Hope of cooperative learning: intentional talk in Albanian secondary school classrooms

The notion of a knowledge society has led policy-makers and reformers to look for classroom practices that would lead to more productive learning in schools. Modern educational technologies are often thought to transform the traditional presentation-recitation mode of instruction into more participatory learning. This paper assumes that teaching for modern intercultural knowledge societies should rely on multilateral communication, students' ideas and social interaction. Based on observation data from 303 upper secondary school classrooms in randomly selected schools which were analysed using Flanders Interaction Analysis Categories, this study found that these basic conditions for productive teaching, such as cooperative learning were missing in most classrooms. These data suggest that typical secondary school lessons are dominated by teacher talk and that time for student-initiated talk is about 1% of total lesson time. This study also confirmed that classrooms provide a poor psychological and social environment to stimulate student initiation, participation or risk-taking. Therefore, unless the pattern of verbal interactions in classrooms is changed, cooperative learning will have difficulty taking root as part of secondary school culture.