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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Pair And Group Work

The strategies for organising pupils in groups, paired and individual and the impact each strategy has on performance

Date : 13/10/2012

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Bushra

Uploaded by : Bushra
Uploaded on : 13/10/2012
Subject : Psychology

Classrooms are social settings; teaching and learning occur through social interaction between teachers and students. In classrooms as few as two people can form groups, as long as the paired individuals have mutual influence through communication and mental contact. When the teacher engages the whole class in a learning activity common to all, then everyone forms into a single group, or as Herbert A. Thelen wrote, a "miniature society." The students of a class form a miniature society with peers, teacher, and teaching assistants in which they experience interdependence, interaction, common striving for goals, and structure. Many subgroups in the class affect how the larger classroom society works and how individuals relate to one another.

John Mark King in jorabek.com defined pair and group work as the act of dividing students so that they work cooperatively with only a small number of their classmates on a specific task assigned by their teacher. According to him pair and group work first came into usage in the 1970s when teachers first noticed that more than 80% of all classroom talk was teacher talk. Dr Bilash in education.alberta.ca suggested that pair work, group work and individual work can all be effective, if used at the right times and if structured in an appropriate way. For teachers, pair work and group work can be excellent tools to promote student interaction; individual work, on the other hand is easier to assess and often appeals to students with intrapersonal intelligences. As a teacher it is important to vary groupings depending on the goals and context of the activity and it is important to know what supports to offer students for each situation. A benefit of students working together is that, by explaining a concept or idea to peers, that idea or concept becomes clearer to the student doing the explaining.

A skillful teacher makes groups when she/he wants to develop team spirit and co-operation among the students. James R Davis in his book "Better Teaching, More Learning" describes about importance of the setting in a classroom. Teaching is affected by the setting in which it takes place. Research on group working (ncrel, 1997) suggested that a group setting facilitates hands-on learning and directly engages students in the processes of education. Doing something useful requires learning skills associated with communication and cooperation as well as procedures associated with inquiry. In some cases it is beneficial to assign roles (with "job titles") to members of groups and to consciously establish heterogeneous groupings. It also seems important to communicate explicit expectations for both individuals and groups and to structure activities so interdependence is essential to successfully completing the assigned tasks. It is also important, however, to not provide too much direct guidance to groups; collaborative problem solving is to be encouraged over "getting the right answers". Blosser (1992) suggested that various cooperative learning strategies seem particularly useful in classrooms. In general, once students learned how to work productively in groups, one should resist the temptation to jump in too early and put the students on the right path. An essential part of the learning is finding out how to identify a path of inquiry and negotiate the path in collaboration with others. It is said "If we expect students to work together, we must teach them social skills just as purposefully and precisely as we teach them academic skills" (Ostlund, 1995).

According to Dr. Bilash in education.alberta.ca there are advantages and disadvantages of individual, paired and group work. In individual type of student work, the benefits are that students work at their own pace, they are confident about what they know and what they need to send more time on, they can use their preferred learning styles and strategies. The disadvantage is that students don't get the benefit of learning from peers as well as working with their peers. Individual type of student work is suitable when teacher wants students to do their final task or assignment. In paired type of student work, the advantages are that students have the chance to work with and learn from their peers; struggling students can learn from more capable peers; it is especially useful for students who prefer interpersonal learning settings. There are challenges involved in paired work. If students are not matched up well (i.e. low students together, high students together, a higher student with a low student but they don't work well together, etc.) pair work won't be useful; the ability of the students to work in this way needs to be taken into consideration. Paired work is suitable in inductive learning activities in which instead of explaining a given concept and following this explanation with examples, the teacher presents students with many examples showing how the concept is used. The intent is for students to notice by way of the examples, how the concept works. As a conclusion to the activity, the teacher can ask the students to explain the rule as a final check that they understand the concept.

Group type of student work also have benefits and challenges. It involve benefits such as it provides more opportunity for practice, an increased variety of activities is possible and an increased student creativity. The challenges may be that as with pair work, the groups must be carefully selected to ensure students can work productively; not all students are able to work to their full potential in this situation; assessment of student progress can be challenging. It is suitable when there is assessment of learning as described by Dr. Bilash in education.alberta.ca. By dividing the class into groups students get more opportunities to talk than in full class organization and each student can say something. Penny Ur recommends that teachers working with large classes should divide them into five groups which is the most effective organization for practising speaking. (Ur, 1996, p.232). When learners work in pairs or groups it is impossible for the teacher to listen and correct all the mistakes they make and this is not the purpose of the activity. However, he/she can reduce the number of mistakes before the students start working by demonstrating the activity to the class first and by asking pairs or groups to perform in front of the class afterwards and discussing what they said and pointing out the most common mistakes.(Doff, 1988, p.141).

Each type of work that may be individual, pair and group has its place in the classroom. As the above table shows, there are certain pros and cons of each approach, but all can be connected to theory dealing with effective language learning. Some activities and topics may be best suited to one particular style of work, but the key is to use variety and give students a sufficient number of opportunities to work and learn from one another.

References:

Thelen, Herbert A. (1981). The Classroom Society. New York: Wiley.

Davis, James R (1997) Better Teaching, More Learning. American Council on Education/Oryx Press Series on Higher Education. Patricia Blosser (1992).Using Cooperative Learning in Science Education

Ostlund. K. L. (1995). Science Process Skills: Assessing Hands on Student Performance. Menlo Park. CA: Addison Wesley.

http://www2.education.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.Bilash/best%20of%20bilash/pairwork.html

http://www.jorabek.com/pairandgroupwork.pdf

http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/science/eric/eric-7.htmA

Ur, Penny. (1996). A course in language teaching, CUP. Doff, Adrian. 1988. Teaching English, CUP

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