What effective teachers believe

last updated:September 2010

What do effective teachers believe about pupils working with others?

Research evidence
There isn’t a single ‘right way’ of grouping pupils for learning and most teachers use a range of grouping strategies.  But there is good evidence that particularly effective teachers believe that group work (when it is structured) is an effective learning strategy. They use this strategy to a larger extent than most and studies have found positive effects on student achievement.

Your evidence
You might like to explore how the combinations of pupils you currently use work by eliciting comments on the issues listed below. You could tape record or video a group discussion, or ask a colleague to observe and report back to you how it worked afterwards.

Issues

• Composition of the group (size, gender, ability, friendship)
• In what ways did the group collaborate?
• Did anyone not participate? (How did the others respond?)  
• Did one pupil assume leadership of the group? (Was this challenged?)
• Did the group feel satisfied with the outcome of their discussion?    
   

What does this tell you about how you think about group work? What activities do you group pupils for? How important do you think it is to retain the same combinations or is there a virtue in getting every pupil familiar with collaborating with every other pupil in the class?

Next steps
Now that you have gathered evidence about how you are currently using groups in the classroom could you experiment with new combinations of pupils (varying the group composition according to size, gender, ability, friendship) for different activities and monitor the effects? Would you find it helpful to work with a colleague and share your findings?