After receiving negative feedback from students and tutors about their group work experiences in a health subject, strategies to resolve these collaborative learning issues were considered. The objectives were to facilitate student ability to resolve group work issues, highlight group work as an important graduate attribute and to improve…

The literature suggests that ostracism coerces conformity to group norms: It maintains the stability, cohesion and safety of the group, and therefore helps maintain the smooth functioning of a group. To this end, a wide range of punishing behaviours may first be employed but if these are not successful, the individual may be permanently excluded.…

Studies of cultural differentiation have shown that social mechanisms that normally lead to cultural convergence--homophily and influence--can also explain how distinct cultural groups can form. However, this emergent cultural diversity has proven to be unstable in the face of cultural drift--small errors or innovations that allow cultures to…

This study investigated the effects of transformational and transactional leadership styles and communication media on team interaction styles and outcomes. Teams communicated through one of the following three ways: (a) face-to-face, (b) desktop videoconference, or (c) text-based chat. Results indicated that transformational and transactional…

Social workers participate with many different populations including perpetrators, victims, and survivors of domestic violence. It is crucial that students in the social work field are educated in the arena of domestic violence. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of intimate exposure to this population through an experiential…

Instructors of college/university writing classes commonly ask their students to "share their ideas" in groups. This paper aims to describe the sequential structures of a kind of talk typical to group work: students presenting "reports" about early written drafts. Specifically, the data analysis in this paper looks at how a student's report…

Chicago's South Side has long been a renowned laboratory for groundbreaking research on Black urban life. The city's vast Black population, largely the product of the Great Migration, has made Chicago the home of both a celebrated Black middle class and an unsettling Black lower class. These two extremes have been meticulously documented over the…

Experts say that good mathematics instruction engages all students as active learners (NAEYC & NCTM 2002). It begins with their current skills and builds new knowledge that is meaningful and appropriate for each child (Baroody 1998). Effective math instruction allows children to develop positive attitudes toward math instead of negative ones…

Highlighting the issues involved in starting and maintaining a teacher study group, this book provides practical suggestions for organizing, facilitating, and dealing with group dynamics within a study group. It addresses the details that go into making decisions about the time, place, group size, resources, and structure of the meetings, as well…

Forensics programs can be laboratories for small group processes, whether or not they are explicitly recognized by either the participants or their teachers. Small group dynamics, as identified by M. Shaw (1981), are present and clearly define the forensic activity as a small group experience. The combination of being a small group, spending…

In collaborative learning, both facilitators and learners are active participants in the process, a sense of community is created, and knowledge is considered to be located in the community rather than the individual. Its guiding principle is that learning is enhanced when knowledge that is created and transmitted is shaped by the activities and…

This paper describes an on-line computer-based model designed to facilitate the teaching of research methods in undergraduate social psychology courses. The model simulates experimental outcomes data for three dependent variables obtained through the manipulation of a subset of nineteen independent variables reported on studies investigating the…

This study is one of a series having to do with, among other things, the relative impact of informational (or cognitive) versus normative (or motivational) processes on the position an individual takes following group discussion. (Author)

The relationship between group cohesiveness and performance was investigated using data from a field setting. (Editor)

This article includes the script for a playlet which may be used as a group counseling model or as an adjunct to individual consulting. Discussion questions are also included. (Author/HMV)