Example A - GROUP WORK

Setting: language students at the European Business School, London (Slimani-Rolls, 2003)

The Puzzle

Three colleagues met to discuss 'puzzles' in their teaching, and agreed that group work was an area that did not work well with their students as some students claimed to finish the task far earlier than expected and needed prompting to keep on task

• some did not listen to the results of their group-mates
• some disturbed the overall management of the class by only settling down to work when their classmates were already making their final oral or poster presentations
• some did not use the target language during group work
• only a few used the language taught to them during the preparation stages leading to group work.

To cast light on the students' behaviour during group work, they decided to investigate the learners' perceptions and feelings about

• working with their fellow classmates
• their teachers' attitudes and behaviour in the classroom

The Method

To ensure that the investigation did not involve significant extra work on the part of the teachers they integrated into normal teaching routines EP principles 3, 4, 5 and 6

• One teacher selected some diary entries from a study into students' perceptions of group work. The teachers agreed that when a group work activity next proved disappointing they would present these diary entries for their learners' written reactions. The aim was to stimulate brainstorming from the students, during normal class time, which might give insights into their behaviour and their thinking during group work. Slimani-Rolls cites samples from the diary entries from Cherchalli's (1988) study.

Learners' feelings and perceptions of their fellow classmates

• When I work in a group my friends help me, encourage me, but when I'm alone I'm lost.
• Sometimes I feel like asking the teacher a question, but just realizing that perhaps the rest of the class understand, I hesitate.

Learners' reactions to the teacher's actions and attitudes

• Sometimes we're blocked by a word. While we're thinking about it the teacher goes on talking about other things and we can't follow any more so we switch off.
• We're never asked why we made a mistake. We're told that we're wrong then
• We're given the correct answer and that's all.

Reflection and Interpretation

The written reactions were collected and the teachers gave themselves a couple of weeks to find time to read these before meeting to discuss them.

• This face-to-face meeting allowed the teachers to comment on the students' reactions by situating them in the context which might have triggered them.
• They also found the learners' responses revealed personal insight into their views about their classmates and about the teachers' ways of conducting the lessons.

The detailed findings are too many to report here, see pages 227 - 236 of the original article.

Implications

The conclusion to the 'findings' section of the original report (page 236) says:

Taken separately, both parties - teachers and learners - know, from their own experience, what is required from them to provide adequate conditions for learning a language. However, as Allwright (2001) notes, when they get together in the classroom they seem unable to behave as intelligently as they would think they know how.

Learners made it apparent for themselves that they need to show responsibility towards their learning and that of their group-mates.

Teachers could also see that aspects from their basic professional training and day-to-day experience can, indeed, get lost in the rush to cope with the demands of the programme. Each party seems to live in a paradoxical world and send out unintentionally to the other party messages that do not reflect their true position.

Specific implications were as numerous as the findings, eg a need to regularly recycle teaching items, but the main point emerging from the discussions was the learners' responsibility both towards their own learning and also towards the advancement of the group. The teacher's position in relation to ongoing group work also became prominent in the debates. Should she, as some suggest, stand as the sole active agent, responsible for guiding the learning process during group work? The learners' age, the status that they acquired as university, rather than high school students, made apparent to everyone the paramount importance of individual accountability at this stage in education. Moreover, expecting the group to be there to offer them positive support, individuals must contribute, in return, to the learning of their group-mates, by displaying a positive attitude and contributing constructively to the advancement of the group's interactive processes. Slimani Rolls notes Murphey's (2000) observation that the discussions about the combination of individual accountability and positive interdependence on the group brought to the forefront the learners' responsibilities both towards themselves and towards the group.

Assia Slimani-Rolls European Business School London Exploring a world of paradoxes: an investigation of group work Language Teaching Research 7,2 (2003); pp. 221-239 The full article is available online at http://ltr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/2/221

Reference

Allwright, D. (2001) Learning (and teaching) as well as you know how: Why is it so very difficult? Available from Lancaster University as CRILE Working Paper 40