Group work isn’t always teamwork – how can teachers make cooperation meaningful?

We’ve all experienced group work at some point or another where a few people ended up doing most of the work, or even you yourself did all the work. Personally, I’ve experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to group work, which has made me realize that putting people into groups doesn’t automatically mean they are cooperating. 

This challenge was touched on during this week’s learning key presentation. While working with others can help students learn new perspectives, share ideas, and build their communication skills, it can also leave some people feeling unheard or excluded, while others take on the whole workload. I think this is especially important to consider when teaching in elementary classrooms, as students are still developing their social skills and learning how to work with others. 

As a future teacher, I want to create opportunities for students to learn from one another while ensuring everyone feels that their contributions matter. Some strategies discussed in today’s presentation, such as assigning clear roles, setting expectations for participation, and checking individual understanding, can help make group work much more effective. For example, during a science group project, I could assign roles to students, including researcher, recorder, materials manager, or presenter. This ensures that everyone has a responsibility and therefore should be contributing equally. 

Ultimately, I believe cooperation is a skill that needs to be taught and practiced, rather than something we assume students already know how to do coming into class. When we do not teach students how to cooperate effectively, that is when we see unequal distributions in workloads, opinions and thoughts being excluded, and clashing personalities and working styles. So as future teachers, I believe it is vital that we teach students at a young age what effective cooperation means and looks like.

ZaraK@OTU