Group Dynamics and Experiential Learning
http://www.anped.org.br/reunioes/25/excedentes25/anapaulachavest18.rtf
Dynamics of Group: A Contribution Towards a Theoretical Practice
Trivializing
GT 18 Education of Youth and Adult
Ana Paula Pacheco e Chaves (PhD Student)
Faculty of Education daUNESP – Marília
CAPES Scholarship
Introduction
This article draws on years of experience in teaching situations where the motto has been the use of group dynamics as a tool essential to the learning process, especially for young people and adults. Roused by the perceived absence of applicant’s total use of group dynamics in formal educational settings (university, schools), I wonder what he has contributed to such practice, so common in educational processes and social business, stay still so far classrooms.
The use of group dynamics in most contexts in which witnessed its application is cheapened by misuse, characterized mainly by the disengagement of the theoretical knowledge of the function of group dynamics in the learning process and the consequent isolation a more comprehensive educational planning.
This article aims to justify the use of group dynamics in more solid theoretical basis in order to demonstrate its potential use as a valuable teaching strategy in the classroom. To that end, I explore here the ideas of philosopher John Dewey and Teixeira and the proposed Experiential Learning David Kolb.
Group Dynamics
Working with group dynamics, gained ground in training and formation processes, from the contributions of Kurt Lewin in 40 years, began with research conducted in the field of organizational behavior. His great innovation was the so-called T-groups (training groups), through which, among other important features of group development, realized the importance of reflecting on the action as a means of developing knowledge to improve the performance of individual.
Today, the group dynamics have been the main tools for training and educational processes, both in companies and institutions involved in the social area. Activities are of short duration, used as a pretext to engage and motivate people to be active part of their educational process. Character almost always playful, challenging, able to recreate the reality as experienced externally, group dynamics can become powerful instruments of motivation for change.
Basically these are the characteristics that define a group dynamics: short activities that use some specific technique, motivating, engaging, whose goals range from heating or awareness of a group, learning some skill, reflection on some subject, or attitude change. If on one hand the simplicity of this definition characterizes any activity with this character and a clear goal as group dynamics, on the other it is this simplicity that has taken the group dynamics of the potential educational tool to let them be used as instruments of closed in itself, isolated from the planning of the learning process characterized by cognition in the proportion that is cumulative or lead to something or has meaning (Dewey, 1959, p.153). In my view thus trivialized.
Techniques of Group Dynamics, in any of its specifications should not be applied to create a new model or differentiated instruction. Should be applied when seeking to establish permanent bases in a training philosophy that if you want to print at school or company (…) is not a magic potion capable of educating people and changing behavior, but only a valid educational strategy in that it inserts into a whole process, with a philosophy widely discussed and clearly delineated goals. (ANTUNES, 1999, p.17)
Moreover, the extensive use of dynamics, even in the face of the growing sophistication and creativity of its implementation, reveals three integrated elements to his character education:
- seu primary use in learning situations for young people and adults embedded in group
- creating a situation that is widely experienced by the participants
- a presence of playfulness and challenge as motivators of participation (and possibly change)
These three elements attract attention by going against the conditions found in classrooms, especially high school, where one still observes a great reluctance to change the dynamic of education, however that the terms in vogue (constructivism is the current) are present as concepts to be deployed in the classroom. But the dynamics in the classroom (although changes such as living room environment) has been continually shocked with the rhythm and speed of information and motivation out of it. This anomaly which manifests itself even more strongly in the current problems it is in High School, where lack of clarity of own goals are more directly observable. (Di Giorgi, memo)
New Curriculum for Secondary Education (PCNEM) also indicate the need for paradigm shift in the educational process:
Faced with this global world, which presents many challenges for the man, education emerges as a necessary utopia indispensable to humanity in its construction of peace, freedom and social justice (…) Considering this context, we attempted to build New methods of curriculum organization for high school committed on one side, with the new meaning of work in the context of globalization and on the other, with the active subject, the human person who will appropriate this knowledge to improve themselves as such in the workplace and in social practice. There is therefore need to break with the traditional models for the achievement of the objectives proposed for the high school. (MEC / PCNEM, 1996, p.14)
The great advantage of the possibilities of the use of group dynamics in the classroom is the opportunity to create a fun and challenging experience with the group of students, to be worked out from the teaching plan, gradually introducing changes that make you understand performance of a different paradigm on which the teacher himself, through his experience, is able to generalize to other areas of their teaching in order to achieve break with traditional models. But for the first step is taken, we must be aware about which theoretical model is based on choice of group dynamics.
