Conversely, in discussions where things didn’t go so well, we saw evidence of students taking control or taking a position of authority, building on their own ideas and dismissing the ideas of others, or deferring to another as the authority. Some specifics of the language are important, too – for example, the use of “shall we” rather than “I think” was common in the better-performing groups.Īlso critical are the more social elements, such as ensuring everyone is involved, keeping the group moving forward and bringing humour to the task. What’s more, if students explain their ideas – rather than simply asserting them – and invite ideas from others and ask each other questions, the group does better. Our study showed that if all participants are contributing roughly equal amounts of talk to a discussion, and if they’re responding to each other by building on ideas and taking them further, they can solve the problems set for them more easily. When a problem needs to be tackled, it is the balance of contributions and not simply a strongly promoted opinion that is important. What we found was that the key to collaborative classroom work was balance. We then looked at what the students in the better-performing groups were doing differently. We recorded them and analysed their discussions, looking for instances of different types of talk: proposing new ideas, for example, or building on the ideas of others, justifying ideas or resolving disagreements with reasons.Īs the groupwork developed, we asked teachers and assessors to observe and comment on it. We worked with 14- to 15-year-olds in schools in the Manchester and Cambridge areas, giving them multistage problem-solving tasks to tackle in groups of three.
We aimed to move beyond a general sense that cooperation is productive and identify in detail what good collaboration looks like, and how teachers can assess it formatively. But with zero-sum social-media rows too often the norm in public debate, how can we encourage effective collaboration in the classroom?Īs part of a study into collaborative problem-solving, researchers at AQA and the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education set out to explore groupwork among young people. In a world facing complex challenges, from climate change to Brexit, teamwork and problem-solving are ever more important skills for young people to develop. Helping students work well together is just as important as the end result, explain Ruth Johnson and Ayesha Ahmed
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