Education Shortform
Groupwork in Education
In a nutshell
Groupwork. You could define this as students working with other students rather than individually. As such, it can include pairwork, and any form of collaborative project.
For example, a popular technique called ‘think/pair/share’ invites learners to think about a problem or question, discuss it in a pair, and then finally share their response with the rest of the class.
Such strategies are popular and easy to use at all ages and stages of education. Teachers find it quick and helpful to put learners into groups in order to discuss what they are learning.
One benefit of groupwork is that it provides some opportunities for peer teaching; new material tends to stick better in the mind of the person who is doing the peer teaching than would be the case with more passive learning approaches.
Some tasks can only be done in pairs or groups — certain drama or communicative language activities, for example.
However, it should be remembered that groupwork can be slow and inefficient compared to direct instruction. Sometimes it’s quicker to just tell learners about something, rather than have them discuss it!
Groupwork is therefore not a default choice, but one of many strategies that teachers can choose.
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This is one of a series of shortform education articles. You can download a simplified summary of my ‘A–Z of Educational concepts’ here.
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