I personally always use that group dynamics in order to climb a step in the process of change desired, use as a theoretical framework for planning the educational process, the Experiential Learning. The reason for this, and have adopted this paradigm, as an educator, is the fact that group dynamics mean, ultimately, an experience that participants of a group experience. And it is this experience which starts the learning process.
The Experiential Learning
Experiential learning provides a parameter for the analysis and strengthening of the factors that link work, personal development and education (KOLB, 1984).
Based on the thesis (first articulated by LS Vygotsky) that learning by experience is the process by which human development occurs (KOLB, 1984), this educational approach is well known to bind the proposal to the intellectual origins of the work of Dewey, Lewin and Piaget – Kolb considered by the builders of the foundation of learning through experience – and to emphasize the central role that has experience in the learning process.
The contributions of Lewin, Piaget and Dewey, are of equal importance in the formation of experiential learning. Each of them drew up a significant portion to form an educational theory that considers man as a being integrated with nature, able to learn from their experience and conscious reflection on her, and driven by their purposes.
Kurt Lewin’s contribution comes from his work with group dynamics and developing action research methodology. Consistent theme throughout the work of Lewin was his concern about the integration between theory and practice […].( KOLB, 1984, p.9), summarized in his classic phrase: Nothing is as practical as a good theory.
Piaget, experiential learning lent theory of cognitive development, through which the experience permeates the dialectical process of assimilation and accommodation of knowledge and learning.
Dewey, pragmatist philosopher said, saw the experience as an organizing focus of learning, the foundation illustrated below with the quote chosen to characterize the Kolb experiential learning:
If one tries to formulate the educational philosophy implicit in the practices of the new education, I think we can find some common … In the imposition from the top are opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline, opposed free activity; learning that comes from texts and teachers, learning through experience, the acquisition of practical and technical isolated by exercise, they oppose the acquisition of them as means to achieve objectives that have direct appeal and vital, to prepare for a future more or less remote, are opposed to making the most of this opportunity of a lifetime, the static targets and materials, are opposed to acquisition in a changing world (…).
I believe that the fundamental unit of the new philosophy is found in the idea that there is an intimate and necessary relation between the processes of actual experience and education. (DEWEY apud KOLB, 1984, p.5)
For Dewey still, experience is the result of human actions on the environment, which arise out reactions in which both modified. To the extent that man has the ability to assign meaning to the lived experience, reviewing it and planning its future, we are doing education (TEIXEIRA, 1980).
It can be stated further that if on one hand the learning process is individual to the extent that any educational activity is a release of forces and impulses and tendencies existing in the individual, which are part of the element of direction and orientation of the activity (TEIXEIRA, 1980, p.122) on the other social life is perpetuated through education, communication and transmission which has a fundamental role in the interrelationship between groups, all education is social, being as it is, an achievement in a way to act together. Nothing is taught, nor learned, but through a common understanding or a common usage. (TEIXEIRA, 1980, p.117-120). This means that the balance between these two processes combining two elementary forces for the educational process.
The element common to these three authors, and given the centrality of experience in education, and the dialectical process between itself and the thinking is the assumption that learning is a continuous process throughout the life of the individual and their development is through experience, through the push towards a specific purpose.
So what sets the Experiential Learning educational principles are built upon a clear vision of the human being who wants to form and function of education in this process. Rescued the statements made above about the main elements of experiential learning, we quote the following description of this theory:
This distinguishes the theory of experiential learning theories of Rationalists and other cognitive theories that tend to give primary emphasis to the acquisition, handling and use of abstract symbols, and behavioral learning theories deny any role for consciousness and subjective experience in the learning process. It should be emphasized, however, that the objective of this work is not put experiential learning as a third alternative (…), but to suggest, through experiential learning, a holistic, integrative combines experience, perception, cognition and behavior. (KOLB, 1984, p.20)
The theory in practice
What does that say for the use of group dynamics?
The prism of Experiential Learning, here’s how I see the group dynamics:
- The group dynamics is a tool through which one can live an experience.
A simulated, designed to create experiences for those who learn, is to start its own process of research and learning. (KOLB, 1984, p.11)
This is why when planning the learning objective to be achieved via a dynamic group, requires you to choose carefully what kind of catapult the dynamic process of inquiry and learning leading to the stated purpose.
