Abstract
Group work is a well-known approach in the Nordic educational context. Some reasons might be its potential as a framework for democratic education and student’s inclusion (Apple et al., 2022). Others might be policies drawing attention to student-centeredness, efficiency or flexibility (Larsen, 2013; Andreasen, 2020). Recent decades there has also been an interest in group work as a context for student´s development of creativity, cooperation, critical thinking and problem solving and cooperation skills. However, it is also well known that students can meet difficulties in group work settings that might challenge the development of skills and competencies. The aim of this paper is to analyze and summarize some of these potentials, possibilities and challenges of group work in digital educational settings in the post-pandemic society. The theoretical framework is Dewey and other theories drawing attention to the democratic as well as the more general learning potential of group work (Dewey, 2005). In addition, sociological and didactical theories addressing youth culture and inequality are included (Bernstein, 2001; Ziehe, 2012). The empirical material includes different kinds of documents, such as course regulations and legal documents framing the group work activities in educational contexts, qualitative interviews with students and teachers as well as observations conducted in different educational contexts at university colleges such as teacher education, technical education and development projects involving schools and courses at a university. The results of the analysis show that even group work appears as a context with a strong potential for democratic learning and inclusion, unfolding this potential is challenging. The challenges can be understood, among other things, in the light of the framework set by e.g. study programs as well as the teachers' abilities to guide the students and deal with the differences that are represented in classes. The different approaches to group work are presented in an upcoming book and selected perspectives will be presented at the conference (Duch, 2023). In a Nordic context, this is an important contribution to the discussion about developing the well fare state building on democracy and striving for equality.
Info
Conference Abstract, 2023
UN SDG Classification
DK Main Research Area
Humanities
