Student Learning Communities: A Springboard for Academic and Social-Emotional Development

by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, John T. Almarode

Student learning communities (SLCs) are more than just a different way of doing group work. Like the professional learning communities they resemble, SLCs provide students with a structured way to solve problems, share insight, and help one another continually develop new skills and expertise.

With the right planning and support, dynamic collaborative learning can thrive everywhere. In this book, educators Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Almarode explain how to create and sustain student learning communities by



- Designing group experiences and tasks that encourage dialogue;
- Fostering the relational conditions that advance academic, social, and emotional development;
- Providing explicit instruction on goal setting and opportunities to practice progress monitoring;
- Using thoughtful teaming practices to build cognitive, metacognitive, and emotional regulation skills;
- Teaching students to seek, give, and receive feedback that amplifies their own and others' learning; and
- Developing the specific leadership skills and strategies that promote individual and group success.Examples from face-to-face and virtual K-12 classrooms help to illustrate what SLCs are, and teacher voices testify to what they can achieve.

No more hoping the group work you're assigning will be good enough--or that collaboration will be its own reward. No more crossing your fingers for productive outcomes or struggling to keep order, assess individual student contributions, and ensure fairness. Student Learning Communities shows you how to equip your students with what they need to learn in a way that is truly collective, makes them smarter together than they would be alone, creates a more positive classroom culture, and enables continuous academic and social-emotional growth.

144 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Douglas Fisher, Ph.D., is an educator and Professor of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College.

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Reviews

[Einar Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written for administrators and teachers based in schools but many of the ideas are useful for those of us in informal teaching roles such as community risk reduction. A Student Learning Community, like its cousin the professional learning community, is what group work should be but can’t be without deliberate cognitive and pedagogical infrastructure. As a guest speaker or instructor, I’m not able to provide that infrastructure; however, I can utilize it and reinforce it.

Some nuggets of knowledge that I can apply to my teaching and learning for students of all ages (with page numbers):

Language is how humans think. (11) Adding time during presentations for students to discuss or talk about the information helps them analyze and store information.
Establish the purpose of a presentation “to help students access their background knowledge of learned concepts in order to build schema to support the newly introduced concepts.“ (14) I don’t need to share all the educational objectives of each lesson, but I can motivate learning with a short statement of why I’m presenting the following information to the group.

Failure is underrated. (22) Tasks that offer challenges and lead to deeper learning. I like the authors’ term of “productive failure.” Learn from mistakes, be resilient, and do better.

All learning is emotional. If students encounter embarrassment or fear in a classroom setting, they’ll “learn” how to avoid similar feelings rather than the information. They may tune out or behave in a way to get booted from class. (37-8). If they encounter positive emotions, they’re more likely to remember the information and hunger for more. As guest instructors, we can set the tone for our learning climate and make a difference. If you’re like me, you’ve both succeeded and failed here; I can do better.

We can use our time with students to help them feel safe, supported, and part of a community. (55)

Groups get stronger when they can examine their contributions and the contributions from their teammates. (79) I found this nugget more useful for our CRR Bureau and Agency. A related idea is a few pages later: team members must be able to recognize when they need help and bring that need to the team knowing they will be supported. (99)

Teach with intention. (78)

Feedback is essential. (107)

We can reinforce the 5 Cs of deep collective learning: Critical thinking, creative thinking timer communication, collaboration, and the civic engagement. (116)

Again, the book wasn’t written for us, but there is information we can apply in our roles to improve our CRR efforts.