Small Group Teaching

A Trouble-shooting Guide

Richard G. Tiberius

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135373733
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A practical guide to improve classes that are bored, hostile, aggressive or just not quite right. The book provides tips form making small class teaching more effective, with practical suggestions for a broad range of problems that teachers regularly encounter.

PART ONE: GROUP GOALS

TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE

Chapter 1 Goals are Unclear

Possible cause 1:	Failure to establish the goals of the group
– Suggestion 1:	Set goals for the course
– Suggestion 2:	Negotiate goals for the course
– Suggestion 3:	Be prepared to negotiate difficulties that may arise
– Suggestion 4:	Establish goals for each meeting
– Suggestion 5:	Include criteria for success
– Suggestion 6:	Modify goals if necessary
Possible cause 2:	Digression from goals
– Suggestion 1:	Pre-circulate questions or issues
– Suggestion 2:	Get right into it
– Suggestion 3:	Incorporate students' agendas into the class goals
– Suggestion 4:	Restate the agenda or summarize
– Suggestion 5:	Paraphrase
– Suggestion 6:	Use a flip-chart or blackboard
– Suggestion 7:	Identify irrelevant remarks
– Suggestion 8:	Evaluate the group product or
– Suggestion 9:	Give praise when it's due

Chapter 2 Goals are Unattainable

Possible cause 1:	Wrong group structure and process
– Suggestion 1:	Familiarize yourself with the many types of groups that provide information, stimulation, or provocation
– Suggestion 2:	Familiarize yourself with the types of groups that encourage participation
– Suggestion 3:	Familiarize yourself with the types of groups that help members understand the feelings or points of view of others
– Suggestion 4:	Use more than one type of group if appropriate
– Suggestion 5:	Consider projects that take place outside the group and report back to it
– Suggestion 6:	Practise
– Suggestion 7:	Discuss the group structure in class
Possible cause 2:	Students are not active enough
– Suggestion 1:	Use learning cells
– Suggestion 2:	Use helping trios
– Suggestion 3:	Arrange practice sessions
Possible cause 3:	Distortion caused by evaluation of group performance
– Suggestion 1:	Evaluate the product of the group rather than its participation
– Suggestion 2:	Reduce anxiety about the exam
Possible cause 4:	Poor time planning
– Suggestion 1:	Consider time in planning
– Suggestion 2:	Remind the group of the schedule
– Suggestion 3:	Assign preparation tasks
Possible cause 5:	Superficial discussion and/or poor listening
– Suggestion 1:	Use active listening
– Suggestion 2:	Ask questions of the right type and level
Possible cause 6:	Unco-ordinated effort - students are engaged in different tasks
– Suggestion 1:	Break the issue or problem down and focus everyone on the same part

Chapter 3: Goals are Unacceptable

Possible cause 1:	Students' experiences and values make them reject the teacher's goals
– Suggestion 1:	Make your learning goals relevant to those of the students
– Suggestion 2:	If you can't make your case, accept rejection - for now
– Suggestion 3:	If you cannot convince your students of the value of the material, quit
– Suggestion 4:	If you cannot convince yourself of the value of the material, quit
Possible cause 2:	Teachers and students perceive the course goals differently because of their different intellectual frameworks
– Suggestion 1:	Take into account different stages of intellectual development
– Suggestion 2:	Match the students' level
– Suggestion 3:	Use plus-one-staging
– Suggestion 4:	Combine support with challenge
– Suggestion 5:	Use metaphors
– Suggestion 6:	Give it up
Possible cause 3:	Teachers and students are not pursuing the same goals because the students are avoiding the real issues, which they find difficult or painful
– Suggestion 1:	Make it clear that you support the students
– Suggestion 2:	Divide students into groups of two or three for intensive discussion or buzz groups
– Suggestion 3:	Encourage speakers to be concrete and specific
Possible cause 4:	Teachers and students are not pursuing the same goals because the teachers are avoiding the real issues, which they find difficult or painful
– Suggestion 1:	Invite a peer to review your class
– Suggestion 2:	Separate your personal reactions from your professional ones
Possible cause 5:	Teachers and students are not pursuing the same goals because there are hidden agendas
– Suggestion 1:	Check your perception
– Suggestion 2:	Confront
– Suggestion 3:	Negotiate
Possible cause 6:	Students perceive the group activity as a waste of time because they think it is irrelevant
– Suggestion 1:	Align the goals of the course with the evaluation
– Suggestion 2:	Discuss the goals and exam with your students
– Suggestion 3:	Write the objectives on a flip-chart
– Suggestion 4:	Brief the small group leaders
– Suggestion 5:	Write the exam and the goals first, then plan the group activities
– Suggestion 6:	Explain the lecture/discussion co-ordination

