Finally, and perhaps most importantly, collaborative learning pedagogy undercuts cooperative learning's aim to ensure accountability by encouraging dissent. Collaborative learning assumes that resisting the task, rebelling against the teacher, and questioning each other's views within a group may be inevitable and often necessary aspects of learning. That is, it supposes that, in group work, getting off the track for a while by rebelling against the task or by questioning the question may sometimes be the best way--and perhaps the only way--to do the task well, answer the question, or solve the problem. It also supposes that trying to account for dissent--what may be motivating a group member to dissent against the prevailing opinion--is an especially powerful tool of understanding.
Consistent with this cultivation of dissent, collaborative learning assumes that, relative to the most important questions and problems, the "correctness" of an answer or solution is seldom absolute. What is considered "correct" is more likely to be a matter of the relationship of the answer to a current consensus in the larger disciplinary or cultural group that the teacher belongs to and represents in the classroom. Teachers design collaborative learning tasks specifically, therefore, to make sure that an answer or solution cannot be judged in any absolute way "correct."