- Ao working group, we are creating the opportunity to exercise the function in society through communication and exchange, in that there is plurality and differences to be worked. Considering the diversity in a classroom, one can say that it is the ideal environment for group dynamics, since who knows if it facilitates the process of work on them.
- The group dynamic also works on the level of individual motivation, in that the participants experience an activity. Having positioned to be a response to specific stimuli or general, born of his own body and the environment in which the individual lives, and containing the potential for release of forces and impulses and tendencies existing in the individual, and he worked and exercised, and therefore directed (DEWEY apud Teixeira, 1959, p.15-22), it becomes an educational activity – from the contextualized educational purposes defined by objectives that consider the needs and identity of the group of participants. As illustrated Dewey, in the following example:
The boy who rears a parrot has to keep his gaze fixed on this and notice the pressure oscillations of the wire in your hand. His senses are avenues to knowledge, not because external facts are somehow conveyed to the brain, but because they used to do something with a certain objective. The qualities of things are seen and felt grasp on what you are doing and are, therefore, strongly perceived, have a meaning, have meaning. (Dewey, 1959, p.155).
- Cabe group dynamics drawn from reality the environment where there is a dialectical tension between the immediate and concrete experience and analytic detachment – since learning is best facilitated by this environment (KOLB, 1984, p. 22) – to recreate you through the proposed activity, giving meaning to the purpose of its use.
- The process of learning stimulated by group dynamics, to be effectively considered educational, that has lead to the attribution of meaning that the experience in order to revise it in the real context and plan for the future within the group’s reality. That is, once considering the needs of the participant group, the result of the application of group dynamicsmust add to the reality of the student must carry a seed of change to be reflected in a differentiated practice:
Learning from experience is to do a retrospective and prospective association between what we do to things and what a result of these things make us enjoy or suffer. Under these conditions the action becomes an attempt; experience to the world to know how it is, what if you suffer as a result becomes instruction – that is, the discovery of relationships between things. From this derive two important conclusions for education. 1) Experience is primarily an active-passive action, it is not primarily cognitive. But 2) the measure of the value of experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads. It includes cognition in the proportion that is cumulative or lead to something or has meaning. (Dewey, 1959, p.153)
- A group dynamics can contribute to the exercise of formal operations in so far as to analyze the experience and generalize it to other contexts (see Experiential Learning Cycle below) transactions are released to the duration, ie Indeed, the psychological context of the subject’s actions, with which they afford of the causal dimension, and its properties implicative or logic, to reach finally a character out of time (Piaget, 1990, p.45).
Then being the pursuit of abstraction and reflection on reality in order to create opportunities for significant changes in attitude, we value the potential of this educational strategy and learning opportunity. This exercise has improved efficiency and educational results (in terms of knowledge production), children at this stage of development (according to Piaget, from 11 years). Note also that the detailed planning and the exact targets they want to achieve with the implementation of the dynamics must be prepared carefully.
Another crucial element in the educational process is the role of teacher as facilitator of attribution of meaning and planning for the future resulting from the application of dynamics. As facilitator of the process, the teacher has the responsibility of planning consistent with their teaching plan, implementation of the dynamics in order to involve all participants in the activity without any coercion (hint: if someone refuses to participate, you can help as an observer. Experiencing the experience should never be a traumatic process, especially in a classroom), and driving the process until the desired result (through open questions is one of the simplest and most efficient ways of conducting the process). It is not up to it in any way the interpretation of the situation experienced by students (a big warning sign right now: the role of momentum in a process of school learning should never be associated with any attempt to psychologizing of the group or individuals involved it).
The Experiential Learning Cycle developed by Kolb, model quite well this contextual basis described above. I use it as a basic framework for the planning of any educational process started with a group dynamic.
The Cycle of Experiential Learning
The Experiential Learning Cycle has four stages from the experiment started and developed through a dialectical movement between experience and analysis.
The certainty that both Dewey and Kolb found in experiential learning, is based on the transformative power of belief that this process is cyclical. What Kolb has therefore been to determine which are the crucial points to close the cycle and be able to intervene in reality differently, integrating opposing processes to transform the impulse blind couple in purpose. (KOLB, 1984, p.38). Or as Dewey says, is a mixture of desire and impulse to acquire the force that drives what otherwise is blind […].( DEWEY apud KOLB, 1984)
Once you determine the purpose of use of group dynamics and the design of tailor-made to achieve this goal, it is applied, giving up early in the process of learning seen as a dialectic process integrating experience and concepts, observations and action (KOLB, 1984, p.22).
