Designing Groupwork

Chapter 1 in Elizabeth Cohen's Designing Groupwork discussed how groupwork is used as a strategy in a classroom and some of its key features, which are allowing students to make their own mistakes and have delegated authority and members need to rely on each other to complete the task at hand.  The chapter also briefly introduces the advantages of groupwork in the classroom - face-to-face interaction (reduces misbehavior), everyone participates because students care about their evaluation by other members, and peer assistance.  Finally, the author points out that with all of the research and published literature that has been done, several theories about groupwork have emerged and that they can be applied to a variety of educational settings.  I'm curious, however, about what these theories are, and how effective they are when they are applied to a secondary school setting, as most of the research that the author has done has been at the elementary school level.

In chapter 2, it showed how effective groupwork is as a technique, as it helps students achieve certain intellectual and social goals and it helps solve two classroom problems that commonly plague teachers.  The intellectual goals that are accomplished with groupwork include helping students with explaining and learning new concepts (conceptual learning), creative problem solving, helping students develop those critical higher order thinking skills, increasing and improving one's basic skills, and improving oral proficiency - no matter what the task is, no matter what the students disagree about, every student learns and develops these crucial intellectual skills in an interactive manner.  The social goals that are accomplished with groupwork are establishing positive intergroup relations and socializing students for adult roles, the skills that are necessary for students to be successful in the adult world.  Finally, the two common classroom problems that groupwork helps alleviate are with the low-achieving student who is often off-task and allows the teacher to maintain control over the classroom while she is working with one group of students - the rest of the class knows what they should be doing, so there is some type of control that exists within the classroom.  This reading has made me realize why I had an easier time in student teaching when I assigned my students to make their own propaganda poster.  They knew what to do, they had accessible materials, they had models, and they were all allowed to express their thoughts in a different, creative way.

In chapter 3, Cohen describes the dilemma, someone usually takes charge of the group and the rest of the group members agree, and the causes of this dilemma in groupwork.  She attributes that this behavior exists because groups will achieve a hierarchy, or a status ordering, that is based on four different statuses, which are expert status (everyone relies on the group member who is the expert of the subject or topic), academic status (everyone relies on the group member with the highest grade or with the highest ability, even if that ability does not relate to the task), peer status, and societal status.  The author then explains that with these status orderings comes expectations that hierarchical members follow, which results in a self-fulfilling prophecy and a continuation of high status members dominating the group and low status members not becoming involved.  However, even though groups can be used to combat these prejudices, if the teacher does not properly make use of grouping strategies and recognizes these inequalities, then groupwork will do nothing more than to further these inequalities. I am curious to know if there are any other solutions, other than heterogenous grouping, to this dilemma, and if so, what they are and how effective they are.

Week Three Reading Reflection - Ethnography

The first thing that I learned was that in order to put "outrageous" behavior in context and to truly understand it, one must suppress their rage and stay with that culture's "outrageous" behavior.  One can use their rage as a way of measuring their tolerance of the act (9).  This is important because if one does not control one's feeling during observations, then one is more likely to write a biased report, and from that report, the bias can spread.  A second thing that I learned was that the behavior we take for granted, such as greeting people and having a laugh at lunch, turn out to be the most significant behaviors in a final report (10).  The author is saying that these behaviors are so ingrained and unnoticeable by us and when a researcher examines this and puts it in a report, we often find that these behaviors are normal and really stick out in our minds.  The third thing that I learned was that students who belong to a certain group, such as athletes and scholars, experience a change in their social status (6).  This explains why certain groups in high school tend to associate with each other and distance themselves from other groups.  These associations tend to give a social hierarchy in schools, with the popular kids at the top and the relatively unknown kids at the bottom.

The first question that I have is why did the author leave out the teacher's perspective?  He briefly stated the common teacher myths in the article and noted that he did not study them in depth, but I am just wondering why he chose to publish the article without gaining an insight from teachers.  Although he did provide some brief insight from elementary school teachers, the insight from middle school and high school teachers was lacking.  The second question that I have is what information or evidence is considered "good" or "valuable," as ethnographers have an array of information to choose from?  Since an ethnographer can study the hierarchy, customs, rituals, members and other factors in a school, which is/are the critical components to study - the author does not go into much detail.  This lack of detail has left me wondering.

