Group Work Is Usually a Waste of Time
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that group work shouldn't be the default instructional strategy because it's frequently unproductive and unevenly distributed.
Key Takeaways
- Group work is overused - Making it the default means students spend too much time on logistics and social dynamics instead of learning
- One student usually does the work - In most groups, one or two students carry the load while others coast
- Use it selectively - Group work has a place, but it should be chosen deliberately for specific purposes, not used as a daily routine
Transcript
Group work is usually a waste of time because there's usually not enough of a reason to make an assignment a group assignment or make an activity a group activity.
But for my entire career, for my entire life, it feels like group work has been seen as the preferred default, right?
You should not make an activity individual or whole class.
You should make it a group activity just kind of automatically, unless you have some super strong reason not to.
And I think that's backwards.
I think we need to be selective about what we make into a group activity because a group activity has some pretty big built-in drawbacks, right?
If you have students working in groups, you don't necessarily know what each individual is capable of doing and who did what.
And of course, we've all had the experience of one person doing the work for the entire group or You know, people copying off of the one person who did the works, and then the teacher can't tell at all who understands what, who contributed what.
And it's just a whole extra layer of work and confusion to do something as a group activity instead of as a whole class or individual activity.
So I don't think that should be our default.
I think we should be very selective about what is a group-worthy task.
I think there definitely are some things...
that are group worthy, but it's extra work to set them up.
So this can't be our default and it can't be just like a vibe that group is better than individual or whole class.
There are lots of things that make a lot more sense as individual slash whole class activities.
Like if you're having students solve math problems, why do you want students to collaborate on that?
Can they collaboratively understand it?
No, like each individual kid has to understand it.
And yes, I think there's opportunity to learn from peers.
I think that can be good.
but it should be purposeful and it should be selective.
The other way that I think groups can go wrong is we divide kids into stations and we have one teacher work with one group and then the other kids do hopefully something productive.
This, of course, is much more popular at elementary, especially in the early grades.
And in a lot of cases, you know, we need the opportunity to work with a small group directly, you know, have that teacher time freed up.
But what is the rest of the class doing there?
Are they wasting that time?
Is it actually productive?
If we're so allergic to anything whole group or anything individual, it is okay to have your kids sit at their desks and do their own work.
They do not have to be talking.
They do not have to be in a group.
And it's okay for kids to sit in rows i know that's probably you know some sort of crime to say these days that kids can sit in rows but they can they don't have to sit in table groups they will talk less when they're not supposed to if they sit in rows they will focus better they will distract each other less if they're sitting in rows so i'm absolutely not saying don't ever do group work i'm saying let's be very careful about it and let's not assume that it's the best for everything and let's only do it when it makes sense let me know what you think