The 2015 UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development is an invitation to make meaningful connections between learning and the development of a sustainable future.

My submission "Cooperation for Life" investigates Cooperative Learning as a pedagogic solution to the student-centred learning (SCL) paradigm promoted by business and governments and its potential impact on community empowerment, citizenship and democracy, specifically in the UK Muslim context.

Signed by 46 Ministers of Education, the Bologna Process 2009 communiqué positions SCL as the key to economic success by providing the skills required in the fluid and decentralised 21st century. According to the OECD, these include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, initiative, self-direction, leadership & responsibility.

The parallel impact on community empowerment, citizenship and democracy are obvious and well-researched. In spite of this, shifting to SCL has been largely ineffective across all phases, as such skills do not fit current assessment tools and because SCL is traditionally perceived as difficult to manage for teachers.

One solution to this conundrum is structural Cooperative Learning, which uses tightly organised and controlled classroom cooperation to secure measurable results through collaboration, non-competitive interdependence, individual accountability, and space to negotiate understanding via enquiry. In relation to low resource learning environments, Cooperative Learning will fuse with any materials available and requires very little teacher training to be effective.

Using UK Muslim pupils as an example, this paper demonstrates how such collaborative classrooms potentially facilitate in-depth discovery and negotiation of identities and cultural values as well as comprehensive, relevant subject knowledge to engage positively and effectively with the wider community using 21c skills.