Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge

Bruffee PhD, Professor Kenneth A.

ISBN 10: 0801846420 / ISBN 13: 9780801846427

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801846420
• ISBN 13: 9780801846427
• Binding: Hardcover

About this title

Synopsis

Knowledge has traditionally been understood as cognitive - we gain it by examining the world and taking in the facts. Kenneth Bruffee offers a different model that accounts for new ways of thinking about how we learn and do research, proposing that knowledge is "constructed through negotiation with others" in communities of knowledgeable peers. He argues that this new understanding of learning as an interdependent, collaborative enterprise is a central issue for college and university education today. "Collaborative Learning" discusses fundamental change. Bruffee's premise - that learning occurs among persons, not between persons and things - "overturns traditional notions about the authority of knowledge, the authority of teachers and the very nature of colleges and universities. Bruffee begins by discussing the place of collaborative learning in higher education, explaining what it is, how it works and why. He then examines the implications of the "Kuhnian" understanding of knowledge on which collaborative learning is based, explaining how "nonfoundational social constructionist thought" changes our understanding of education in general. Bruffee argues that changing college and university education depends first on changing how teachers think about knowlege, teaching and learning. He describes the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach - students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers and helping each other with editing and revision. He concludes that this organized practice in working together on intellectual tasks is the best possible preparation for the real world, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence and construct knowledge in ways that academic disciplines and the professions actually do.

Review

"Collaborative Learning is an important book. One of my longstanding complaints has been that most of the theories so widely quoted by scholars today have not been examined in light of their pedagogical implications. Bruffee has done that; we all need to do that."

(Pat Belanoff Journal of Higher Education)