In his attempt to reduce excessive academic stress, Superintendent David Aderhold has emphasized that learning to be a team member is a basic principle of the Whole Child approach to education. Recent studies indicate that as much as 75 percent of the day is spent interacting with co-workers in many occupations, and Google invested in a three-year study to understand why some of its groups are much more effective than others. The question for Dr. Aderhold and the school board is how best to promote the group process.
In my work as a psychologist, one of the greatest sources of academic stress for WW-P students in the past twenty years has consistently been group projects. With few exceptions, one student does 70 to 90 percent of the work, and a second does the remaining 10 to 30 percent. A third student creates problems that make finishing the project difficult for the first two, and the fourth student does nothing. This broken process is not the fault of the teachers. They have been trained to grade the product, not guide the process.
In fact, Google’s recent research sheds light on what the process should be, and if WW-P wants to promote teamwork, considerable money needs to be spent to train and mentor its teachers to negotiate the many complexities of the group process. Adding more group projects, as currently constituted, will increase neither team skills nor the desire to be a team member.
Google found that groups differ significantly and need different types of intervention, though feeling accepted and being listened to are key elements of any high-functioning group. It will be necessary to assess on a daily basis what every student has contributed, how comfortable students feel to generate ideas, how well students listen to all group members and what help students need to pull individual work into a cohesive whole.
For many students, the current model generates stress and a dislike of team projects, but with training that incorporates Google’s findings, as well as those of other researchers, each teacher will be better prepared to guide students as they learn to integrate their skills and personalities to work creatively and productively as team members.
Tamerra Moeller
West Windsor
