After reading this article I found many new insights on what group work entails and the different problems that may arise from having students work in groups. Out of the entire article-the most interesting thing that I thought of this article was the way that students were treating each other and acting when they were put into small groups. Reading about the student named Anna had to deal with seemed very upsetting to me and I feel that it is the teachers as well as the students responsibility to make the classroom seem like a community where everyone gets along and works together. Further down the article I came across a quote that I felt was very fitting for how I am feeling about group work upon reading the beginning of the article. “Small task groups tend to develop hierarchies where some members are more active and influential than others. This is a status ordering-an agreed-upon social ranking where everyone feels it is better to have a high rank within the status order than a low rank. Group members who have high rank are seen as more competent and as having done more to guide and lead the group” (The Dilemma of Group Work, page 27.) This blog is interesting to me because it explains why group work can go wrong when the classroom and students have little positive experience with working in small groups and developing hierarchies needs to be leveled down to developing more equal task work where all students feel comfortable contributing to the group. The group members that are scene as having a hiring rank and being more competent need to be leveled out and even give them a chance to ‘help’ the others, giving them more of a job type role verses just feeling like they are above the other students because they have more knowledge. This can be very troubling for the student (s) on the lower end of the hierarchy because they can feel like they are not good enough or the others in the group do not want their opinion so they shut down- which is never something that a student should be feeling or should happen while in school.
From this quote- in my classroom treating small group work in a status ordering rank is not what I want. This has helped me realize that I want my classroom to be a total community and for all students to feel comfortable when they have to break off into groups and work. I never want a student to feel like Anna or the two African-American students who were not given much chance to talk because they were the minority of the classroom. I want the total opposite of that and know that I will achieve it because I have been in Anna’s and the two African-American positions before and it was not fun and it made me not like working in groups and therefore my school work suffered. All around students need to be happy and willing to participate when given the chance.
Candice, I completely agree with your comments about the hierarchy and students overpowering others. While reading your post, it immediately brought me back to TE 401 as we discussed literacy circles. In order to better eliminate the problems that can come with stronger students overpowering lower level learners, everyone is assigned a task. The different task allow for all of the students to feel needed and they also give everyone a purpose in a group. For those that may not be the most outspoken, they can be the recorder or timer. For others that may be a bit loud, they can be the discussion director, making sure that everyone stays on task. In theory, it would be great to assign roles or jobs to small groups in math to help to eliminate anyone feeling overshadowed. However, sometimes it feels like the inevitable. I think that it is important to set up rules and guidelines during small group activities to eliminate the struggles that different leveled learners face.
ReplyDeleteIt is very difficult as a new teacher to decide what we will do in our own classrooms. Reading all of the articles and seeing first hand the struggles that different learners face is difficult. I think that regardless what we do in our classroom, there is no real way to have task that support each learner. I think that the best thing we can do is become that support as a teacher.
Candice,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great blog and was incredibly enlightening. It is difficult to assess which learners will work well with each other and make sure that the same students do not take over in class discussion. I remember reading in Math last year how to create roles in a classroom and how to constantly rotate these roles. Although it is much more difficult for a teacher to establish I haven't realized how crucial it actually is until now. It is so true that leaders will constantly be leaders and be at the top of the hierarchy while other students will constantly be on the bottom of that same hierarchy. As a teacher it is important understand that this is difficult and somewhat hard to arrange.
It is also hard not to label students as being at the top or bottom of that hierarchy and easy to say that students at the bottom are just not trying. But we need to give these students tasks that build their esteem to take over these leadership roles. I remember my CT saying that last year she had on of the quietest students in the class "win" student council. Although she didn't actually receive the votes so technically the class was not a democracy, this girl completely blossomed. We need to assess what our individual student need and do what is right in the long run. By doing so we need to rearrange this hierarchy and give students opportunities to build self esteem and confidence.
Great post it was really interesting!