Collaboration and Teamwork: Peer Interaction in the Classroom

In this chapter, we explore how peer interactions in the classroom have been theorized in educational scholarship until now. We put this into dialogue with discussions of collaborative practices in the theatre to highlight significant corollaries between both the activities and the objectives of having participants interact in this way. To showcase the impact of peer learning, we discuss a few successful instances of collaborative learning in our classrooms. The best learning experiences, we argue, are those which are active and put students at the center of the learning process. Thus, it is vital to provide students with opportunities to work together to discover course content and develop course skills in support of one another.