In press for The Clearing House. Copyright 2005 by Kelvin Seifert.

Learning about Peers: A Missed Opportunity for Educational Psychology

By Kelvin Seifert
University of Manitoba

I just love being here, because I have 30 new friends, and it’s never been like that before anywhere at university.
--Sharon, speaking of classmates in her teacher education program

I argue in this paper that Sharon’s experience with her "30 new friends" presents a double opportunity. On the one hand, the experience can help Sharon learn about the social dynamics among future students of her own, even though her students will probably be much younger than she is. But the process also works in reverse: her learning about social dynamics among children and youth can help Sharon understand the complexities of her own current relationships with teacher education classmates. The two-way enhancement will work most effectively if instructors of educational psychology point explicitly to similarities and differences between life in classrooms and life as a teacher education student. Currently, however, this opportunity is often overlooked because of how educational psychology is usually taught in preservice teacher education programs. The opportunity need not be lost, and in fact can be remedied easily because of inherent strengths of psychology in general, including educational psychology in particular.

To make these points, I must go back to Sharon and her new friends, and situate her appraisal among our more general knowledge about relationships among work-related peers, friends, and colleagues. Much of the knowledge, it turns out, comes from educational psychology research, and recognizing this fact will suggest how educational psychology may be relevant not only to classroom teaching itself, but also to developing as a teacher. It will also suggest how modifying the teaching of educational psychology only slightly can demonstrate its dual relevance to students better.

What Are Cohorts in Teacher Education?

Sharon is enrolled in a preservice teacher education program organized around peer cohorts, or groups of students that take most of their courses together. Cohort programs are becoming common in teacher education as a strategy for stimulating students academically and facilitating supportive social ties among them (Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert, in press). As a beneficial side-effect, though not a primary motive, cohorts also make the formal administration of teacher education easier—notably when it comes to arranging class schedules. Although cohorts can vary widely in size, they are usually small enough so that individuals can know (or at least have a passing acquaintance with) all other individuals in the group. Because cohort members take the majority of classes together, they typically end up having much or even all of their free, out-of-class time in common as well. There is usually no written or unwritten rule requiring them to spend the free time together, but it is usually convenient to do so. The net result is considerable social and (potentially) academic contact with the same people across the day and throughout the week. In some cohort programs, in fact, the contact can be virtually continuous. As I note below, the large amount of contact creates issues for program planners, but creates productive opportunities and responsibilities for expanding the curriculum of educational psychology.

Are Cohorts A Good Idea?

Studies of cohorts that solicit students’ opinions have generally found positive reactions like Sharon’s to be common, though not universal—a point to which I will return later (Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert, in press; Seifert & Mandzuk, 2004). This fact, along with a widespread belief among educators that classroom teaching is inherently isolating (Lortie, 1975; Jarzabkowski, 2002), appears to account for the popularity of cohorts. Like a lot of educational initiatives, though, the effects of this one are neither as clear nor as simple as its initial proponents might have hoped or claimed. There is relatively little research directly about cohorts in teacher education, and research about related forms of peer relationships presents a somewhat mixed picture. Consider, for examples, the following four areas of research, each of which is part of or relevant to educational psychology.

Learning Communities The most positive views of professional or peer groups exist in the literature describing learning communities in education—face-to-face groups of educators (like the staff of a single school building) teaching and learning from each other. This literature is intended more to advocate for collaboration among peers than to study and report dispassionately actual effects of collaborative experiences (for example, Bolman & Deal, 1994; Dufour, 2004). It tends as well to have communities of practicing teachers or administrators in mind, not groups of preservice teachers (Carver, 2004; Millinger, 2004). It is also oriented more socially than personally, meaning that it is more about how collaboration benefits a group or benefits educators as a whole, and less about how collaboration affects individuals within a group.

Individual Responses To Professional Collaboration Research focusing on individuals within groups presents a more complicated and cautionary picture. Several authors have noted that individuals’ responses to collaboration are highly diverse, and range from shallow and fleeting to profound and lasting (Hargreaves, 1994; Schamber, 1999). The format of collaboration—how often to meet, where to meet, with whom to meet—is also diverse and has little to do with its success (Lieberman & Miller, 2004). It is even possible to collaborate effectively without any physical presence, as when two teachers share ideas over the internet but never visit each other’s classrooms. The cohorts organized for preservice teacher education can in principle honor such diversity, but there is little research about how much they actually do so.

Cooperative Learning in Elementary Classrooms A mix of optimism and caution is also expressed in the literature about cooperative learning in classrooms, although the ambivalence has different sources. When classroom groups work well, they appear to motivate individual students and to provide them access to additional knowledge and resources (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). But groups can also reproduce many biases of society as a whole—notably about race and gender—within the confines of the small group (Cohen, Brody, & Sapon-Shevin, 2004). If, furthermore, activities are not well-chosen or planned carefully, group work can allow free-loading or to over-specialization (Slavin, 1994). In the first case selected individuals do not work hard enough and get more credit than they deserve, and in the second case individuals essentially work alone and share their thinking only in trivial ways.

