Teachers’ leadership and students’ experience of group work., 2012, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice

INTRODUCTION

There is strong scientific support of the benefits of students learning and working in groups. Comprehensive research reviews and studies (Gillies & Boyle, 2010; Lou et al., 1996; Slavin, 1996) have verified that learning in groups has several advantages compared with traditional lessons. Even if group work is defined as “pupils working together as a group or a team” (Blatchford, Kutnick, Baines, & Galton, 2003, p. 155), it is important to differentiate between working in a group and working as a group. A number of experimental and naturalistic studies have shown that people in a group work faster and produce more when other individuals are present (Zajonic, 1980; Baron, 1986). This applies to simple and routine tasks. The benefits of working with individual tasks in a group are not an effect of cooperation but rather social facilitation. The assumption behind social facilitation is that individuals produce better when they know that others are observing them. However, this is when they are not working as a group, just working in a group. The objective of this study is to capture the students’ view of group work.

Students’ experiences of group work

In this study, we are interested in students’ experiences of what they think constitutes meaningful group work and what enables them to work as a group. Even if group work in education has been examined in numerous studies, there is still much to be discovered concerning students’ experiences of group work in schools. There are few reports from a student perspective (Cantwell & Andrews, 2002; Hansen, 2006; Peterson & Miller, 2004; Underwood, 2003). To sum up the results, positive experiences resulted from the necessity of all group members participating and showing respect for each other. In addition, the students emphasise the importance of understandable goals, tasks, and organisation (Hansen, 2006). According to Underwood (2003) and Peterson and Miller (2004), there is also a problem with students who do not contribute to the group work, so-called free-riders.

Given the limited number of studies, it is obvious that more studies concerning the participants’ perspective on group work in education is desirable. The purpose of this study is to investigate the students’ experiences and conceptions of high-quality and low-quality group work and analyse if their opinions have support in small group research?