Paired-Learning for Students and Teachers

A very practical, ‘how to’ classroom management guide for teachers, Paired-Learning for Students and Teachers transforms the old tension between ‘individualized’ and ‘grouping’ approaches to optimizing learning by pairing students in order to  dualize education. 


The book describes the practical aspects of implementing this new paradigm: Each class is broken up into three small collaborative learning groups; groups are composed of 3-5 pairs of students and two adult small group co-facilitators (teacher and an aide, and two pairs of trained community volunteers); students systematically shift who they are paired with every two weeks until everyone in each small collaborative learning group has been paired with every other member of that small group; small groups are mixed over the course of the school year until every student has been paired with every other student in the class; learning activities sequentially rotate through self-study, pair-dialogue, pair-sharing within small group and inter-group sharing.


The approach systematically uses paired-cognition as a pivotal link between individual and socially distributed cognition, reduces every class size/adult-student ratio to 5:1, evenly distributes diverse students with varying skill, knowledge and culture experience among all students through pairing and shifting pairing, provides adult pairs to model and mentor the very skill sets students are to learn, and offers several other new conceptual and schooling/training delivery components (e.g. eight basic and universal dyadic relationship positions that optimize different kinds of learning activities, four basic small group configurations to optimize collaborative learning). 


Integrating and refining earlier paired-learning approaches used in the military, business, K-12 and university settings that showed 20%-100% gains in learning efficiency, Paired-Learning, Pair-Modeling and Pair Mentoring (PALMM) increases students ability to self-regulate, enhances learning effectiveness, and optimizes small group productivity in a manner that reduces unproductive teacher time spent on off-task behaviors and enables concentrated focus on creating curriculum and facilitating optimal learning.