In Teacher
Proof, by Tom Bennett, group work is characterised as voodoo teaching: an approach to learning advocated by armchair
educationists, based on theory and evidenced by proxy measurements, while from
a teacher perspective there are a considerable number of disadvantages for
example, inactivity (disguised), unequal participation and too much social chat.
Don’t these behaviours occur whatever pedagogy a
teacher uses for imparting knowledge?
When
the aim is to improve teaching and learning oppositional conversations are not
helpful. If teachers could be convinced of the value of group work then the
disadvantages might morph into barriers to be overcome. However, two
misconceptions need to be dismissed at the outset. Firstly, learning is not
about accumulating factual knowledge and being able to recall it; understanding
the knowledge and making conceptual connections are the key indicators of knowledge
acquisition. Secondly, the idea of group work is not that students teach each
other. The value of inter student interaction lies in the process od developing
their learning of a topic through verbalising their current level of understanding while communicating it to other
members of the group, and by assessing and/or developing the ideas of their
peers. With a 1/30 teacher/student ratio it would not be possible for the
teacher to undertake this process with every student. However, the teacher’s expert knowledge is
not wasted, she/he can correct any misunderstandings that persist at group
level.
Hard
to learn stuff is cognitively and emotionally painful so there is value in
easing the emotional strain. In the UK
we have just witnessed the annual duel between the Oxford and Cambridge
university boat crews. Although both Oxford teams won easily (for the first
time female crews competed on the same course on the same day, albeit not at
the same time) it hasn’t always been the case. The media spend a great deal of
time describing the commitment and explaining the endurance required by rowers.
In 2007 when the Oxford male crew were not doing so well research was carried
out that involved comparing threshold for pain when elite rowers trained
individually compared with training together in a virtual boat when the
physical effort involved was done collectively [1]. Physical
effort is known to stimulate endorphin (opioid) release and it has been shown in
other studies that high opiate activity is specific to the areas of the brain
associated with mood. Could this finding be translated to a group learning
context? Does working on a task collectively provide a more conducive emotional
climate for the learning? Is the mood of students enhanced in a way that helps
them to tackle the painful business of learning? The unknown is whether
collective action without physical exertion is sufficient to achieve a positive
effect on mood. I propose that it is a sufficiently important area of inquiry
for encouraging further research and encouraging teachers to persevere with group
work.
Teachers’
experience of group work in practice is that it can lead to a loss of control
and increased disruption. Provided that a school has the technological infrastructure
to support forums group work could be done online i.e. mediated by a digital
device and associated software. Students would know that the teacher could be
monitoring their interactions without being physically co-present in either
time or space and that a persistent record of their conversations is available.
That should wrest some control back to the teacher.
1. Cohen, E.E.A., et al., Rowers' high: behavioral synchrony is
correlated with elevated pain thresholds. Biology letters, 2009. Evolutionary biology.
