Organising individual and group learning

Adult Literacy and Numeracy (ALN) Curriculum Framework for Scotland

Part Two: Practice

2.2 Organising individual and group learning 

We know that effective adult literacy and numeracy learning should relate to individual goals but we also know that adults learn from others when working in groups.  Drawing up ground rules with a group of learners can provide tutors with a useful opportunity to encourage the whole group to challenge discriminatory language and stereotyping.  This can also be a way of promoting a working culture of mutual respect and support.

There are four advantages of learning in a group:

  • Groups provide a supportive environment for learning

When people work together on a shared task it provides encouragement to everyone and an atmosphere can be generated that enhances the learners’ self image and encourages them to greater effort. The sense of solidarity created can provide the security necessary to take risks and experiment in a safe environment, helping to overcome individual anxieties and generate confidence.

  • Groups provide a challenge for learners

In a group new ranges of views, prejudices and experiences are met, all of them calling for learning changes and widening horizons.  The group can provide a stimulus for change, for increased awareness and critical reflection helping adults to become more conscious of, and more effective in, their learning.

  • A group can provide resources to build richer and more complex structures for learning

The group can draw upon the variety of experience and resources possessed by its members, and so present a wider range of possible solutions to problems. The participants have their own learning styles so the methods available in the teaching-learning process are greatly multiplied. The resources that both the learner and the tutor can call upon are greatly increased by the existence of the group.

  • The group dynamic

The group has a life and momentum of its own. It creates and maintains motivation, aids retention and sets a pace of learning that is satisfying to most of its members. Loyalty to the group will often bring about greater effort at particular times than any demand the tutor can make. 

Context and purpose for learning

One of the men in a group of literacy and numeracy learners is a farmer who is on the committee of an association which arranges ploughing competitions. The post of Chair to the committee is allocated on a rotational basis, and his turn would be coming round in a couple of months. He felt nervous about his inability to speak in a group setting and to take coherent notes. The group discussed this and agreed that, as well as joining forces to help the farmer, they could turn the activity into a learning project for everyone.

After discussion the group decided to work as a ?Fundraising for Charity? group.  Everyone in the group adopted a post on the committee, and wrote up reports relevant to their post. The fundraising function of the committee introduced a substantial numeracy element into the curriculum for this group, and the focus for their work has been the fundraising ideas suggested by committee members.

Since the group started work on this project, the farmer has done a lot of writing and talking in the group, and is now not at all worried either by taking notes or speaking in a group setting. He feels more confident and understands the need to pace himself and not aim too high in terms of vocabulary used. He also reckons that ?there?s a lot of bluff in this chairing lark?.

The tutor?s final comments: "I’ve been quite surprised and pleased by the effects of the project, not only on our chairman, but on all members of the group - a vindication of the student-led approach." 

This curriculum encourages a variety of modes of learning - one-to-one and groups - but encourages group provision wherever practical. Within groups, however, practitioners may find it hard to balance individuals? goals and needs with those of the group. Group management skills, thoughtful preparation and appropriate resources can help, but it remains, as many practitioners testify, "a hard nut to crack". Also, clustered one-to-one or flexible learning may remain preferable for learners with lifestyles influenced, for example, by mental health difficulties or by childcare demands.

In literacy and numeracy groups, the tutor may wish to organise the work differently according to whether the group or the individual’s agenda predominates.

Where the group activity is the priority this could come first, with individuals and pairs working on their own goals in the second half.

If the group activity generates the individuals? learning tasks the tutor needs a good and handy collection of resources and the ability to select from them quickly and confidently.

Group activities and individual programmes
The four learners in the "Super Shopper" group were supported by a group tutor and two volunteers. They worked on their own individual programmes for the first hour as negotiated the previous week. There is a varied bank of practical, paper and IT resources available from which tutors and volunteers select and adapt. Two learners used worksheets to practise the operations while another practised weighing with both balance and digital scales in preparation for an SQA unit. A fourth identified and counted coins for a shopping task.
 
A break for coffee provided opportunities for real money transactions before the group changed to its joint activity of identifying best buys in fruit juices.  This was part of an ongoing sequence of work which has included shopping for light bulbs, chocolate tasting, examination of supermarket wars, food additives, as well as value for money in newspapers, CD and video-cassettes. These topics have come from group discussions and involve a great deal of work on time, weights and  percentages as well as reading information and deciphering graphic information.  Visits out to the shops naturally involved planning, estimating and recording results.

Critical literacy and numeracy are major features in group work discussions, including the language of advertising and special offers and the way packaging can deceive!

The group enjoyed identifying (from their own experience) what had been left out of the advertising blurbs for cheap flights and tried to make out the message of the  extremely small print at the bottom of the adverts.   Another activity which promoted critical comment was identifying the language of special offers like "Three for Two", "Family packs" and  "Buy one and get one free".  They discussed the power of these phrases and compared their experiences of buying (and  storing!) such offers.

