Different stories of group work: Exploring problem solving in engineering education
Journal article, 2012

This article aims to further the understanding of group work in higher education, primarily in science. This is done through an empirical investigation of problem solving in small groups. Position theory is used as an analytic tool for describing the complex and dynamic processes of group work, focusing simultaneously on the physics content and the student community and how they constitute each other. We analysed four video-recorded sessions with students from two Master’s programs, Engineering Physics and Bioengineering, respectively. The students addressed two introductory mechanics problems. The analysis resulted in a characterisation in terms of seven ‘storylines’ of two different kinds. These are argued to reflect different aspects of engineering student communities, where one kind of storylines captures ways of approaching the problems and the other kind exemplifies boundary work involved in the constitution of communities.

Author

Maria Berge

Centre for Competence and Knowledge Building in Higher Education (CKK)

Anna T Danielsson

Åke Ingerman

University of Gothenburg

NorDiNa

1504-4556 (ISSN)

Vol. 8 1 3-25

Subject Categories

Didactics

Educational Sciences

Pedagogy

More information

Created

10/6/2017