Currently reading Eddy et al. (2015) on “Caution, student experience may vary: Social identities impact a student’s experience in peer discussions”

I am still on the “tyranny of participation” trip, this time reading about students’ experiences in peer discussions and inequities in roles that students take on in those discussions. Generally, we assume that students learn through peer discussions, but we also know that not all students learn equally in that format. What are the barriers and are they maybe systemic?

In “Caution, student experience may vary: Social identities impact a student’s experience in peer discussions“, Eddy et al. (2015) investigated students’ preferred roles in group work (assuming that students tend to mostly take on their preferred role, since they are free to find a group that lets them act in that role; but this was not tested). They found four roles:

• leader/explainer, who reported liking to take control of the discussions and explaining to others, never indicating that they also listen, in total 27% of students
• collaborator, who either said they liked groups in which everybody contributes equally, or who report to lead and listen and ask questions, in total 44% of students
• listener, who report they like material being explained to them, for 11% of students
• recorder, who like to note down group responses but did not report to listen, explain, or lead. This was the preference reported by 5% of students
• “other” — the rest that couldn’t be classified

But which students end up in which roles?

• Despite being equally competent etc, women were less likely than men to report liking to be the leader/explainer, and they were 4 times more likely to want to collaborate rather than lead. Women are also 4 times more likely than men to want to be a listener, and 11 times more likely to want to be a recorder. The average male student had a 45% chance of wanting to lead, whereas the average female student only had an 18% chance of that.
• Asian-American and international students were more likely to want to be a listener than their white American peers and less likely to want to be in other roles (and no international student wanted to be a recorder!).
• The more competent students were, the less likely they were to want to be listeners

Focussing on barriers to participation in peer discussions, Eddy et al. (2015) investigate three specifically:

• Students are excluded from the discussion by actions of their groupmates: Eddy et al. (2015) asked about the “worst part of group work”, which, it turns out, is that other students in the group don’t know enough in 1/4 responses, that someone in the group is lazy, shy, etc in 1/8th of the responses, that someone is preventing others from participating in also 1/8th of responses, groupmates with conflicting ideas or personal discomfort with participation with 1/10th of the responses each. Investigating how other members of the group can limit participation, Eddy et al. (2015) find that it is usually one student dominating (54%), fear of reactions (26%), and the pace of the discussion being too fast (20%). When specifically asked whether there are dominators in the groups, international and Asian-American students were most likely to report that there is one.
• Students are anxious about participating in peer discussion: not really — only international students; and women are less likely than men to be comfortable in whole-class discussions.
• Students do not see value in peer discussions: The better a group functions, the more values students report from peer discussions. For women, it is especially important to have a friend in the group to feel that peer discussions are valuable.

So what now? In their discussion, Eddy et al. (2015) make several recommendations:

• Use peer discussions to promote gender equity in participation, since male and female students report similar levels of anxiety for peer discussions vs women being more anxious in whole-class discussions.
• Consider structuring interactions during peer discussions to improve participation equity, for example using the suggestions in Tanner (2013).
• They also suggest to reconsider assigning students to groups (so they have the chance to be in a group with a friend). My thought on that is that you can have a both/and solution to avoid students who don’t have friends to feel left out, for example by asking students for their top 3 connections and then still assigning groups, making sure that everybody gets to be with someone from their top 3, but that otherwise the groups are diverse and assigned.
• Also, group discussions need to be structured in a way, and be at a level of difficulty, that contributions from more than one person are actually needed (because otherwise what’s the point?), for example in a jigsaw activity. But making several students share one set of materials to do something (like only one worksheet) may limit who gets to interact with the artifact and thus make it more difficult for some students to learn from the activity.

Eddy et al. (2015) end by writing “How instructors choose to structure—or not to structure—their students’ peer discussions may have a differential impact on participation, and only by identifying the barriers underlying participation differences can instructors design and implement learning interventions that are effective for all students“. Here it is important to remember that they are working in a US context, so findings for example about race might not be transferrable to other contexts. Also gender dynamics might be different in other contexts (although Ballen et al. (2017) find a large gender gap in participation even in Norway…). But even though the results may be specific to the context of the study, the important point still stands: We need to understand barriers to participation. And — coming back to the “tyranny of participation” — reconsider what we really mean by student engagement and whether what we can observe is really what matters most, contributes to learning, or if there are other factors that influence learning that we have no idea about and can definitely not observe just based on how much airtime someone takes up in a discussion and that might have other barriers we need to identify and take away.

Eddy, S. L., Brownell, S. E., Thummaphan, P., Lan, M. C., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2015). Caution, student experience may vary: Social identities impact a student’s experience in peer discussions. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(4), ar45.

Featured image and pictures below from a recent dip

Morning sun… I had last Tuesday off and made the most of it!

Afternoon walk!

Great place to enjoy the sunshine

And, as always, my favourite place…

And back to the same bridge a bit later!

I like bridges without boats, they look so calm and peaceful!