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Chapter Ten – Summary and Conclusions – Page 316
One set of these findings involves the demonstration of a group in action, with a
purposefully assembled body of theory used to exemplify processes as they occur. This
leads to a collection of examples or sticky moments, important both for emphasising
significant process as well as for highlighting potential opportunities where the theory
and analysis offer ways to help the teachers to work differently. These sticky moments
include: a difficult beginning; an eruption of emotion in an hiatus; the dramatic
appearance of a powerful symbol; phenomena transferred to, enacted in and managed in
an allied reflective space; and disconnection from reality at an ending. These are
understood respectively as illustrations: of timelessness, and of containment, essential to
the work of the group; of how an individual can come unconsciously through a form of
symbolisation to be the focus of and conveyor of experience for the group; of
condensation of an array of meanings into a single instance; of how displacement offers
potential for experience, appreciation, understanding and resolution; and, finally, of how
an absence of mutual contradiction can, amongst other things, allow the unconscious to
remain so, in this case at a cost.
A second set of findings involves the elaboration and exemplification of the potential of
this approach. This includes the employment of the approach in the planning, use and
understanding of learning experiences that take place in a wide range of groups, as well
as the capacity in action to recognise phenomena as they occur and to know how they
can be subjected to a more group-aware process of reflection.
Taking the two questions together, the research can be seen to have done three things. It
theorises existing and new phenomena from a particular group perspective; it provides
another level or vertex in any small group experience for consideration of phenomena;