The purpose of the study is to explore women's experiences as they negotiate
collaborative group projects in a college course. This qualitative study extends the
existing literature by providing depth to the research on women's learning through
observation of women in group activities, surveys about college students' attitudes
toward collaborative learning, and in-depth interviews with university women.
The study isolates four ways women negotiate collaborative learning in a college
course. (1) Women take group work seriously and consider it to be very important. (2)
Women are often leaders in group work. Sixty-four percent of the women and only two
percent of the men said they are usually the leader in collaborative learning situations. (3)
Women end up doing more than their share of the work, although they may have won the
leadership roles. (4) Earning good grades is very important to the women studied, and
they are willing to work harder than anyone else in a group to earn them.
The theories of how women learn include the debate over whether women are
relational or task-oriented. The conclusion of this study is that in the university classes studied, women are both. However, textbooks on collaborative learning may contain
passages that indicate that in mixed-sex groups males will emerge as leaders. In addition,
some textbooks suggest that women might lead when groups are primarily dealing with
relationship issues, and men will lead when groups are primarily task-oriented or where a
democratic rather than a participatory style is preferred.
Discussions of collaborative learning often include the goal of helping
counterweigh the hidden curriculum that diminishes women. Although collaborative
learning can be an important classroom technique, this study points out that it is
important that collaborative learning and feminist pedagogy not be conflated. Some
collaborative learning groups are a site of discrimination and power difference for
women.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/85927 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Bond, Linda Thorsen |
| Contributors | Chlup, Dominique |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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