Any teacher wanting to employ innovative teaching strategies in their classroom will have realised, having encountered numerous unanswered problems, queries and questions, that doing so is not an easy task. They will often have needed to step into the unknown, seize the initiative, and wait to see how their students respond. This book is an illustration of the courage of two teachers who dared to teach their students how to work in teams.
Knowing how to be a team member – how to join forces in pursuit of a common goal – is a basic competence. We all need to learn to cooperate because we all have shared projects. Cooperation is only learned through practice by listening to others, encouraging those with the most difficulties, evaluating all contributions fairly, accepting responsibilities we may not enjoy, and respecting everyone’s differences.
Like a bifocal lens, this book allows us to view a classroom experience in detail and later analyse that experience from the perspective of theoretical reflection. This experience was designed in accordance with democratic and inclusive principles and evaluated in a manner that puts students at the centre of the process. Through a format that combines essay and narrative, we follow the development of a second-grade and a fifth-grade group in primary education and discover with the children how we can all learn to cooperate.
The fragment below exemplifies the book’s excellent combination of essay and narrative. The essay component introduces and contextualizes the main themes. The fragment begins with a discussion of the pedagogical principles of democracy and inclusion in education and continues with a narrative account of the interaction between teacher and children in the second-grade group:
Each chapter also ends with an essay-type commentary. The debate in the above example focuses on the importance of choosing an inclusive, non-selective school on account of the importance of organising and exploiting the heterogeneity teachers find in their classrooms. The fragment also mentions the importance of forming groups as the starting point for teaching children how to work as members of a team.
As we go through the book, the accounts progressively demonstrate the gradual, distinct and unique process the groups of children follow during the school year. In this way we see how the experiences of the two teachers who create the narratives and of their students develop between September and June, when the school year ends. On this journey, ideas with powerful pedagogical significance are presented. These include the notion that cooperation is a cooperative skill that goes beyond didactic strategies, must be practised, and is required as a learning process.
The book deals with a wide range of topics as we are put in the shoes of the teachers with their respective narratives. These topics include the process involved in constructing the reflective, evolving teacher who constantly has to face the challenges of education – which range from the ongoing difficulties of their sociocultural reality and the continuous renovation of the institution alongside their colleagues (at meetings and in coordination sessions, etc.) to their activities in the classroom with their students. This process also concerns the inquiring teacher who wishes to progress, anticipate future challenges, and adapt to unforeseen and ongoing changes to their environment and profession. Constructing professional reflection from experience and practice and reaching a critical level of social thinking are much-needed tasks our teachers always bear in mind.
I would now like to highlight the importance of the teaching and learning process becoming a participatory space for children. A team is built if its members are involved in its construction. Each member should develop a unique construction process, so cooperation within a team is constructed via communication between its members aimed at achieving a common goal. The fragment below illustrates how cooperation is understood as a communicative competence that develops throughout the process to become a complex skill in which any conflicts that arise represent opportunities that enable team members to mature:
The narrative then describes how some children failed to listen as they attempted to impose their will on the others in an environment marked by resignation, disdain, lies and cheating. This scene demonstrates that communication involves conflict and that those who work together often have different opinions. Knowing how to manage conflict is therefore a common requirement when one works as part of a team. Other scenes in the book present further topics of great interest in the educational and social context.
In short,