An investigation into individual gains through group-work

Children learning together

Gregor WatsonTeacher Action Research Scholar 2007-08

Glashieburn Primary School, Aberdeen

Presentation at STNE Seminar Perspectives on Learning

18 March 2008 at University of Aberdeen

Learning

Three views of learning:1. Learning is being taught2. Learning is individual sense making3. Learning is building knowledge as part of

doing things with others

From “Learning; a sense-maker’s guide”

Commissioned by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Written by Chris Watkins, tutor for MA Effective Learning at University of London Institute of Education

What some children said

I find it hard to work all on my own sometimes so me

and my partner give each other

ideas (Rhea)

You learn more because if you explain to people what to do you say things that you wouldn’t say to yourself, really. So you learn things that you wouldn’t know if

you were just doing it by yourself (Annie)

Group-work behaviour

• Kids not actually working together but in parallel, and not communicating

• Arguing in a futile way

• Not listening to each other

• One child dominating proceedings

• Often off task

From research on group working in classrooms (1990 – 1999) by Open University Professor of Language and Communications, Neil Mercer

3 types of interaction

Source: Mercer (1995)

Disputational talk -disagreement

and individualised decision making

Cumulative talk – positive butuncritical comment

Exploratory talk – constructive criticism, justified challenges,

solutions offered

‘Thinking Together’ framework

1. Teacher leads group talk, modelling and encouraging skills necessary for exploratory talk (i.e. listening to others, active participation, respectful challenging, reasoning, negotiating)

2. Elements of group work evaluated and rules made and agreed on for working together successfullySource: Mercer (2005)

The context for my research

Arrival of interactive whiteboard

School registration to on-line

learning platform ‘Education City’

Aims

• To find if structured group-work, following the Thinking Together model, can improve individual attainment in maths activities, more than unstructured group-work

Procedure – Part 1

Individual activity to measure

gain from practising with

group (2nd Assessment)

‘Unstructured’ group working at the whiteboard

Individual activity on

class computer to form

baseline measure

(Initial assessment)

Part 2

Individual activity

On class computer

(3rd Assessment)

Gain from

‘structured group-work’

measured by comparing

2nd individual assessment

with the 3rd

Groups working at whiteboard using learned

strategies for success

Teach and practise framework for Thinking Together

Initial findings

• The class experience of ‘Unstructured group-work’ matched that found by Mercer

• The group activity scores are consistently higher than mean individual scores from the baseline and second assessments

• Individual scores for the second assessment are neither consistently better nor worse than the baseline measure

Design and participants

• Within group design – children will participate in both conditions of the research

• Three ‘symmetrical’ maths groups

• Quantitative data – score from activities

• Qualitative triangulation – focus group