The New Circles of Learning

In this concise book, David and Roger Johnson and Edythe Johnson Holubec reinforce the cooperative learning theories found in Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom and expand those theories to include the school and school district. Offering a thorough description of cooperative learning and the research behind it, the authors explain how cooperative learning can be implemented in the classroom and why cooperation must pervade schooling at every level.

They discuss not only formal cooperative learning but also informal cooperative learning, cooperative base groups, and cooperative structures. They emphasize that cooperation is more than a seating arrangement, that educators must attend to these essential components:

* Positive interdependence
* Individual accountability/personal responsibility
* Face-to-face promotive interaction
* Interpersonal and small-group skills
* Group processing

Conflict is inevitable in any environment, and the authors provide succinct advice on managing conflict to creative a cooperative environment, structuring academic controversies, teaching procedures and skills, structuring a peacemaking program, teaching negotiation/mediation procedures and skills, and arbitrating as a last resort.

If you want a successful learning community where people support each other's efforts and treat one another with respect, helping students develop their cooperative learning skills should be a key part of your strategy--and with this book you can start doing that.