Group work in science learning - international scenarios and implications for teaching and learning in Hong Kong

Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 2, Issue 2, Article 9 (Dec., 2001)
Teresa T S WONG
Group work in science learning - international scenarios and implications for teaching and learning in Hong Kong

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Implementation Considerations for Group Work
Although participating teachers have drawn from their experiences as science teachers, the basic principles pertinent to group work implementation identified by these teachers can well be applied for teaching other subjects. However, whether or not group work is deemed appropriate for all teaching occasions is a questionable issue. All forms of group work need to be designed to fulfill their own sets of requirements, in order to become meaningful methods for both teaching and learning.
To structure lessons so that students do in fact work cooperatively with each other, Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) believe that teachers must understand the five key elements (to be discussed in the following section) that make cooperation work. Mastering the key elements of cooperation allows the teacher to:

Take the existing lessons, curriculums, and courses and structure them cooperatively.

Tailor cooperative learning lessons to the teacher's unique instructional needs, circumstances, curriculums, subject areas and students.

Diagnose the problems some students may have in working together and intervene to increase the learning groups' effectiveness.

The first two objectives above come from the notion that the primary success factor for group work is the amount of initial effort that teachers put into its design and organization. These are of particular important for science education because of the necessary inclusion of experimental setups. As stated by the Czech Collaboration Team, successful teachers of group work should know how to set tasks unambiguously, how to steer the initiative of the students and how to assess students' tasks, but at the same time, take into consideration the different situations and individual backgrounds on which each child builds his or her own learning. Here is a compiled list of teachers' tasks for the successful implementation of group work suggested by the team teachers:

Teachers assign some work beforehand (formative assessment) to check students' previous knowledge and skills and to prepare them for the group work to be assigned.

Teachers provide clear instructions during the assignment introduction, such as explaining the work schedule, role description for each group member, task specifications, uses of tools/experimental apparatus, the importance of interpersonal skills and division of labour.

Teachers provide students with enough resources for group work as well as for reinforcing their research skills.

Teachers provide sufficient time for students to complete the specified tasks.

Hong Kong teachers have identified some regional constraints for implementing group work. For example, resources available and the classroom physical environment may influence both the methods and applications of cooperative learning. Most Hong Kong classes and school climates have been primarily individualistic or competitive due to the fact that most people from the general public regard increasing individual power to compete in public examinations as the most important achievement in education. Therefore, teachers have to devote more time to convince students to engage and develop a cooperative climate for learning.
In addition, Hong Kong has a set of very intensive curriculum expectations for its local students within the educational system. Many teachers feel that they need to "compete" for more teaching time in order to cover all the curricular materials. It is also believed that the prescribed teaching contents in the current teaching syllabuses do not leave much learning space for developing students' creativity and critical thinking (Curriculum Development Council, 2000). A well-designed group work should provide opportunity to foster these two important generic skills. However, the fixed time-tabling in terms of number of periods/weeks or cycles for most school do not suit the purpose of experimentation of an extend group work activity, especially if teachers are interested in implementing experimental extensive and investigative activity and doing cross-curricular collaboration. In reality, successful implementation of group work activity not only require time for teachers to follow-up student progress, but teachers themselves also require more time to develop implementation skills and confidence. To promote positive learning atmosphere for conducting different teaching strategies such as group work, the Hong Kong educational reform has introduced certain constructive motivations, such as creating more flexibility in time-tabling and trimming overlapping or out-dated curriculum content to provide teachers with room of trying different teaching approaches. Kagan (1994), one of the main leaders in the group work movement, has suggested a step-by-step approach for teachers who would like to attempt the group work strategy. First of all, he suggested that teachers should attempt to do this in a very limited way at the beginning. After they have mastered the art of managing a classroom of teams and feel competent in one structure, they may be ready to include other techniques - eventually discovering the amount and style of grouping which best fits their own personal style. As they endeavour to attain group work strategies, the excitement, involvement and gains of their students will lead them to try more.
The third objective of Johnson, Johnson and Holubec as stated above, is that cooperation work should be mastered with the aim of allowing teachers to diagnose the problems some students may have in working together, and intervene to increase the learning groups' effectiveness. Following along this direction, the German Collaboration Team believed that group work is successful if there is no loss of learning. Teachers have to install classroom rules for group work, have to watch all the groups carefully in case the students get out of control or require assistance.