Working with Students Who Have a Hard Time Collaborating

You already know collaboration is essential to today's classroom -- especially in the age of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills Framework (P21). Students who truly collaborate construct knowledge together. When we ask students to collaborate, we’re asking them to take responsibility for their learning.

Okay. You get it. Collaboration's important. But how do you motivate productive collaboration within your classroom? First, figure out what's going on with the uncollaborative student.

There are any number of reasons a student may not like to collaborate:

• Collaboration may clash with her culture.
• He simply may not understand the project or assignment.
• She may be shy or introverted.

Cultural Differences

David A. Kolb -- he of the Learning Style Inventory -- and Simy Joy researched culturally divergent learning styles in 2009, concluding, "Culture has a significant effect in deciding a person's preference for abstract conceptualization versus concrete experience." Typically, students who learn via abstract conceptualization prefer solo work, while students who favor concrete experience enjoy working with others. Also, some students may be uncomfortable working closely with students of another sex or ethnicity (or a host of other potential "others"). Certainly, discrimination is not okay and has no place in the classroom. Instead, model inclusive behavior, create a classroom safe for learning, and immediately address issues.

"I Don't Understand"

This plea (or complaint) is as enigmatic as the Bermuda Triangle. First, ensure that your student isn't manifesting a learning disability. Then ascertain if the student's home language is the same one you're using in the classroom. With those two hurdles out of the way, you can begin to solve the confusion puzzle. Confusion can take many forms. Suzanne Plaut has classified these forms into four "facets of confusion:" nature, types, causes, and responses to confusion. Wow. Plaut's research led her to five conclusions:

• Cues that students send unawares
• Signals they send intentionally
• Their written work
• Their thoughts

Create a classroom wherein students are confident enough to express their confusion, and you are bold enough to explore their confusion.

Shy versus Introverted

I’ll bet you read this phrase at the beginning of the post and thought, "Aren't shyness and introversion the same thing?" Well, no. As succinctly defined by Susan Cain, "Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating." But, she adds, "You can also, of course, be both shy and an introvert." Because a shy student worries about embarrassment -- desperate, life-ending embarrassment -- establishing a classroom environment that safely encourages student interconnections may actually help that student perform socially. You can approach introversion similarly:

Indeed, the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota has practical advice for all the students in your classroom, not just the introverted ones.

Teachers already understand that they cannot just throw a bunch of students together and expect magic. Rather, a teacher must know his or her students well enough to understand the ways in which collaboration might be a struggle. And, as effective collaboration is a skill students must learn, the teacher has to work to ensure the time students spend together benefits each and every one of them.