Our information on the collaborative school comes from participant observation as well as from systematic classroom observations and surveys and interviews with teachers, parents, and students (Baker-Sennett, Matusov, & Rogoff, 1992; Matusov & Rogoff, 2001; Rogoff, 1994; Rogoff, Matusov, & White, 1996). In addition, participants in the collaborative school have described its philosophy and practices in a collaborative volume (Rogoff, Goodman Turkanis, & Bartlett, 2001).
The collaborative school was organized as a parent-teacher co-operative and had functioned as a public school program for 14 years by the time of the study, with 6 or 7 mixed-grade kindergarten through sixth grade classrooms. The program is public, serving the whole school district, and optional, open for families to select. Children represent the range of aptitudes that are usual in classrooms throughout the district.
Learning to work effectively in groups is an explicit part of the collaborative school’s curriculum, as indicated in written philosophy statements. During the schoolday, children usually work in various-size flexible small groups with the teacher and/or parent volunteers, and children sometimes work on their own. They often share decision making on projects with classmates and adults; they contribute to adults’ guidance (conversing openly with teachers and parent volunteers, as well as with each other) and treat other people as a source of help. This school, like the traditional school, had been honored with awards in recent years by the state governor.
Many characteristics of the children were similar across the two schools, including standardized achievement test scores of the children. Ethnicity of the families at both schools was similar -- predominantly European-American, consistent with the Salt Lake City population at the time.