Although these research results seem relevant to peer dynamics among adults, there are important cautions about extending them to peer cohorts in teacher education. Cooperative learning in classrooms is usually about small groups constituted for specific projects and for limited periods of time, and the groups are made up of individuals who are (presumably) less mature than teacher education students. In addition, as in the literature about learning communities, it emphasizes the structure and functioning of the group. Research about classroom cooperative groups is about how the diversity in a group can affect overall group functioning, not about how group functioning can affect individuals’ personal development.

Case Studies of Individuals in Professional Groups When the latter, individually oriented perspective is taken, the result is deeply ambivalent and full of caution about peers and their effects. Such is the case, for example, in what we might call the "testimonial" literature in education. An entire genre of books, articles, and stories exists describing individual students’ or teachers’ experiences in coping with and fitting in to the educational system. While many depict the joys of teaching, many others portray a rather dark or negative impression. Using case studies, for example, Evans (2002) describes the never-ending challenges faced by lesbian and gay teachers in working comfortably with colleagues in schools. Marsh (2003) describes detailed cases of the profound impact of race when collaborating with colleagues. Johnson (2000) describes personal difficulties collaborating because of his gender, as a male teaching kindergarten. Working with fellow educators, it seems, is not necessarily easy or satisfying.

Assessments of Cohorts in Teacher Education

Studies that actually focus on peers in teacher education are relatively few, but they echo these cautions. One study, for example, found that cohorts of preservice teachers were bimodal in their relationships, either highly supportive of each other or markedly dysfunctional and critical (Radencich, et al., 1998). In another study, preservice cohorts showed mixed, contradictory attitudes toward each other: individuals did cooperate more than usual, but simultaneously competed more than usual and occasionally even scapegoated individual members or instructors unfairly (Mather & Hanley, 1999).

More thorough and recent research about preservice cohorts in teacher education comes from the series of studies by David Mandzuk, Shelley Hasinoff, and myself (Mandzuk, Hasinoff, & Seifert, in press; Seifert & Mandzuk, in press). In one of these we interviewed a cross-section of individuals at length who were enrolled in a preservice program organized according to cohorts (Seifert & Mandzuk, 2004). Overall, students’ assessments of cohort experiences were consistent with research on peer relationships outside of education. The most important trend was that cohorts did often provide friends, but that they sometimes also posed challenging socially. Most students cited emotional support and social inclusion as a major benefit. As one student in the Seifert & Mandzuk study put it, "I think everyone sort of felt accepted and there was never anyone, if we had group work together, who was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a group’ or didn’t feel like they belonged." Most cohort members valued, either by implication or by explicit statement, the guarantee of connections among peers in a cohort. Some contrasted this security with previous educational insecurities—characterized either by cliques (e.g. in high school) or by anonymous, alienated relationships (in university).

But the students also offered additional opinions that complicated this picture. Cohorts, they said, are not merely positive experiences. A significant minority also reported either major lack of involvement with classmates, or lack of interest in involvement, in spite of how easy cohort organization made such contact. Many did not seem aware of differences in students’ level of involvement with or commitment to each other. Others in the cohorts reported awkwardness about developing friendships selectively; they felt that social invitations had to be offered either to everyone in the cohort or else to no one, to avoid slighting individuals. Still other cohort members reported a proneness of their cohort to mass hysteria about assignments. The ease of communication, it seemed, allowed rumors to spread too easily and to create unnecessary anxiety.

All in all, however, direct assessments of cohorts in teacher education are more positive than negative, though by a narrower margin than meets the eye. Students appreciate the social support provided by cohorts, even though they do not always do so for the intended reasons and even if appreciation is far from uniform. Students do point out persistent interpersonal problems inherent in continual peer contact, but tend to attribute the serious cases to just a few individual cohort members. How accurate these perceptions are remains an unanswered research question. The related (non-teacher education) research on professional and peer relationships, cited earlier, suggests that students’ perceptions are somewhat accurate.

Using Educational Psychology To Understand Cohorts

Although the research just described has implications for the administration of teacher education programs, I have a different reason for reviewing it: to point out that research on peer relationships is a legitimate part of educational psychology and that cohort programs can often illustrate, or at least make meaningful, many aspects of the research. Whether or not the problems of peer relationships can ever be fully "solved," their complexities can and should be understood by teacher education students. Given the prevalence of cohorts in teacher education, furthermore, education students can often use their personal experience to develop such understanding. Educational psychology would seem to be the place for students to do so. Relatively small changes or expansions of the current curriculum can accomplish this goal, whether the changes are made in educational psychology textbooks, in classroom discussions, or both. The result will be a mutual enhancement both of preservice cohort relationships and of the learning of educational psychology.

Four traditional topics are especially good candidates for change and expansion:

1. Cooperative learning among students in small groups. I already summarized this research earlier in this paper. As I pointed out, research on cooperative learning usually ignores teachers’ experiences with professional collaboration, and focuses only on the potential and pitfalls of children working together. For purposes of teaching educational psychology in a cohort teacher education program, this seems unfortunate. More effective would be to point out potential parallels (and differences) between children’s groups and adults’ groups explicitly. While some of the parallels and differences would necessarily be speculative, they can still be useful if made reasonably.

