Günter L. Huber

Symposium "Cooperative in-service training for cooperative teaching and learning"

Today, we begin to experience the limitations and the costs of predominantly individuum- centered, competition-oriented social systems. For instance, growing heterogeneity within the social system of classrooms creates problems which teachers on their own are usually unable to resolve. Growing demand for people who are capable to think, to learn, to work in teams is expressed on all levels and in all organizations of modern societies. However, most teachers never experienced group processes during their own training, nothing to say about reflecting these experiences or even systematic training how to diagnose and to regulate ongoing group processes. Unfortunately, the response of pre-service and in-service training follows the traditional routines in the majority of cases: Student teachers and teachers are informed about group processes, conditions and difficulties of cooperation, etc.-- but in the seminar style as usual. Additionally, in in-service training, teachers from a variety of schools come together for these courses in training centers and return to their schools afterwards individually. As individuals their chances to change the existing local system by applying their newly acquired knowledge and skills tend toward zero. This symposium will present two interesting and appealing approaches to change this situation. A group from the University of Seville, Spain, will report about teachers as self-regulated learners in small groups, who assist each other in the process of their professional development. A group from the University of Tübingen, Germany, consisting of teachers and educational scientists, will present an approach to staff-based, interdisciplinary in-service training together with the results of implementing its contents in the participating schools.

Description of the symposium

This symposium will present two approaches to in-service training which respond to a growing demand for teachers as cooperating professionals able to promote their students' team capabilities. One approach describes teachers experiences as self-regulated learners in small groups, who assist each other in the process of their professional development. Of particular interest is the dialectical relation between theoretical knowledge and experiential learning. In a related group of contributions the teachers, who developed the approach, present a school-based preparation program for "fractal" learning situations, which determine inter disciplinary teams on all levels - from staff to students' small groups. Teachers' and students' reactions to six weeks of team teaching and learning according to these preparations are reported. Particular attention is drawn to individually differing responses to the challenges of team situations.

Presenters and presentations:

Carlos Marcelo, Aracelia Estebañez & Pilar Mingorance: Teachers as self-regulated learners in small groups

Jose A. Gonçalves: Teachers' Career and Professional Knowledge

Martin Herold & Birgit Landherr: Staff-based preparation of teachers for interdisciplinary fractal learning situations

Sigrid Nachtmann-Kensche & Susanne Mayer: Teachers' and students' reactions to six weeks of team teaching and learning

Günter L. Huber: The ambiguities of cooperative teaching and learning as challenge and threat


8th International Conference of the "International Study Association on Teacher Thinking", Kiel, 1.-5. Oktober 1997