One thing that I would like to explore further is if there have been any ethnographic reports done on schools in North County or in San Diego County, as this information can be crucial in choosing a possible school to teach at.

Week Two Reading Reflection - Disrupting Class

One thing that I learned through this week's reading is that a school is composed of four interdependencies - temporal, lateral, physical, and hierarchical (33).  I knew that a school had to conform to mandates from different authorities, but I did not know that this dependency relied on three other dependencies.  These four help explain why a school functions the way it does and why it is often hard for a school to change.  A second thing that I learned through this week's reading is how much is spent on educating a special education student.  As the author points out, in Rhode Island "it costs $22,893 a year on average to educate a special-education student, whereas it costs $9,269 for a regular education student" (34).  I think the reason why so much is spent on special education is because the teacher training is more difficult, the lessons must conform around the student's disability, and the supplemental material that is needed in order for a student to succeed is costly.  Finally, the third thing that I learned was about Henry Ford.  I learned that when he first started making his Model Ts, the steel he used to make auto parts sprang back from their die, so that there was a range of different size auto parts.  These differences meant that the car parts would not easily fit together.  Since steel suppliers could not solve this dilemma, as they were not stamping the steel in Ford's environment, and since Ford could not solve the dilemma either, as he was not making the steel, Ford decided to make his own steel plant and have his workers conform the steel to the dies (30-31).  This short vignette shows how when different problems emerge within a single structure a solution that satisfies all of these problems must be produced and how everything is related.  So one could apply this dilemma to the current school situation.

One thing that I have a question about also relates to the special education funding.  The author points out that over the last four decades, funding for this has increased so much that in many districts it accounts for over a third of all funding (34).  If that is the case, then why do schools consistently put ELL students or children with mild learning disorders in special education?  Is it because the teachers who had these students before do not want their future teachers to go through the ordeal of teaching them?  Maybe if we stopped putting ELLs and students with a mild learning disorder in special education, then we can stop spending as much money on this and spend more on regular education. The second question I have relates to the efforts of teachers.  The author states that "in most U.S. schools, especially at the middle and high school level, even the heroic effort by a teacher to pay attention to multiple intelligence patterns is...almost guaranteed to fail" (37).  Why is that so?  I know that it may be because of the school's structure or because of the way the teacher presents the material, but is there another explanation?  I think there may a combination of other factors that may cause a teacher to fail.

Finally, one additional thing that I would like to learn more about is if other schools have gotten on the same path as the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland have when it comes to personalized learning (36).  It seems as though the program they have works well, as teachers can see where students are in their learning and can then customize their instruction to meet every student's needs/progress.

Week One Reading Reflection - Rethinking High School

In chapter one of Rethinking High School, the authors point out that in modern times, high schools have become an anachronism because they fit a model that was established back during the 1920s (20). This point stuck out to me because high schools today still follow an outdated model that is no longer effective and now results in damaging effects on youth. Instead of changing the model, high schools just add on new curriculum, such as NCLB standards, which only furthers the damage. By following such an outdated model, high schools are not really preparing students for the real world. In order for students to be prepared for the real world once they leave high school, schools need to stop functioning on this older model. The point that I would like to further explore is how high schools "make things worse" (21), since from personal experience, high school didn't really make instruction or life worse for me. The one reform that didn't sound good was size - sometimes the larger schools are more successful than smaller ones.

A number of the Second to None "Components of Reform" were woven throughout the chapter, especially Second to None's component of "Developing Powerful Learning and Teaching." Both Second to None and Best Practices High School promote a curriculum that involves students researching, solving problems, and working together, generating new knowledge, and applying this knowledge to the real world. It seems that in order for students to become informed citizens and to be prepared for the real world, schools have to prepare their students by providing them with the information, knowledge, and experience that is necessary to be successful in reality every day, rather than just cramming them with knowledge that will most likely be forgotten within a few weeks.