Students' strategies for managing social loafers in PBL : interactional means of dealing with unequal participation in group work
Year: 2020
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In this new era of education, employers require graduates who are not only academically proficient, but who also possess a variety of attributes such as being communicators, leaders, and networkers (Davidson & Major, 2014).As well as technical and practical subject knowledge, today's students of the 'Information Age' (Lee, Huh & Reigeluth, 2015) must be capable of working with others and jointly making decisions, regardless of the unpredictable work-based challenges that they may face (Woods, Briedis & Perna, 2013).Essentially, employers demand the professional skills which gear graduates directly towards industry needs, and these competencies must be cultivated by educational institutions throughout (Imafuku, 2012).Problem-based Learning (PBL) -a group-based pedagogical approach where students are placed at the core of their learning -has been shown to foster these very skills (Boud & Feletti, 1997).As a student-centred pedagogy, PBL is in clear contrast to the authoritative dynamics of traditional didactic teaching; the student is no longer forced into a passive learning role, and is instead empowered to be accountable for their own learning (Kindler, Grant, Kulla, Poole & Godolphin, 2009).Through its modern theoretical foundations (Dolmans, de Grave, Wolfhagen & van der Vleuten, 2005), students must work actively, and collaboratively, if they are to develop resourceful solutions to the problems at hand.Through its focus on authentic scenarios, PBL aligns with the realities of graduate employment, and recognises the necessity of socialising learners towards professional identities, and in functioning autonomously (Imafuku, 2012).In turn, PBL is associated with positive cognitive effects including deep learning, critical thinking, enhancement of intrinsic motivation, and the ability to more readily integrate knowledge with applied problem tasks (Dolmans & Schmidt, 2006).One major challenge in the implementation of PBL and other forms of group work, however, is that of dealing with the social loafer: a group member who continuously disengages with the tasks at hand, yet seeks academic reward from the efforts of his/her peers by freeloading (Aggarwal & O'Brien, 2008).The social loafer concept derives from social psychology (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979), and is classed as a critical incident in PBL tutorials (de Grave, Dolmans & van der Vleuten, 2001), and one which leads to dysfunctional groups as a result of chronic tardiness, absenteeism and a lack of commitment (Kindler et al., 2009).Previous research has illuminated the detrimental consequences of social loafers in impeding the effectiveness of group work (Elder, 2015;Kindler et al., 2009), where even highly motivated team-players become worn down, and serious relationship conflicts often ensue (Lee, Huh & Reigeluth, 2015).These issues of uneven participation have been linked to the primary reasons for student dissatisfaction with group work (Aggarwal & O'Brien, 2008), and may be one reason why students feel short-changed when exposed to PBL, despite attaining their learning goals more successfully than in traditional teaching (Warnock & Mohammadi-Aragh, 2016;Yadav, Subedi, Lundeberg & Bunting, 2011).In short, social loafing is a main contributor to dissatisfaction with group work, and has major implications for the successful implementation and overall productivity of PBL.While it has been established that social loafing is the principal complaint associated with student group work (Woods, 2001), very little research has considered the social processes
Institutions: University of Strathclyde, Linköping University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
Funder: Purdue University
OpenAlex ID: W2944419375