SELS Dialogues Journal Volume 3 Issue 1

Pedagogy and Critical Thinking
Group Work: A Barrier to Learning?
by Yangming Hu and Dr. Richard Williamson
As one of the most common cooperation methods,
group work is applied to almost every field including
education and workplaces. Although group work has
such popularity and frequent connection to everyone’s
life, the problems with this mode of collaboration draw
people’s attention. It is true that group work may be
good for learning in certain situations such as general
idea exploration, but it may be inefficient and hard to
facilitate in many other circumstances. It is difficult
to track individual progress during group work, which
often causes problems like inconsistency and delay
in completing work. At the same time, the working
ability of group members is rarely at the same level.
The difference between the skills within the group
may cause the high-performing members to take more
responsibilities and work in the group project while
the low-performing members make few contributions.
Moreover, it is very difficult for instructors to grade group
work fairly as individual contribution differs, and these
contributions usually cannot be evaluated through a
standard system. Finally, group work can sometimes
create situations where the group gravitates to the ideas
of a dominant member and the equally relevant ideas of
others stay unshared.
While group work may be an appealing instructional
strategy to use, there are enough cautions about it for
educators to think very carefully about its pedagogical
value. When people talk about the nature of group work,
one of the most common ideas they come up with might
be interpersonal cooperation. This aspect of group work
requires consistency in communication and progress,
and it challenges the individual personalities and
work styles. Research indicates that “managing group
dynamics for successful implementation of group work
is time intensive for instructors” (Chang and Brickman,
2018, p.3). It is time consuming for instructors to
implement organized group work effectively. The
instructor might find it difficult to present a wellorganized
plan that passively addresses the differences
among students. The lack of appropriate guidance
might cause confusion in students while doing the work,
such as, cooperating with other group members, and
dealing with various issues and conflicts that occur
during the work process. Despite the difficulties in
organizing the group and gauging individual progress,
the instructors also face problems in designing a fair
group work grading system. According to research,
current grading systems might not be able to reflect
every member’s personal performance accurately
(Chang and Brickman, 2018). When some members
work extremely hard while others just work for a passing
mark, it is reasonably inappropriate to give the whole
group a single grade. The hardworking students are
not recognized for their individual contributions while
free-riders are tacitly allowed. Unfortunately, to solve
this, “researchers have recommended administering
both holistic rubrics in which students are given points
that they must divide between the group members to
gauge contributions and analytical rubrics with multiple
indicators such as attendance, cooperativeness, and
academic contributions”, work that few educators are
likely to engage in due to its complexity (Lejk and Wyvill,
2001; Johnston and Miles, 2004, as cited in Chang and
Brickman, 2018, p.2).
Another concerning issue about group work is the
disparity of working ability of members within the group.
The unavoidable gap between the most productive
members and the low-performance members might
place too much responsibility on certain members or
lead to the exclusion of some less skillful participants.
Unequal contribution is the main problem identified
by most students involved in group work. Research
indicates that, “students in both high- and lowperformance
groups still complained of unequal
contributions” (Chang and Brickman, 2018, p.1). The
high-performance members are usually the major
contributors in a group. Their skills and personalities
push them to take leading positions, while in other
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