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Section 8 – Information literacy and reflective learning The action research spiral – Evaluate

8.2. Evidence of students’ learning outcomes

8.2.3 Working in group and learning together

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Some students in particular showed a high level of self-criticism:

Yasmine: We had different opinions: I wanted to insert many things, many ideas…..It is not easy for me to discard something, everything seems important in some way….However, when I compared our work with the work of other groups, I realised that the best ones were just the more synthetic ones. This is a fault of mine, I need to experience my mistakes and then I am disposable to admit that I was wrong.

Most students also expressed their difficulties to communicate effectively, both each other within their group and to the class during the final presentation: more than once, both in learning journals and during the peer assessment they underlined this aspect.

Giacinto(During group presentation - He is describing the first stage of the group work): The problem was that we adopted the same words with different meanings, we felt the need to “define”

what we were speaking about, because we intended different things while using the same word.

Silvio: I find that it wasn’t so easy to convey effectively the way we proceeded (here the student is referring to the “research report”) One would imagine that this is simply a matter of describing your work. It was not easy indeed. How is it possible to explain how we arrived to settle our work? There isn’t even a precise moment when we had defined it, it was such a mess….

felt particularly satisfied with this aspect, since students, during focus groups, had expressed their negative attitude towards team work and their frustration for previous unsuccessful experiences.

In fact, though most students underlined the problems faced working in group, none judged in a negative way this experience. Rather, many of them compared their negative attitude at the starting of the activity with the satisfaction of succeeding in their tasks and of having their efforts acknowledged.

Caio: I had some negative experiences at the secondary school and I was not enthusiastic about starting this activity. However, everything went right and I felt really satisfied at the end. We did a good work.

Most students described their work as a “journey” from uncertainty and confusion towards a clear goal and the fulfilment of a shared task

Giacomo: I experienced this in a positive way. The starting was really hard. There was such a confusion, we did not know what we were going to do. We had to define, together, our goal.

Eleonora: The most satisfying moment was the final presentation. It is not usual to complete a course in such a way. The final day we were excited and everybody was satisfied, it has been a really nice experience

The group work, according to students, helped them to acquire new competencies and to

“empower” the existing ones.

Agata: I believe that this has helped us to learn how to do a real piece of research. We learned the actual process.

Mario: I found it interesting to have the opportunity to chose the subject for the team work. I was interested and therefore I engaged myself …..

Some students clearly expressed the opinion that the research task had had an impact on their attitude towards team working. They also recognised the existence of different approaches to the same problem and the need to share knowledge and competence.

Paolo: I found it interesting to see different ways to approach a problem. I am a very practical one, I need to put my hand on everything , while Caio is a methodical one and he is good at managing and scheduling. Mario is the reflective one, he was in charge of writing the journal. Each of us had his role to play. However, there was something to learn from other people .

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Flavia: The group work has been a painful experience, but, from another side it has been important for me, I mean, it has helped me to recognise my limits. I am used to study alone, I don’t like to work with other people. I’ve seen that I am much more bullying than how I expected to be. I agree to listen to other but….when it comes to take decisions…. I want to be the one who decide…

Actually, just those groups who had to face the most difficult problems in managing personal relationships (the third and the fourth ones) expressed, in an even stronger, way the idea that the team work itself had been stimulating, though the final presentation was not completely satisfying. This is consistent with what I found in literature: even if the group climate is unsupportive or threatening, the reflection about group processes stimulate learners to take specific actions to improve their team effectiveness (Loo and Thorpe, 2002).

I am satisfied, even if we could have done better

Gemma: We had lots of contrasts. At the end we had to divide in two subgroups, otherwise it was not possible to go on. None of us wanted to have a conflict, so we divided our group.

This has, in some way, spoiled our work. However, even if I found painful to work with others, I think it is important to learn… I mean, being able to work in team is crucial in workplaces…

Students clearly identified in the starting and in the final steps of the research task the most critical aspects of their assignment , which is described in Kuhlthau’s work.

Fabrizio: The most difficult moments were the starting stage and the final synthesis. Here it is frequent to have contrasts: when you start to work you have to define a common goal, at the end you must set up the final product. Everyone has a different idea of how this should appear and it is difficult to abandon it.

The problem of managing time, in particular when working in team provided another opportunity to adopt reflective thinking.

Fedro: The fact that we had to present our work helped us to manage our time: we had a deadline, we were forced to synthesise, to define a limit, and some priorities. We probably had better scheduling our work but we didn’t do that. This was a mistake.

In general, the importance of team work as an opportunity to reflect as well as an educational chance has been acknowledged by most students:

Gerardo: While working in group you must be disposable to give up something. You have to know that the final product will be different from what would be if you had worked alone. In some way it will be better, in some way it will be worse. Anyway, it will be different as it is not “your” work.

Diana: I think the reason why we enjoyed this work is that we felt we had a common goal

Caterina: Working in group is in some way easier, in some way more difficult; you have to take in account different opinions, but you feel supported, you are not alone. Moreover, you have the opportunity to learn more, to learn from other people in your group.

8.3. Evaluation of the learning activity. Feedback from students and from critical