APPENDIX 2

What tutors and students lie about small group teaching.

Tutors The informal atmosphere opportunity to get to know students at a personal level and for them to get to know me. Feeling of informality and, when thins go right, that students have learnt something and even in statistics enjoyed themselves. Seeing a student suddenly grasp an idea for the first time, which for him or her makes a number of other disjointed areas simultaneously fall into place. I can be stimulated by students ideas Opportunity for providing instantaneous, personal, feedback on their own thoughts and efforts. The educational goals are readily defined, almost as a contract between me and the group. Students I can personally have a greater influence on what is being discussed. I can actually remember, and feel I understand what we are discussing. Being able to participate and to find out other peoples ideas. I like the flexibility of a small group. We arent bound to a rigid schedule. It teaches you how to converse in a literate manner. Helps develop your power of analysing problems and arriving at solutions. By being in a smaller group, one feels part of a class rather than just another face in a sea of faces. I actually feel more part of the university.

Difficulties and dislikes

Tutors Keeping my mouth shut. Getting a discussion going. It often requires considerable skill to direct discussion in fruitful directions. It requires considerably more mental alertness and flexibility than a formal lecture, and can be a bit of a strain. Getting students to see me as an equal, talk to me as they would their peers, and lose their inhibitions about displaying ignorance in front of men and their peers. Very difficult to establish the kind of atmosphere in which students will begin to talk. They tend to be very much afraid of not saying the right thing. Shutting up the vociferous. Bringing in the meek. How to deal with a poor or irrelevant answer.

Students
A small group can easily be dominated by one person When members of the group will not talk. Long silences. Being asked to contribute when you dont want to. Being asked to contribute when you dont want to. Being directly asked vague questions. A feeling of being assessed by the lecturer through your answers to questions and your attitudes. Sometimes you feel threatened by the closeness of the lecturers. There is a vast amount of research evidence on group work and it is in a constant state of expansion and revision. The fact remains that it can be described as work done by other people in other places for other purposes and this provides a ready excuse for teachers to reject it or at least ignore it. The notion of the teacher as researcher, therefore, has a lot to commend it.

D. Jacques (2000 p39/40)