CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Presenter: Michael Townsend

IS COOPERATIVE LEARNING GOOD FOR GIFTED STUDENTS? WRONG QUESTION!

The social constructivist philosophies that underlie much of today’s pedagogy in classrooms in New Zealand place primacy on “student interaction” in learning. Thus, teachers are encouraged to use collaborative groupings of students working collectively in sharing and building (co-constructing) knowledge. In particular, the use of cooperative learning methods is common in schools. Pragmatically, this inevitably means that gifted students are partnered with classmates who are less academically able for academic tasks. There is ongoing debate among educators, and concern among parents, about the utility of cooperative learning practices for gifted students. However, to ask whether cooperative learning is good or bad for gifted students is to ask the wrong question. This paper attempts to inform the debate by considering what happens during cooperative learning, in particular, the ways in which different cooperative learning structures and theories of learning influence the types of student interactions that are generated. A more differentiated view of the kinds of structures, tasks and interactions involved in cooperative learning is needed before concluding that cooperative learning is, or is not, appropriate for gifted students.