During their visit to the local supermarket, researching value for money topics, there had been a chance to compare different shapes of shampoo bottles which contained similar amounts of shampoo.  This resulted both in arguments  on whether packaging is made to deceive or merely to attract and quizzical studies of other fancily packaged products like deodorants.

Where learners have not yet cohered round an issue or where new members need to be integrated, the tutor may choose to prepare individual worksheets for the first half of the session and then bring the group together for an enjoyable group activity at the end.

With this model the tutor will have to prepare individual work as negotiated at the previous session.

In both models a coffee break is useful not only for social interaction and resource-browsing but also for a concentration break. In one group, where coffee is not free, collecting and recording payment is used as a learning activity.

Group programmes and individual tasks
A group of literacy learners decided, having been sent a newsletter from another group, that they wanted to produce their own newsletter.

The learners used their writing for the newsletter to concentrate on the skills needed to achieve their individual goals, while work as a group enabled them to address issues around knowledge and understanding.  Some of the individual work included organising writing into paragraphs, work on spelling, reflecting on the process of having a letter scribed, selecting and organising information about that process which might be of interest to other literacy learners, proofreading writing concentrating on missing small words, using a personal dictionary to record words to use in writing and using examples of short forms to help with construction of a form.

Group work covered during the term included:

  • looking at examples of newsletters from various sources - church, school, literacy group, union - to consider audience, purpose, content, use of language, layout
  • deciding content - identifying what the group read first in magazines/newspapers, to select content of interest to other learners
  • discussion of differences between speaking and writing
  • planning writing - brainstorming ideas, selecting, organising, ordering ideas
  • vocabulary extension - using the group as a thesaurus, and consulting published thesaurus
  • discussion about  English as a continually evolving language
  • editing and proof reading each others’ contributions, with emphasis on writing that made sense to the reader
  • choosing a title for the newsletter
  • negotiating and agreeing layout: the group did not have access to ICT, so were unable to use a computer themselves to produce the newsletter, but they decided on font styles and size, illustrations and order, bearing in mind their audience, and took part in the final pasting-up session.

Where tutor assistants are used, mostly in community learning and development, they may be asked to work one-to-one with a particular member of the group or move around the group as appropriate. Sometimes they might prepare the work for individuals; at other times they use the materials prepared by the tutor. Using assistants can allow for both individual and group needs to be addressed and for learners to make a transition from embarrassed individual to confident group participant.

Using tutor assistants
 In a voluntary sector project for recovering/stabilised drug users there is literacies provision that is a voluntary element within a compulsory 12-week course. Learners make a self-assessment of their abilities and then choose particular aspects of literacies that they would like to work on within the group setting. Although some of the work is group based, using volunteers makes it possible for the learners to work on individual tasks. Each learner develops a portfolio of work to take away with them and decides which work (if any) they would like to include in a group booklet.

A range of tools and methodologies are used:
1. Individual Learning Plan: a variety of Plans are used, from the very brief three questions to a more detailed format that may take several sessions to complete. These are reviewed at the end of an agreed period.

2. Evaluation of progress: again a range of methods is offered and learners choose the method they feel works best for them. This will involve a review of the Individual Learning Plan but it may be in the form of a tape recording, a letter, production of a portfolio, a completed form, a post-it note, etc.

3. Literacy/numeracy diaries have been used by some learners to provide a starting point for understanding current uses and identifying potential uses. 

Where space allows, tutors have experimented with clusters of one-to-ones in one room under the supervision of a group tutor who may gradually institute some group activities. Once again a coffee break can be a useful first step to building a group.

An alternative to the established group/one-to-one or cluster models is possible with suitable premises, substantial hours and adequate staffing. Adult literacy/numeracy study centres   with large open-plan accommodation can  set up a "Community of Learning". This might provide  individual tuition with  opportunities for group  work  where a number of learners are interested in looking at a similar idea (such as handwriting, magazine work, spelling hints and tips). Only those wishing to stop their individual work would participate.  The element of choice here is an important factor in emphasising the learner’s ownership of the learning experience while   the move from non-participation to participation is an observable stage in the new learner’s development.

Learners can drop in rather than join a group fixed by time, duration or membership.  They can choose to learn flexibly with short frequent input from paid tutor and/or gaps for learners to work alone. Learners can attend for several sessions per week: a model which research suggests can boost achievement.

In this setting, the skills of the tutor are crucial in maintaining a dynamic within what could be a silent world of study. On the other hand a learner can choose a degree of private space and avoid the stress of being interrupted or even of being allocated a personal tutor. There is no need for artificially created topics for the purpose of working together - learners share the same environment and discussion is a day-to-day part of the experience.

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