2. Material and Method
This article reviews surveys about collaborative style of teaching and learning. This paper starts with a brief
history of CL and continues with the definition and concept of the term. It describes the key elements of CL and
presents major benefits thereof. Key issues were identified through review of literature on the CL, through review of
literature on its elements and through review of literature on the benefits of CL.
3. Results
Kenneth Bruffee (1996) stated that the idea of CL was based on the efforts of British teachers and researchers in
the 1950s and 1960s. A teaching physician, M.L.J. Abercrombie found that the medical students who work together
as a group, made faster diagnosis and better judgments than those students working alone. Bruffee first encountered
with the belief of CL when he met the results of a group of researchers who thought that CL stemmed from an attack
against authoritarian teaching styles (p. 85). A decade later, college professors increasingly worried about the
students who had difficulty with the transition into writing at the college-level. Researchers found that the helpseeking
by students was too similar to classroom learning. The students needed a substitute for traditional classroom
learning, not an extension of it (p. 86).
From the socioeconomic aspect, learners require and deserve stimulating, supportive, instructional environments,
attractive subjects, and the opportunity to learn in situations which provide collaboration with peers, teachers, and
the larger world community (Executive Summary, 2008).
Collaborative teaching and learning is a teaching practice that includes groups of students working together to
explore a problem, finish a task or produce a substance (MacGregor, 1990).
What one understands from the term of CL is the social act of learning in which individuals talk with each other.
It is through talking that learning occurs (Gerlach, 1994,).