Should Students Work Together?

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Desiring to be a math teacher next year, I have thought a lot about how I am going to teach. There are a lot of different strategies when it comes to teaching, but what is the best method? I used to always think lectures and note taking was the best for math classes, but now I am questioning this thought. What about the implementation of collaboration?



Small group collaboration is something that a while back would never be considered. Actually, even today there are countries that would never consider teaching with students in small groups. Even I used to think that small groups is nice, but ultimately something that should rarely be used. However, my thoughts on this matter have changed in the past few years. I have realized that teachers may know the material at hand extremely well, but this does not necessitate that they can truly relate the material to every student. Sometimes the best person to help a student understand something is another student. Current students are the ones that are also facing the same material and potential facing the same hurdles in learning. Thus, if one student struggled in learning but finally came to understand the material, then they would be able to really help others that are struggling with the material!

Now one thing that I want to point out is that student collaboration does not always work. Sometimes putting students together who do not understand will produce small benefits. Therefore, teachers must use small groups with discretion. Teachers may use it a lot in their instruction, but they must also know when to not use small group collaboration. To think of it in another way, collaboration is one of the many tools to use for student comprehension, but it is not the only one. Teachers must use multiple strategies to instruct studies, always learning which strategies work best for which classes.