Cooperative Learning" because first we need to get comfortable with using CL structures before we start playing with the elements to modify existing structures and create new ones. Also, we need to carefully observe such matters as whether our students feel positively interdependent in their groups, and if they act as though they feel individually accountable for their own learning and participation. Based on our observation and our knowledge of CL principles and of the elements of classroom activity, we can then intervene to improve our implementation of CL.

The book focuses on what teachers do, but I’m sure the authors would agree that students are equally important co-constructors of the classroom environment. I’ve learned a lot about the potential of CL from watching students overcome difficulties which hamper their peer interaction. With this in mind, we should involve students in our lesson planning and thereby acknowledge their crucial role in successful CL.