Developed behavior observation system for group supervision, designed to measure occurrence of verbal problem-solving behavior during group supervision meetings. Obtained reliability data from four counseling teams' group supervision meetings at residential facility for children with social and emotional problems. Results indicated that system had…

Assesses Persuasive Arguments Theory (PAT) assumptions about argument and argument influence. Reviews and critiques PAT, advancing five hypotheses to test its assumptions. Finds little correspondence between cognitive and discussion arguments in number, content, or persuasiveness. Discusses implications for PAT and for the role of communication in…

Instructional objectives for teaching with case studies are outlined, and techniques for using case studies are described. Combinations of objectives and methods for different situations are explored, and suggestions for practitioners on effective use of different case study types, with different populations, and at different phases of management…

Demonstrates how discussion and collaborative learning can be an effective means of empowering the students and helping them to learn about literature. Asserts that talking in groups can be a powerful avenue for learning. Includes actual transcripts of student discussions. (PRA)

Describes a group project from a course on rural, countercultural communitarians' attempts to create utopian communities. Explains that the project gives students the opportunity to integrate material from a variety of sources and to apply it to a group term paper. Suggests that the project utilizes experiential methods for learning abstract…

Describes a technique that sensitizes normative school-focused research and enables the practitioner's perspective to be incorporated into the research design. Bases procedure upon small group discussions called exploratory groups. Finds that the exploratory groups substantially influenced the extent that two related studies were able to address…

Proposes a taxonomy of functions for direct reports of speech (and of writing and thought) in focus-group discussions. Reported speech both depicts the experience of the original utterance and detaches the reported utterance from the reporting speaker. (Author/VWL)

Members of a diverse management class discuss how they explored issues of spirituality "in" and "of" work, an inclusive definition of spirituality and work, and opposition to organizational imposition of spiritual values. (SK)

Defines "spiraling" as a reappearance later in discussion of proposals that had received positive evaluation when first discussed. Evaluates the generality of spiraling in a set of 87 group discussions among undergraduate students. Shows large variability among groups. Notes many groups spiraled little or not at all and a few groups…

Uses qualitative analysis to understand how middle school students thought about and approached problems while they wrote descriptions of why and how they solve problems. Indicates that rich learning experiences are possible when writing is used as a way to prepare for small group discussion in mathematics. (Contains 13 references.) (Author/ASK)

A nursing school used asynchronous computer conferencing for student discussion groups and three distance sites and one host site. Course evaluation showed students appreciated the ability to review discussions and reflect before commenting and felt team collegiality. A switch to different software reduced the technology learning curve, but…

Used as an explicit evaluation tool, group discussion could encourage ongoing reflection on the program and on individual and group learning. Learner interests are thus interwoven into ongoing process evaluation. (SK)

Computer mediated communication (CMC) refers to communication between individuals and among groups via networked computers. Such forms of communication can be "asynchronous" or "synchronous" and serve a wide variety of useful functions ranging from administration to building understanding and knowledge. As such there are many reasons for interest…

In this article, we analyze the complexity of using instructional dialogues in the teaching of mathematics. We trace a 10-lesson unit on functions and their graphs taught by Magdalene Lampert to a 5th-grade classroom. We use this trace to help analyze and systematize the complexity of the classroom discourse. Analysis shows that Lampert's…

In the project described in this chapter, discussions during group exams were analyzed to gain insight into how students make group decisions for their answers and the implications of their decision-making methods for deepening student understanding.