2. Friendship development and peer influences. This topic often is taught in educational psychology courses as part of a chapter or unit on "child development," though sometimes it is coupled with discussions of moral development. Again, however, the focus is on children or youth. What gets overlooked are the issues of friendships and peer relationships among cohort members themselves. These can be discussed in ways that do not violate students’ privacy, but that do connect their lived, vivid social experience (or lack thereof) with the general knowledge offered by educational psychology.

3. Social stereotyping (especially racial and gender biases). As important as this topic is, it often stays at the fringes of educational psychology because of its dual relevance to psychology and sociology—to both the individual and society. As a result, it often turns up in courses with names like "social foundations of education," "school and society," or the like. The psychological part of this topic relates to individuals’ experiences of social bias—precisely the part that may also be experienced in a teacher education cohort. Educational psychology is well positioned to address this potentially personal issue—though again, it can (and must) do so in ways respecting students’ privacy.

4. Communication among students and between teacher and student. This topic is taught most commonly in one of two places in educational psychology. The first place makes it part of classroom management or "discipline"—how to deal with difficult students or difficult behavior. The second treats communication more hopefully, as advice for "creating a positive learning environment" or promoting community in the classroom. The idea is either to reduce conflict (the first perspective) or to prevent it by motivating students (the second perspective). Either way the communication in question is either among students or between the teacher and students; it is rarely about communication among teachers, or even among fellow teacher candidates.

At present, the relevance of these topics to the professional development of students tends to be ignored. The result is a disconnection from students’ lived experience of preservice education that is unfortunate, or even alienating. Ignoring students’ actual experiences with peers sends a message that there is little of importance in the experiences—quite the opposite of what most cohort members believe (Seifert & Mandzuk, 2004; Seifert, 2005). If instructors of educational psychology can take students’ relationships seriously, student cohorts can offer case studies in social relationships useful for understanding not only students’ professional development as teachers, but also the dynamics of relationships among children and youth in classrooms. To ignore this connection is to miss an important teaching opportunity: the immediate, vivid, and personally meaningful "natural experiment" of students’ developing professionalism.

Textbook authors could also reduce the disconnection, of course, by revising their presentations of the relevant topics in educational psychology textbooks. But textbook revisions relatively slow to implement, and instructors may not want to wait for them. Nor do instructors have to, because they are in fact better situated than authors to help their own students understand peer relationships in schools by thinking about their own cohort relationships during teacher education. Instructors are closer than authors to the social settings of their particular students experience—including both the opportunities and constraints of local cohorts, and to both their pleasures and pains. Perhaps, in time, educational psychology textbooks will catch up to these realities and find ways to recognize students’ peer relationships as significant influences on their professional identity. Meanwhile, though, it may be time for instructors to build their own bridges to these realities.

 

References

Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (1994). Becoming a teacher leader: From isolation to collaboration. Newbury Park: Corwin Press.

Carver, C. (2004). A lifeline for new teachers. Educational Leadership, 61(8), 58-61.

Cohen, E., Brody, C., & Sapon-Shevin, M. (2004). Teaching cooperative learning: a challenge for teacher education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Cohen, E. & Goodlad, J. (1994). Designing groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Dufour, R. (2004). What is a "professional learning community"? Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6-12.

Evans, K. (2002). Negotiating the self: Identity, sexuality, and emotion in learning to teach. New York: Routledge Falmer.

Hargraeves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern age. New York: Teachers College Press.

Jarzabkowski, L. (2002). The social dimensions of teacher collegiality. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 3(2), 1-20.

Johnson, R. (2000). Hands off: The disappearance of touch in the care of children. New York: Peter Lang.

Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. (1998). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive and individualistic learning, 5th edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Lieberman, A. & Miller, L. (2004). Teacher leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mandzuk, D., Hasinoff, S., & Seifert, K. (in press). Bridging and bonding in student cohorts: Source of social capital? Canadian Journal of Education, in press.

Marsh, M. (2003). The social fashioning of teacher identities. New York: Peter Lang.

Mather, D. & Hanley, B. (1999). Cohort grouping and preservice teachers' education: Effects on pedagogical development. Canadian Journal of Education, 24(3), 235-250.

Radencich, M., Thompson, T., Anderson, N., Oropallo, K., Fleege, P. Harrison, M. & Hanley, P. (1998). The culture of cohorts: Preservice teacher education teams at a southeastern university in the United States. Journal of Education for Teaching, 24(2), 109-127.

Shamber, S. (1999). Ten practices for undermining the effectiveness of teaming. Middle School Journal, 30(3), 10-14.

Seifert, K. & Mandzuk, D. (in press). Student cohorts in teacher education: Support groups or intellectual communities? Teachers College Record Online, in press.

Slavin, R. (1994). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice, 2nd edition. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.