Understanding collaborative work in education and revealling its benefits

Abstract

The paper has the aim of discussing and asserting the importance ofcollaborative activities in schools. It has been based on a wide rangeliterature reviews directed to: a) theorizing about the psychologicalprocesses involved in these activities, guided mainly by Socio-historicpsychology; and b) analyzing the results of different investigations thatfocused on collaborative activities among teachers and students, in order todraw some useful conclusions about the area of education. The review wascarried out with the help of research reports published in books, journals,theses, dissertations and annals of traditional events in Brazil and othercountries. It also includes the results of investigations taken place withinthe research project “Collaborative work in Education: development andbenefits”, coordinated by the author, who has been dedicated to this studyof collaborative work for the last five years. The text is not intendedto constitute to be “state of the art” about the subject. It might evenfail to include findings of investigations considered important by otherresearchers. Due to the extent of the production related to this topic, itscomplete revision would be never-ending. Therefore, the paper presentspieces of works considered to be methodologically sound and theoreticallyrelevant and have been collected with the aim of summarizing andpublicizing, at least in part, the knowledge produced about the importanceof collaborative work in Education.