References for Part One

1

GOALS ARE UNCLEAR

I never knew the whole year what was going on or where the teacher was heading. It was all so vague. There was no flow or direction. Everything jumped all over the place. He never said what we were doing or where we were going. I survived by copying down some key words and reading sections of the text that seemed relevant. I faked it.

Unclear goals are frustrating for both teachers and students. Students thrash around in confusion, and teachers, often unaware of that confusion, face unresponsive classes without a clue as to what is happening. This picture of confusion occurs over and over again, and it appears to have two common causes.

The first is a simple failure to establish the goals of the group; the second is digression from those goals.

POSSIBLE CAUSE 1:
FAILURE TO ESTABLISH THE GOALS OF THE GROUP

An economics professor and her teaching assistants conducted several tutorial sessions in conjunction with her lectures. Year after year, she received lower ratings on student evaluations than her assistants. She felt really annoyed about it. She said that she felt burnt out, that her teaching assistants received higher evaluations because they were younger and more in tune with the students, and that that was all there was to it.

This was the second year she had taught the particular course she called me in to discuss. We talked about the structure of her tutorials and students' responses to them. At first, her goal had been for the tutorials to provide an opportunity for students to ask questions. When they asked very few questions and the sessions went dead, she changed the goal and, instead, she asked the questions. At the end of the year students gave her a very low evaluation. They accused her of using the tutorials to ‘grill’ rather than help them. One even wrote ‘sadistic’ on the questionnaire.

The next year, before she called me, she tried a third goal for the group: she used the tutorial to reinforce the main points of her lectures. Were the students happy? They made it clear that they considered the tutorials a relatively painless waste of time. They perceived her as wandering around the topic without any focus. She was fed up. She wanted a sympathetic ear more than educational advice. She didn't really think anybody could do anything to help.

Her understanding of the problem grew out of her concept of teaching as something you do to students. The performing arts may be like this, but teaching and learning should not be. What I offered, instead of another goal for the group, was an alternative concept of teaching as a process of co-operative interaction.

To me the significant fact was that, through all of these changes, she had never included the students in her efforts to find suitable goals for the tutorials. She had struggled privately and then acted upon rather than with the students. The point is that, although none of her goals had worked, in fact, any of them could have succeeded if both teacher and students had known about and agreed to them.

One more point about goals. There is a common myth that students will praise any teaching session in which they have a good time. Some teachers imagine that if they are entertaining, the students will be happy. These teachers are soon disillusioned. If students enjoy themselves, they may appear satisfied, and they may even be satisfied – for a while. But afterwards, when they think about what they learned and compare it with what they feel they should have learned from the class, they criticize and stay away. They want and need more, and part of that more is clear objectives.

Suggestion 1:
Set goals for the course

The first thing a teacher needs to do, before this kind of confusion or frustration arises, is to make sure that the students understand the goals of the course.

One of the group leader's functions is to ensure that a set of mutually agreed-upon goals is established early in the course, preferably at the very first meeting. The goals should be specific enough to guide the actions of the group and to serve as criteria with which to measure the group's success.

There are ways to broach this subject which will engage students in constructive negotiations with you. You might say, for example: ‘Let's spend a few minutes deciding how we might use the time in our discussions.’ This is highly preferable to: ‘I want to spend a few minutes telling you the purpose of this session.’

Suggestion 2:
Negotiate goals for the course

If at all possible, students should take part in deciding the goals of the group. People take more responsibility for goals and accept them more readily when they have helped to choose them, and the goals students have helped to set are often better than ones a teacher alone comes up with.

Suggestion 3:
Be prepared to negotiate difficulties that may arise

1. Sometimes it becomes evident that no one goal will please all the students. If that happens, you may want to say something like, ‘I gather from your comments that you disagree as to how we should use our tutorial time. Some of you would like to review points from the lectures, others would like me to answer questions about areas you are having trouble with, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One Group Goals
• Part Two Group Interaction
• Part Three Group Motivation and Emotion
• Index