Identifying and Analyzing Actions of Effective Group Work

Abstract

This study investigates the characteristics valued by teacher-researchers in collaborative group learning. Video data of groups engaging in the Physics and Everyday Thinking High School activities was collected from one teacher implementing the curriculum, and salient characteristics of group interactions were identified. These characteristics were organized into codes. The frequency of these codes was analyzed for trends. Based upon the code frequency analysis, the group that teacher-researchers identified as most effective engaged in more sense-making, displayed greater equity of voice, and demonstrated more equitable contributions. These findings may have implications for what actions teacher-researchers value in student groups. These valued behaviors may provide potential for interventions to improve group effectiveness and student achievement.

Quantitative measures of equity in small groups

“…Group work is a fundamental part of most research-based teaching methods in physics [1][2][3][4]. Research on group work focuses on group effectiveness [5], reasoning [6], and coordination [7]. These studies focus on "mutuality" [7] and "equity of voice," [5].…”

“…Research on group work focuses on group effectiveness [5], reasoning [6], and coordination [7]. These studies focus on "mutuality" [7] and "equity of voice," [5]. Mutuality is whether individuals in a group can contribute to the group, which was measured by looking at turn-taking norms.…”

“…Therefore, we suggest individuals who speak two times more than their group mates are oppressing those group mates. We chose a threshold of 200% because it is small enough for there to be larger cases but small enough to possibly not occur at all (both seen in [5]). The severity of inequality in our analysis relates to both how many times larger the speaking time difference is and between how many group members this is shared.…”