Beaut Ideas - Group work for senior students: some guidelines

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Group work for senior students: some guidelines

Paul Dobber currently teaches at Claremont College and is a former state moderator for English. During moderation, teachers raised concerns that students tend to engage in group work without a very explicit understanding of the process. Paul prepared this resource for teachers and students to help address the problem.

A WORD TO TEACHERS

The focus of the reading that I’ve done and the courses that I’ve been to regarding group work has been on the teacher (how to ‘plan’ group work, how to make group work ‘work’ and so on) but if we are going to assess group work, in all fairness we should first teach group work.

One of the differences between group work at primary and junior high school levels and the group work we do at senior secondary level is that at senior secondary level we are not so much focussed on teaching the individual micro-skills, but in teaching students how to manage the process(es). We are no longer as much concentrated on teaching turn taking and ‘no put downs’ as we are in teaching students how to use group work to achieve their learning goals.

The goal is that our students, certainly the more capable ones, have a reasonable understanding of the group work process, as process. We are asked not only to teach through group work, but to teach group work. This also means that any necessary teaching of the micro-skills of group work that we undertake is done in the context of their importance to the whole process and this relationship is made explicit.

At senior secondary level, students need to have an explicit knowledge of the more significant aspects of achieving a cooperative task. How can we expect them to improve in their cooperative learning skills if we do not teach them what they are? Because group work is carried out in such a wide variety of contexts, however, tasks vary widely and their component skills defy any neat listing and categorisation.

This all seems uncontroversial enough. As a tentative start, let me suggest what follows.

FOR STUDENTS

Almost every course you study involves group work. In almost every course you study, your teacher assesses your group work skills.

That almost certainly raises some questions.

Why is there such a focus on group work?
What are these group work skills, and how can I work on them?
Isn’t group work unfair? Students sometimes say:
- A whole-of-group mark advantages the lazy and disadvantages the hard-working.
- Sometimes one person not cooperating can destroy the whole task.
- The capable students do all the work.
- What can I do if the others in my group will not work, or do not take the task seriously?
- My teacher gets us to write journals about what we do in group work. I know that not everybody in my group is honest in what they write about themselves and about me.

Let’s take a look at these questions and some of the underlying issues as well.

Why is there this emphasis on group work?

In very many workplaces group work is how they carry on their business. A group of carpenters building a house, a team of engineers designing a building, a number of nurses working on a ward, a group or workmen sealing roads and filling potholes, the teachers teaching English in a school – they all need to work together as a group. In meetings of employers with people who write syllabuses, the employers always emphasise that they want the people they hire to be able to work as part of a team. You’ve seen what a problem it is if somebody doesn’t cooperate in a group task at school. When this happens in the world of work, employers lose money. Sometimes lots of it.

What makes group work ‘work’?

Firstly I’ll look at the stages of a group work task and then I’ll look at the skills.

The five stages flow

Pretty obviously the sorts of tasks that could come under the heading of group work are almost endless. So there is no perfect model that suits every case. However, let’s look at it like this. If your teacher assigns group work, then you will most likely need to work through the following stages. I have put a little comment and explanation next to each stage. (Why I called it a ‘flow’ will come later!)

1. Goals

Typical tasks

I have called this a Five Stages Flow because it moves from stages 1 to 5, but sometimes things may flow backwards. For example, in deciding on roles (stage 2), you may find that nobody in your group has some skill that happens to be essential to the task. You then need to go back to your teacher and negotiate on the task (stage 1). However the most obvious case where the flow gets turbulent is with stages 3 and 4, that are obviously done together.

It is crucial to understand what the word ‘leader’ means in group work. Yes, one of the members will need to ensure that as you pass through each stage, all the essential things have been done. However it is the responsibility of the group to see that the task gets done. A group cannot give away that responsibility and hand it over to a leader. The leader is the person in the group whose role is to alert the group if some important step has been forgotten. It is the job of the whole group to make sure that that important step actually gets done.

