Elevers laginsats i klassrummet : En litteraturstudie om grupparbetens roll och möjligheter i samhällskunskapsämnet

Sammanfattning: Group projects are a near universal part of, and can be seen in all parts of, the education-system. In collaborative assignments ranging from kindergarten to university-level group research projects. The goal is for students to learn, explain, formulate and to disclose the group-findings in papers or in front of the educational group. Students develop important 21st century skills during group-work projects such as the ability to collaborate, to think critically, to problem solve and to manage their own performance in relations to theirs and others academic goals. In all levels of education, the innate difficulties of group-activities can be seen and appear quite abstract to solve on an individual as well as on a group level. This paper aims to summarize the teachers view on group-activities in connection to social studies and what type of structuring can be done by the teacher to promote student-learning and achievement. The study concludes that teachers’ views are split between seeing the many benefits of the method such as greater academic achievement and the numerous skills that student develop, and against the fact that many dimensions of student group-work are outside of teachers influence. Perhaps the biggest caveat that teachers relate to are the difficulties in giving student an accurate assessment when they work according to the structuring that cooperative learning and the science promote. Scientific publications from both national and international perspectives have been selected to be the grounds of analysis and interpretation towards two research questions that have become clear through the theme of the results. Throughout this study it is clear that students may benefit from teachers learning to structure student group-work so that it may benefit the group-members more equally and so that it may be a time for cooperation for cognitive development.