Research taster

Pupils seem to like to be involved in group tasks.  When asked, they report that they enjoy them and can identify how group-work helps them.   Group-work can help some pupils establish friendships and feel more secure at school.  But some children are less inclined to join in so they do not learn the skills needed for effective group-working.

Your evidence 

Before designing group-work activities it may be helpful to find out more about pupils who find it hard to join in with group-work. You could ask a colleague to observe one of your lessons in which group-work is a main element and let you know what happens.  Or have your lesson videoed so you can analyse it yourself. Points to watch out for could include:

- Pupils who do not volunteer to speak or answer questions.
- Pupils who avoid being chosen to speak, perhaps by only putting up their hand as someone else is chosen to answer.
- Pupils who seem embarrassed if they become the centre of attention.
- Pupils who refuse to speak at all or who give only very brief answers.

How did you support these pupils? Did this help and if so in what way? Did you identify any particular common factors relating to the non-participants?

Moving forward

What else might you do to encourage their active participation in future? Would it be helpful to experiment with the composition of groups in order to put supportive children with those who are shy, disruptive or have greater learning needs? How tasks are constructed could be important.  Would it be helpful to design tasks so that all group members have to contribute something to completing the task? There are divided views about allocating specific roles to children. What do you think – is it something you could try out?

Find out more

The SPRinG project:
http://www.tlrp.org/proj/phase11/phase2a.html

Planning and implementing group-work:

The Research informed Practice website digests:

The effects of cooperative learning on junior high school students during small group learning

Gillies, R.M., University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/pupil_grouping/ThuAug261107362004/

Widening access to educational opportunities through teaching children how to reason together

Wegerif, R., Littleton, K., Dawes, L., Mercer, N. and Rowe, D.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/speakandlisten/wegerif_access/