As a student, group work has a considerable presence in my education. You cannot live a school year without a groupwork project or group activity. Conventional wisdom sustains that group work will improve emotional intelligence, teamwork, and communication skills, all of which are undeniably essential, but I have to admit that group work has been the derivation of much of my frustrations in school.
The main reason why I am frustrated with group work is because I personally don't think it is supportive of independent thinking and multiplicity. Usually, the work is distributed among several members, and there are almost always particular "roles" that will be assigned to each student. Because of this, a student is constricted to one role, or one section of work, so I think students lose a whole lot of opportunities to practice MULTIPLE skills and independently think about MULTIPLE things, besides just the things they were assigned. Since you depend on others to do certain portions of work, you don't always get to analyze the material you were not assigned for yourself, or devise and use your own approaches to things. Gaining ALL skills and being able to discover and think for oneself is definitely not something you can find in groupwork. For the sake of independent thinking and multiplicity, can I skip that group project?
Another reason why I am frustrated with group work, in particular group assignments, is the way they are assessed. It is already hard enough to do group activities but being required to complete a project that is actually being graded is the worse. According to my past experiences, students completing group assignments are often still assessed individually, but I believe that using a group assignment to assess a student is not the best strategy. (But I am not an educational specialist, so I am pretty sure there are tons of better-experienced teachers and school staff who have logical refutations to this claim. I just want to write down what I think). That being said, when it comes to group work, students have to compromise with each other, and so many actions that are being taken are done collectively as a group, not as an individual. This may be problematic, because assessing someone based on a group project may show the group's abilities, but not the individual's. For example, there might be that lazy kid who sits back and merely copies what their more hardworking team mates write down/say. If we are grading a group project, we may notice the group's work is good, since the majority of the team mates have been hard working and making wise decisions, but we may neglect the lazy kid, so the lazy kid may have work on their paper, but it is not their own. Hence, they may receive a higher grade than they should have. Likewise, bright students may have great ideas, but suppose the group members were low-performing, so the overall work from the bright students' group becomes low-quality, or maybe the bright students' ideas were turned down and replaced with ideas that need improvement. The bright students would not have a mark as high as it would have been if they worked alone. Maybe I am not the most well-qualified person to make criticisms about grading assessments, since I am a kid and I have not had real experience with educational specialization, but for the simple reason that the First Amendment exists, I just want to ask: is group work really a good determiner for grades?
Another reason why I have frustrations with group work is the reduction of opportunities for self-direction in students' academic journeys. Once again, compromises and assigned roles are common in group work, so I believe major limitations on self-direction in learning are placed on students. A kid, for instance, might need a little extra time to assimilate material, but if their group members do not need that extra time, they may be left trying to hurriedly cram in information, which may actually hurt their learning journey. Maybe a kid might work faster than everyone else, but their group members are average, so they can only work as fast as their teammates. The first student could have had some extra time to acquire valuable information, and the second student would have worked faster.
There are also some wonderful stress factors that I (personally) deal with during group work. I would not consider these factors to be rational justifications to my frustrations with group work, but for the sake of being honest, I'll list them:
If you make a mistake or fail, it would not just be you who knows---your group members will also be aware.
You have to prove yourself to your group members, and/or make sure they don't get the wrong idea(s) about you; when you work alone, you work with yourself, but you don't have to prove yourself to yourself, because you know who you are. However, your group members don't, so you are not only trying to complete a project, but also trying to make sure no one misinterprets you or doubts your competence in that project.
You do not have full accountability, especially when that bossy kid is around, or when the leader says so. You can be capable, assertive, keen, but that could be forgotten when the leader is the one who ultimately decides on what your role is (not that it is wrong for there to be a leader, and I know that life will always present people with authorities above them, but objectively speaking, you don't enjoy that full accountability you would have had as a lone wolf). And then, there are bossy kids. If you beg to differ on a certain point, they will argue, or ignore you. Possibly, a kid might take over, and there may not exactly be a window to say something, since they keep talking or making orders before you can talk. (I was close to experiencing something like that for an entire class period, and I was actually assigned to be the leader of the group!)
Finally (and this is a minor reason, but still a reason nonetheless), I get frustrated by group work, because your ideas can be taken, hence you may not contribute to a group project as much. Since there has to be at least one other person working with you, there are more people who can have the same ideas as you, so when planning or executing projects, you may not make as many contributions to the project, because someone else is making that contribution for you, or, as I like to put it, someone else steals your opportunity to make a certain contribution. This is kind of scary to me, because it exemplifies that your thinking is not always truly your own.
I would like to offer an alternative to group work: Socratic Seminars. Some may think that by taking away group work, crucial opportunities to communicate, empathize, and adapt to certain situations may be taken away, and that probably is true. I think Socratic Seminars still allow communication and empathy among members' viewpoints, since they are discussions that involve open-ended questions and students' responses and critiques to one another's comments. You may also adapt in order to participate in a discussion, in case the discussion goes in a way that caused the points you originally planned to make to not be convenient to how the discussion currently is going.
Plus, they directly alleviate my worries about group work; since you can still prepare and formulate your own ideas to bring to the table, you won't have to worry about a lack of independence and multiplicity. Students are also assessed as individuals in an accurate manner in my opinion, since they are being assessed based on what they say and contribute to the discussion. Self-direction has a lower probability of being lost, because you can personally ask questions, make points, and respond to others.
Risking one's independence and multiplicity, being possibly assessed in an accurate manner, and losing self-direction are my main concerns about group work, so I listed Socratic Seminars as an alternative I prefer. To be honest, I think groupwork is very overrated among schools, and although I am just a teenager, I believe this article brings a lot of legitimate concerns to the table. I am pretty sure schools have good reasons behind keeping groupwork, but with my education in their hands, I think I have the right to voice my concerns.
Comments