Is this true or do our cultural norms make it common?
I have been following, and intending to write about the recent conversations about groups and networks, as it tickles a lot of thoughts I've been having about the wonderful tension between the individual and the group.
Konrad Glogowski has written a very thoughtful post about why he does not generally use "group work" in his classroom. It is a very cogent piece, and I urge you to read the whole thing, but when I got to this bit, I started wondering about this statement. Is it true? Is it true because we have compromised other aspects of group so that it has become a reductionist form rather than a creative, generative form?
Konrad wrote:blog of proximal development � Blog Archive � To Ungroup a Class: "But conversations that originate inside a group tend to be expressed in one totalizing voice. Groups tend to focus on compromises, on reducing all individual voices to commonalities that all members can agree on and that all members see as somehow representative of their individual voices. That is precisely why teachers ask students in groups to report on their progress by choosing one student to act as a speaker - a representative of the group. We never ask about what every single participant had to say. Instead, we ask what the group, as a whole, came up with. We reduce its rich constituent parts to one voice."
I have recently been facilitating a two week online e-conference for a group of NGO folks scattered around the world on the topic of gender and diversity in their organization. The argument there is that diversity strengthens the organization and the groups. That groups are stronger not in their conformity, but in their ability to generate, listen to and make sense of difference.
I'm wondering if we have been losing a skill, a competency, a practice that makes group about more than groupthink, or dominant voices. Or maybe I have the wrong definition of group floating around in my head.
Maybe what we need to be thinking about is the set of skills in groups that are about listening, as much as speaking, of supporting diverse but full participation (including peripheral participation, which I think is important.)
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so I'm not ready to condemn groups to all the awful, controlling things that they CAN be.
Am I deluded?
(Oh, and sorry about the rush of posts. I am doing research for my Australia trip and keep finding all this COOL stuff that just triggers me to post!)
posted by Nancy White at 5:03 PM
6 Comments:
You may want to check out Cass Sustein's work in Republic.com. There he talks about some of the dangers that may appear with groups. There are other studies on the flip side -- such as AmericaSpeaks, Deliberative Democracy and the like.
From personal experience, group work is just one of many ways to get people to interact. I know of many other educators who do not use group work, or solely group work, as a means of helping students reach their full potential. That to me seems to be a reasonable approach as it presents different opportunities for learners to find their own style, interests and motivations.
Thanks to the reference to Sustein's work. I'm on it!
I find the discussion of Groups/Individuals fascinating. I work in elite sports coaching and many of the issues floating in education right now are critical in coaching.
I'm not sure that it is true that we are 'losing a skill, a competency, a practice' though. In effect, I don't think we ever had it.
Grouping is the most efficient way to deal with any number of individuals. Therefore it is used almost exclusively in almost all areas of life - including the developmental years of learning (and usually more than just the developmental years!).
The question I constantly raise is, when you see 5 people standing together, do you see 1 group, or 5 individuals. I've never had anyone answer '5 individuals'. The extension of this question is, if you want to get the most out of each individual in that group, are you better off considering them one group, then developing an understanding of the individual traits of each. Or do you start off by treating them all as individuals, and learning how to meld them together as a group?
Hm, interesting questions, Alexis. And the question might not only be about looking at a group from the outside, but how we look from the inside.
I also think some of the challenge of this discussion is that we are all defining group differently. (I'm not saying you used the definition.. I'm thinking about other comments on this question that are floating around on the blogosphere!)
Hello Nancy - i tried sending you an email but it didn't seem to work (either off the website or one that I found on another website). I was hoping to talk to you about the possibility of coming to Canberra to visit the Australian Institute of Sport. My collegue Keith Lyons has invited George Siemens who will most likely be coming. We are hoping that both will be interested. Please contact me if you are interested in discussing this further. Thanks
Alexis Lebedew
alexis.lebedew@ausport.gov.au
Vivian was excited to see her cake appear on the net yet again!
A few things about groups...
You can't have them without individuals, so any treatment of group dynamics, results, or cohesion is entirely based on how our brains want to organize things.
A group changes the individuals that interact with it. When your various chemistries - philosophical, rational, communicative - come into contact with others, you create a new one .. that of the group.
When you put a carrot in a stew and pull it out later to eat it, you still call it a carrot, but its interaction with the herbs, meat, broth, and other vegetables have changed it.
You can still pull it out and call it a carrot. But it is a changed carrot.
Groups form usually for a purpose, schisms form when the individuals in the group have different interpretations of that purpose or when that purpose starts to lose cohesion.
Individuals exist ... but they usually don't have a personal mission statement and disband when that mission statement is fulfilled.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about how individuals and groups differ. I've come to the conclusion that groups are not like Transformers which take a bunch of little robots and snap them together to be a big huge robot. Rather, they seem more like lego or playdough, where a bunch of individuals can gather to create almost anything. And, lots of times, you'll want to disassemble or mash up that thing and try again.
Jim
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