Collaborative learning practices: teacher and student perceived obstacles to effective student collaboration

While the educational literature mentions several obstacles affecting the effectiveness of collaborative learning (CL), they have often been investigated through the perceptions of only one actor, either teachers or students. Therefore, some sources of obstacles that teachers and students encounter may not have been revealed. In our study, we interviewed 19 teachers and 23 students in different disciplines at a pre-service teacher education faculty at a university in Vietnam. 47% of the teachers taught science subjects and 53% taught social subjects. 35% of the students majored in science subjects, 57% in social subjects, and 8% in primary education. With respect to study cohorts, 22% of the students were in…