Interactive groups: a strategy to improve coexistence, participation and learning

Abstract

Interactive groups are a way of classroom work that takes advantage of the benefits of dialogic learning, of interactions between people, and for that, students are grouped heterogeneously under the tutelage of an adult, whose responsibility is to ensure the participation of all its members. It is a performance that is emerging as an evidence of successful inclusive schools turned into learning communities. Its staging requires time to assimilate its principles and therefore the aim of this paper is to present the difficulties as well as the advantages collected from the incipient experience at the Caballero de La Rosa school, in Logroño, La Rioja. The methodology used was participative action research by having a diversity of participant agents: family, teachers and students in two focus groups conducted at the beginning and at the end of the school year 2012/2013. The aim was to contrast the first impressions with those settled after a period of development and thus to obtain results from practice. The results are organized around three areas driven in learning communities: academic, coexistential and participative. It shows that interactive groups have achieved a greater student involvement motivated by its own dynamics. It also shows that family and external agents’ collaboration, as well as the links among them, reverts to learning outcomes and help to improve coexistence. Far from being considered an intrusion, the possibility of counting on more people in the classroom offers new lenses that can provide improvements in the coexistence and give more light to student learning.