The cycle (Kolb, 1984, p.42) Experiential Learning begins with concrete experience, in this case with the application of dynamic activity chosen. Examples of activities that may constitute the group dynamic range from reading a novel, a play, a game, even a well-designed simulation. What is essential is that the activity contains elements aligned with the planned educational objective. Secondly, give yourself the reflective observation. This is the moment when what one wants is that participants make comments, exclamations, statements, finally, to express their impressions and feelings about what they experienced. It reflects the experience you want to see, without interruption or filter. While at first there is room for a natural manifestation of the affective side of the individual, second, we are describing what has been experienced. It is only the third time, abstract conceptualization, which is initiated at a rational process of abstraction, when one begins to conceptualize the observations made and give them meaning from, not just more of group dynamics, but the individual experience or group that was reflected in the dynamics.
So far, it has been the assimilation of knowledge. From here, when experience is apprehended and turned into extension of learning, we are creating ways to accommodate that knowledge. Hesmisférios the right and left brain, which directly correspond to the distinction between practical and cognitive approaches abstract experiential learning are used in these first three phases of the cycle. The last step in the cycle of experiential learning, is called active experimentation, which is nothing more than the creation of alternative changes that can support a new experience, planning for the future. And then he resumes the cycle with the new experience.
The central idea here is that learning and, therefore, require both a knowledge and understanding figurative representation of experience and a transformation of this representation. The seizure figurative or operative transformation alone is not enough. The simple perception of experience is not enough to learn, something must be done with it. Similarly, transformation alone is not the learning, there must be something to be transformed, some state or experience upon which it is acting. (KOLB, 1984, p.42)
As Kolb, Dewey emphasizes the importance of extracting the learning process theorizing. This point is extremely important to note because it was insignificant in working with group dynamics. It is as if an idea (distorted) that excludes experiential theory. This is where print is the trivialization of the use of group dynamics and if it takes the strength of learning. Therefore, I reiterate this point: experiential learning, and therefore the use of group dynamics can and must have products if they want to have sound theoretical education. The theory is the structure and organization of practical learning, enriched as the act of thinking and thinking is the intentional effort to uncover the specific relationships between one thing we do and the consequence that follows, so that there’s continuity between the two … Think equivalent thus the patent, to make explicit the element of our experience intelligible. (Dewey 1959, p.159)
The thought or reflection ,(…) is the discernment of the relationship between what we try to do and what happens as a result.Without any mental element can not experience any significant (…) In painstaking discovery of relationships between our actions and what happens as a result of them, there is the mental element which is not manifested in the experiences of try and error. As he expresses this element increases with the value of experience. With this, he moves the quality of this, the change is so significant, we can call this kind of reflective experience – that is, reflective of excellence. (Dewey, 1959, p.158-159).
This character of thinking is contained in the proposal description that makes Dewey’s reflective experience, in my view, the summary of the experiential learning cycle proposed by Kolb:
This is referred to the general aspects of a reflective experience: a) perplexity, confusion and doubt, due to the fact that the person is involved in an incomplete situation whose character was not fully determined yet, 2) an estimate conjectural – a attempt to interpret the data elements, giving them a tendency to produce certain consequences, 3) a careful examination (observation, inspection, exploration, analysis) of all possible considerations that define and clarify the problem to solve; 4) the subsequent elaboration hypothesis of an attempt to make it more precise and consistent, by aligning themselves with a larger series of circumstances, 5) be based on the hypothesis designed for the action plan applies to existing states of affairs, do something to produce the expected result and proof in this manner for the hypothesis (…) [last two] makes the act of thinking in an experience. (Dewey, 1959, p.165)
One can not recall ever saying that Bourdieu, in one of his interviews, reflective analysis is that the only way to break the determinism of the habitus, the matrix of rules that control our social behavior through unconscious. It is a chance given to the character [that] was not fully determined yet, and which therefore still brings with it the possibility of change.