In education we deal with two related things, process and product. For example, it is important that students know how to add up (process) and that when they do add numbers up, they get the right answer (product). Both are important. In Food, it may be important that a student knows how to plan and prepare a meal. This can be assessed by observing the process (the teacher takes note of how the student went about preparing and cooking the meal) and by looking at the product (the teacher marks the actual meal that is cooked).

Group work is a process and not a product. So it is possible to assess a student highly on group work even if the task that the group attempted to perform was a flop.

Nevertheless the quality of the group work can be reflected in the quality of the product, just as you can get some idea of the quality of the cooking and preparation skills of a student from the quality of the meal actually cooked. That is why teachers look at the finished product as well as the actual group work.

This might be a good time to look at some of the fairness/unfairness issues raised earlier.

First, you need to remember that final assessment on the group-work criterion is done over a wide range of tasks performed over a significant period of time. Many teachers may make notes on individual students, or give marks on individual tasks. However, they take an over-view when writing reports and doing an end-of-year assessment.

Second, if your group’s task flops, it does not necessarily mean that everyone’s group work skills were bad. Remember that a process and not a product is being assessed.

Third. Ask for help from your teacher whenever something arises that is beyond the abilities of your group to solve. (This is the most often broken rule of group work, believe it or not.) But think about it, what else could you do? what else could your teacher expect you to do? If your group task crashes, then your teacher will help you look at the group work you did prior to the crash and see what can be learnt and what can be done now.

Fourth. Your teacher will use a variety of methods to assess group work. S/he will walk around, keep eyes and ears open (teachers are experts at sensing what is going on in a class and in reading body language). Teachers will read the logs (if done) of all the members of all the groups. Teachers will look at all the presentations and performances. Teachers overhear the interactions as students work together in class. All these things add together to paint the final picture.

Fifth. It is your responsibility to explain the situation if you feel the teacher has not understood the realities of some situation. If you really believe that the teacher was unaware of something that excused what you feared seemed a dismal effort, then you need to explain it, in just the same way that you would explain a late assignment if you had been ill.

Sixth. A most important one. Ask yourself when a problem is happening in group work, or even if you can foresee a problem happening: "What can we/I do to solve or work around this problem?" Put the problem to the group or get one of the other group members to put it to the group. If you have a student in your group who is reluctant to participate and you or your group manages to encourage the student to cooperate, to negotiate with that student and solve the problem, then this surely is an example of outstanding group work skills on your part. (Provided that the method used isn’t you and your big mate Bruiser talking to them behind the toilets at lunch time!)

Obviously there cannot be a complete list. However I have singled out some of the skills and accompanied them with comments. One of the things to be borne in mind is that often English teachers ask students to discuss in groups. Therefore many of the skills I mention here focus on aspects of group discussion. (The skills are mentioned in no particular order.)

Psychologists in studying group work have looked at four phases. (These are not the same sort of things as the five planning and organising stages I listed earlier.) These are four phases that groups go through (if they work together for a while – it probably won’t happen in a single lesson of English). I put them here so that they will not come as a surprise if they happen to your group.

Norming (‘norm’ here means ‘rule’) – setting up the rules, roles, procedures, pecking order, typical interactions and ways of behaving to each other (e.g. who is the ‘clown’ and the ‘guru’ etc)

Storming when things get difficult and people find it hard to subordinate their own needs to group needs

Performing the group comes through the storming (assuming it hasn’t blown itself apart) and operates as a team.

The challenge, if you find your group is in the ‘storming’ phase, is to work together with whatever and whomever you can to move the group into the ‘performing’ phase. That’s the real group work skill.

So, group work is a very important skill in the workplace and in life (think of families – the fundamental group).

Finally, just think of the impression it would make on your skills and your results if you could honestly write in a reflective journal about how you had singled out these and these particular group work skills to be worked on this time, how you had used those particular skills, and what the results were. Your teacher just couldn’t help being not only impressed, but thrilled. And that won’t harm your results!