When NZ researchers like Dr. Russell Bishop and Dr. John Hattie support cooperative learning as effective teaching, we should pay attention. However, only Kagan ensures equitable outcomes. We can make this claim because Kagan is the only form of cooperative learning that uses the structural approach, thereby ensuring equity. Every student gets approximately the same amount of time or turns when engaged in a Kagan Structure.

Kagan is relevant to the New Zealand setting in that Tuakana Teina and Akō are inherent in many of our structures. With relationship-development also being a priority, Kagan provides teachers with practical strategies to deliver their curriculum using relational pedagogy.

Let’s look at the research by Bishop and Hattie.

Teaching to the North East

In Teaching to the North-East, Dr Russell Bishop et al say effective teacher practice should be a balance of both high quality whānau-like relationships & high quality pedagogy. Kagan helps teachers achieve both. By this they mean teachers need to have the ability to create a relational classroom environment as well as be competent teachers who deliver the curriculum using proven instructional strategies.

How Kagan supports North East teaching

If we first consider how important it is that teachers create whānaungatanga in their room, then Kagan’s approach is one of the few that prioritises this on a daily and weekly basis. If students are to learn from each other, then they need to feel safe to do so, have the will to want to learn from others, and the skills to do so.

Kagan’s classbuilding structures have student interacting with every other student in the room. Although students spend most of their time in teams in the cooperative classroom, it is important that students see themselves as part of a larger supportive group - the class - not just as members of one small team.
Classbuilding lowers the anxiety level in the class, elevates students' self-esteem level, and boosts motivation. Students feel safe asking for help, sharing how much they really know, presenting differing perspective on contentious issues, and testing out fledgling knowledge or language skills.

Ideally, classbuilding structures should be used throughout the day because they are brain-friendly, requiring movement, offer novelty, and develop safety as students get to know each other. These structures can be for both academic and ‘fun’ content so classbuilding is not at the expense of excellence.

Weekly teambuilding activities for fun are also part of a Kagan classroom. Because students sit in teams, we need to be constantly building connections within the team so they develop empathy, kindness and tolerance.

Because we structure and regulate interactions between students with social skills embedded in every structure, they are also learning and applying crucial interpersonal and teamwork skills.

When it comes to claiming we can support teachers with high quality pedagogy, then cooperative learning is the most researched educational intervention of all time - it works!

However, Kagan takes things to a whole new level, because it doesn’t just focus on cooperative learning. Apart from the curriculum content, our 7 keys for Success incorporate every facet of classroom practice:

• Team and pair formation for effective social learning

• Teambuilding - team culture and teamwork skills

• Classbuilding - classroom culture

• Management - behaviour and classroom

• Social and communication skills - interpersonal skills and character education

• Interdependence - learning with and from each other

• Student accountability - everyone participating with support to do so

• Equity - everyone matters, everyone is equal

• High levels of engagement

• Kagan Structures - pair, team and class, sitting, standing, verbal, written and ‘do’, full coverage of interpersonal and academic functions

• Fun - Silly Sports and Goofy Games

Kagan & Visible Learning

Kagan delivers in multiple areas of Hattie’s Zone of Desired Effects, but his research mustn’t include Kagan Cooperative Learning because Jigsaw has an Effect Size of 1.20 yet cooperative learning has an Effect Size of 0.40 (and a weighted mean effect size of 0.53). This doesn’t make sense given that Jigsaw is just one of over 250 Kagan Structures. Read about effect sizes here.

When we look at the detail of his findings, Hattie’s ‘Influence Definition’ of Cooperative Learning is as follows:

“A pedagogical strategy through which two or more learners collaborate to achieve a common goal. Typically, cooperative learning programs seek to foster positive interdependence through face-to-face interactions, to hold individual group members accountable for the collective project, and to develop interpersonal skills among learners. Cooperative learning programs aim to enable learners to engage in more complex subject matter than students would typically be able to master, and such an approach has been recommended for both gifted and remedial learners.” (https://www.visiblelearningmetax.com/influences/view/cooperative_learning)

The research he reviewed shows a huge range of effect sizes from 0.15 to 1.16, and given that Kagan’s approach is far broader than the above definition, incorporating and delivering many other highly effective strategies (as highlighted below), it could conceivably be far closer to 1.16 than 0.40.

NB: Only strategies of 0.40 and above have been highlighted.

Click to download the PDF.

If you’d like to know more, or set up a free Discover Kagan session please feel free to contact us.