Program Directory

AEDT 563

Peer Teaching - session 1 - 5/15/2003
Presentation: Educational Groups

 

Goal: Participants will gain a basic understanding of these 3 dynamics common to educational groups and some insight into how to use them in designing and selecting group activities for their students.

Objectives: Participants will be able to …

1. … identify three group dynamics and characteristics of each as presented in this lesson.
2. … analyze accounts of educational group interactions in terms of these dynamics.
3. … describe 3 benefits of collaborative group work skills in adult learners’ lives.
4. … appraise the use of group instruction in the context of EFF Content Standards and Kolb’s cycle of learning, with emphasis on an activity’s likely impact on the learner.
5. … use this knowledge of group dynamics, learning styles, and EFF standards to design a group learning activity.
6. … modify a given group activity to emphasize a particular dynamic

 
Session one will focus on objectives 1-4.

 

• Types of Groups (or Dynamics w/in a Group)
   

  Dynamic	Scope	Application	Key Player	Philosophical Leanings	Irony
  Collaborative	more fundamental and enduring	personal philosophy	Learners (student centered )	Social Constructivism	Collaboration is process oriented, but can be the intended product of a cooperative activity
  Cooperative	more superficial and short-lived	immediate utility	Instructor (teacher centered)	Behaviorism	Cooperation is product oriented, but can be used to practice skills required for collaborative work.
  Competitive	I could not find competition in educational groups directly addressed in the research literature, or even defined, so I'm making up my own way to address it. This homegrown construct makes no attempt at neatly defining this dynamic, but treats it as pure potential, present to some extent in any group activity. I assume that if we make it work for us (in activities like Jeapordy or Grammar Olympics) then hopefully it can't work as hard against us. At present, I see two aspects of competition worthy of consideration: Internal vs. external - competition between members of the same group vs. competition between groups good-natured vs. antagonistic - competition similar to banter between friends vs. competition where rivals have a deeply-felt personal stake in the outcome. Please don't just humor me, but if you seriously believe that you see a legitimate shortcoming in this construct, your input is warmly invited. You need not have a ready-made solution; I'd just like to know is all. Thanks.

  
   
• The most authoratative treatment I've found on the distinction between collaborative and cooperative learning comes from the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research at SOE-UW-Madison (http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/nise/cl1/CL/question/TQ13.htm)
   
 
 
• Why should we even care?
  Group work skills can benefit students:
   
  1. In class- Group work brings multiple backgrounds and resources to bear on the task at hand.
  2. In private life- Interpersonal skills developed or refined in educational groups can be used to become more effective in our private lives.
  3. In public life - Group work skills are increasingly valued in the work force, to the extent that the concept of Adult Literacy is being redifined by the National Institute for Literacy's ABE reform initiative, Equipped for the Future. EFF Content Standards identify 16 skills divided into four categories:
     • communication skills
     • interpersonal skills
     • lifelong learning skills
     • decision-making skills
  
     

   

• Paper on Adapting Kolb's Experietial Learning Cycle to a social constructovist (Vygotsky) perpective.
   
• The author is a practicing adult educator in Scotland. He has recently come to view his prime role as that of helping learners develop what he calls desirable PPC's - Personal and Professional Characteristics. What follows is an excerpt from his paper that describes four learning processes; I inserted the red text to reflect my understanding of how each relates to stages in Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle and the role that stage plays in terms of input and output. The bold-face words appear as such in the original, which has illustrations that may help clarify this point if you choose to pursue it:
   

  From my own engagement in the process as a mature learner, I see the four elements of the Cycle as potentially benefiting from different types of purposeful interpersonal activity.

  • Concrete Exprience (input) When I have an experience of a certain type, it can be enriched as a basis for generalising by other experiences in the same category – which have involved me, or peers, in similar situations.
  Reflective Observation (output) When I have begun to generalise, it is always of great assistance to me to explain my thinking to a listening other, and to hear their comments and reactions – provided I do not have to reach a consensus with them
  Abstract Conceptualization (input) While I can often question myself to good effect in the reflective parts of the Cycle (which I see as the question asking and answer seeking stage), I sometimes miss on an obvious question, which someone else may point out to me
  Active Exprimentation (output) Until I have had considerable experience of “actively experimenting”, I will have no idea of how to approach that task in other than an amateurish way – and I welcomed suggestions from those who had apt suggestions to share with me.


 
 
 
• Webb, N. (1997). Assessing students in small collaborative groups. Theory into Practice, 36/4, 205-213.
   
Purposes of Assessment
(Webb's terminology in the article centered on assessment, but I think these principles can be applied to skill-building activities almost directly, or by analogy.)
 
• measuring individual [unassisted] competence
• measuring [individual] learning from group collaboration
• measuring group productivity
• measuring students' ability to collaborate with others as part of a team

 
Note that there are potential conflicts of interest between individual/group and learning/productivity, many of which center around assessment. We should be clear about what we want students to get out of an activity so we can design it to avoid conflicts where possible and resolve them consistently when they arise despite our efforts.
 
Type of Task
 
• well-defined: very amenable to Cooperative group efforts.
• ill-structured [loosely defined]: requires a Collaborative group dynamic that can shift and flow to suit the most immediate task-at-hand.

 
Group Processes
(emergent in Collaborative groups - good point of departure to anticipate conflicts)
 
• Working together to complete a task or develop new ideas
• Generating and resolving conflict and controversy
• Giving and receiving help
• Equal and active participation of all members of the group
• Social loafing and diffusion of responsiblity
• Division of labor

  Diversity and communication in groups calls for frequent conflict resolution. A marked absence of conflict can indicate either unity of effort or severe dysfuntion. This must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
  Assigning Students to Groups

• Low-achieving students generally learn more in heterogenous groups without diminishing learning of high-achievers.
• Homogenous groups are generally more productive at well-defined tasks.
• This is just one example of conflicting interests (individual learning vs. group productivity) and illustrates the need for us to be clear on an activity's intended purpose.

  Common Application

1. Students work independantly on an abstract or theoretical level (Kolb's Reflective Observation)
2. Work in groups testing/applying the information (Kolb's Active Experimentation)
3. Students return to first task and see their performance change.

   

 

• Bitterman, J. (2000). Learning communities. In Bitterman, J., Marsick, V., & van der Veen, R. (Eds.), From the learning organization to learning communities: Toward a learning society (21-34). Retrieved May 3, 2003, from http://ericacve.org/docs/marsick/marsick1.pdf
   
• Most adult learning communities emerge spontaneously from a mutual interest.
• Involvement in these communities crosses almost every cultural boundary imaginable (race, gender, religion, age ...), & makes conventional points of controversy seem petty compared to the common goal.
• Recognizing and overcoming these differences can be described in terms of disjuncture and reflection, key concepts in Dewey's model of learning.
• Most adults belong to several such communities simultaneously, and these multiple memberships can lead to conflicts about what means to live "a good life" or to "live and let live".
• The American Psychological Society and American Society for Specilists in Group Work have advocated professional standards for group work to objectify the concept and bring it from psychotherapy into the professional arena, but be aware that many of these standards are modified from a counseling perspective and as such may fall short in addressing contemporary concerns around diversity and power differences or helping communities engage in ongoing, critical, productive dialogues on actual needs.