Either it is education or working community team work team dynamics plays an important role in completing a task effectively and efficiently. Here, team dynamics refers to the social process by which people interact and behave in a group environment. For a teacher the knowledge of team dynamics and the collaborative methods is very important not only to enhance teaching practices but also to enhance student learning experience.
When people working in a team, the behavior of one member impact the behavior and the outcome of other team member, we have experience this in many situations in our daily life. The same principles applies in teaching and learning as well. A team always work for common goal, for example, football team, project team, political team, and so on. However, when it comes with team management we all face similar problem, for example how to maintain equal distribution of work and resources, one person is working too much, there might be pressure from peer etc. there is a general behavior shown by team dynamics, for example, when a team is formed people gets excited but by the passage of time there might be some sort of disappointment within the group member or may have some kind of demotivation, there could be many reason for it, for example there could be personal reason or the behavior from the other team member. However, if the team dynamics works well, the end result is always the best. It is very crucial to keep the team spirit.
In general a group formation can be described in following four ways:
- Random: Group is formed without any criteria.
- Instructor-generated: The instructor selects the group based on some predefined criteria.
- Self-selected: The students are allowed to form their own group. It’s a free choice to students.
- Mixed: Group is formed following some very basic criteria, for example the way our group is formed.
In spite of the method chosen for group formation, there is a common challenge faced by teacher and students i.e. How to maintain collaboration between the group members?
For better teaching and learning experience, collaboration in group is very important. The group collaboration helps students to remain engaged in class activities and most importantly better understand the content, and students feel active, motivated and un-isolated while working in a team. But how to define and measure the level of student activation and participation in group discussions? How to keep students motivated? etc. are the common challenges of group collaboration. Maybe group collaboration can be enhanced, if we are able to define the group objectives, it is better to keep a small group size (maybe 4-5), regular feedback on peers and group interaction might be useful. A feedback and interaction helps us to reduce weakness and improve strengths. Group collaboration strategies like think – pair – share, the jigsaw learning model, and project-based learning might be useful in enhancing our teaching and learning experience.
Each and every individual has different capability of learning, as a teacher we should be able to identify and support individual learning paths. It does not mean that team work needs to be avoided. In my teaching I have also realized that some student prefer to do task individually while some prefer to do group work. Likewise, some student finds difficulties in finding relevant materials that support their learning, while some find it very easy.
Curriculum is the core of teaching and learning, therefore while developing curriculum a teacher needs to pay attention to personalized and individual learning. Didactical approach (the relationship between “teacher ……> students ……>subject”) may be very useful. Didactical approach helps a teacher in proper lesson planning, implementation and monitoring. Likewise, there are different methods that can be used in promoting students personalized and individual learning, for example different games, fair and positive competition between students, use of different videos, simulation, developing practical problems and asking students to approach that problem, and so on.
Reflection, learning dairy, assignments (individual and group), project works (individual and group) are the few examples how a teacher can enhance students learning both at personal and group levels.
Giving free hands to students might also be a good approach to guide students. However, a teacher should develop rules of the game otherwise the students might get lost (might find interest in something else or might get too much freedom and does nothing). We always needs to remember that trust (on own and between students and teacher) is very important in enhancing the experience of teaching and learning. As a teacher we should have the patience to listen to students stories, keep them motivating, providing positive and encouraging feedback, and so on.
In conclusion, we can say that it is very important to understand the group dynamics, so that we can use appropriate methods and tools that support students individual learning paths. As a teacher in my future jobs I always try to understand the class dynamics, so I can better plan, implement, and monitor students learning both at individual and group levels.
My Journey to Vocational Teacher Education 2019-20 