I also believe this same process can be analyzed under the theory of reflective abstraction and empirical analysis by Piaget, as the group dynamics, to monitor the evolution of the four stages of the cycle, have the potential to end a cycle of learning, then restarted with the implementation of changes in the new experience. When well-planned process can reach the next stage described by Piaget:
The reflective abstraction is already in itself a kind of operation that removes some coordination of their context, retaining them, and discarding the rest. The empirical abstraction is too, in a sense, but to a lesser degree, for this only choose among the observable realized, those who respond to a given question, while the reflective abstraction involves an ongoing activity, which may remain unconscious […]. The first result of reflexive abstractions is, therefore, entail either the differentiation of a coordination scheme to implement it anew, which increases the powers of the subject […], is the objectification of a process engineer who is, then, becomes the object of representation or thought, which increases the knowledge of the subject, enlarging the field of consciousness and enriching, so its conceptualization. (Piaget, 1995, p.278)
Returning to the proposal of PCNEM, we see that the group dynamics, supported by the theory of Experiential Learning can help teachers take their first steps in learning (from experience!) Of new models, to arrive eventually to the ideal that desires of students to develop basic skills that enable them to develop the capacity to continue learning (PCNEM, 1996, p.14). And I really think that the exercise of reflective abstraction is one of the most important in this process.
The use of group dynamics is just a small practical example developed from years of practice field that indicates a demand of the current educational reality of Brazil: paradigm shifts if we want to achieve through education, we must engage in the reflective analysis (originated from our experience!) from the moment of proposing a dynamic educational until the moment we are intervening with our proposal, the changes to the ideal of man and world we want. We must return to the exercise of philosophy, if only to apply a simple group dynamics.
After all, philosophy of education is, therefore, only the study of problems which relate to the formation of the best mental and moral habits in relation to the difficulties of contemporary social life (Teixeira, 1950, p.172).
ABSTRACT:
The goal of this article is to analyze the group dynamics through use the philosophical foundations of John Dewey and David Kolbs Theory of Experiential Learning and Its effectiveness to educational processes.
REFERENCES
ANTUNES, C. Manual of techniques of group dynamics awareness of play therapy. Petropolis, RJ: Editora Vozes. 17to. Ed
Dewey, J. Democracy and education. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional. 1959.
DEWEY, J. Life and education. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional. 1959.
KOLB, DA Experiential Learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 1984.
Piaget, J. Genetic epistemology. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. 1990.
PIAGET, J. reflective abstraction: relationships, arithmetic and logical order of spatial relations. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas. 1995.
TEIXEIRA, A. Progressive Education. São Paulo. Companhia Editora Nacional, 1950.
TEIXEIRA, AA pedagogy Dewey.In: col. The Thinkers: Dewey. São Paulo: Abril Cultural.1980.
http://www.suapesquisa.com/piaget/
Who was
One of the most important researchers in education and pedagogy, Jean Piaget was born in the city of Neuchâtel (Switzerland) on 9/8/1896 and died 09/17/1980. Specializes in psychology evolutionary psychology and also in the study of genetic epistemology. His studies revolutionized education pedagogy, for various views and overturned traditional theories related to learning.
He was living in the city of Zurich in 1918, where he worked in a laboratory of psychology and an intern at an outpatient psychiatry. Psychopathology study at the Sorbonne University in France.
Surveys
Piaget did research on the characteristics of child thought with French children and also mentally disabled. In the year 1921 wrote his first pedagogical theories. He was director of the Institute Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Switzerland and has taught child psychology at the University of Geneva.
Ideas
Piaget’s ideas are present in various colleges around the world. His theories seek to implement the learning spaces an innovative methodology that seeks to build creative and critical citizens. According to their theories, the teacher must not only teach but also, and above all, guide the students on the path of independent learning.
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
From early Jean Piaget demonstrated his powers of observation. At eleven, he noticed an albino blackbird in a square of your city. The observation of this bird led to his first scientific work. Graduated in Biology became interested in researching the development of knowledge in humans. The theories of Jean Piaget, so we try to explain how intelligence develops in humans. Hence the name given to his science of genetic epistemology, which is understood as the study of the mechanisms of increased knowledge.
It must be clear that Piaget’s theories have proven scientifically. That is, he not only described the process of development of intelligence but experimentally proved his thesis.
Summarize the theory of Jean Piaget is not an easy task, since his work has more pages than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Since she was drawn to reveal the development of human intelligence, Piaget worked compulsively on his goal, until the eve of his death in 1980 at eighty-four, leaving written about seventy books and over four hundred articles. We went over some ideas central to his theory, with the collaboration of the “Glossary of Terms”.
http://www.pedagogiaemfoco.pro.br/per09.htm
http://www.coladaweb.com/pedagogia/jean-piaget