Annotated Bibliography: 6 sources from me, another 6 sources available on Mike's blog!
Non-Academic Sources
Making Math Moments that Matter. (2019, November 28). Building Thinking Classrooms: An Interview with Peter Liljedahl and Judy Larsen [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0TCvExju14&ab_channel=JudyLarsen
This podcast episode called “Building Thinking Classrooms” with Judy Larson and Peter Liljedahl helps to explain why it’s important to build a classroom that utilizes micro and macro practices in order to optimize learning and doing. This will be important for us to identify different ways group learning encourages individual thinking.
Orr, J. & Pearce, K. (Hosts). (2019, April 22). The Thinking Classroom: An interview with Peter Liljedahl (No. 21) [Audio podcast episode]. In Make Math Moments. https://makemathmoments.com/episode21/
In this podcast episode, John Orr and Kyle Pearce also discuss “Building Thinking Classrooms” with Peter Liljedahl and make one point that I love: the content of a curriculum is just context; the processes or the competencies are the content. In the line of group work, again Peter talks about micro practices such as having groups working around the classroom in a dynamic way, such that when you look around, the learning space looks safe and collaborative. This is an interesting source for exploring the group tie-in to contextualized learning.
Adobe Experience Cloud Blog. (2019, January 30). Structured vs. Unstructured Work: What’s the Difference and Which Is Best for You? Adobe Workfront. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://www.workfront.com/blog/structured-versus-unstructured-work-what-is-the-difference-and-which-is-best
This article describes the differences between unstructured and structured work and the different scenarios in which using either would be advantageous. It is mostly contextualized in a business setting, but will be helpful for having us inform our advice for teachers who are looking to assess a certain metric with students (i.e. assessing organization versus collaboration).
Academic/Papers
Liljedahl, P. (2014). The affordances of using visually random groups in a mathematics classroom. In Y. Li, E. Silver, & S. Li (eds.) Transforming Mathematics Instruction: Multiple Approaches and Practices. New York, NY: Springer.
This is another perspective from Peter Liljedahl to explain the benefits of using visually random groups, specifically through the differentiation of social vs educational reasons for group work, and how using nonstrategic groupings can actually be developmentally beneficial to students and teachers. This is a great resource that addresses different levels of the curricular competencies.
Gillies, R. M. (2003). The behaviors, interactions, and perceptions of junior high school students during small-group learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 137–147. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.1.137
This article discusses the benefits of working in cooperative groups rather than individually or in competition with eachother. It also evaluates the effectiveness of learning with structured vs unstructured group activities, concluding that the structured work led to more task-related discussions and higher sense of respect in the group. We will use this paper to help form our arguments with regard to the psychological and educational benefits of structured group activities.
Bartko, W.T., Eccles, J.S. Adolescent Participation in Structured and Unstructured Activities: A Person-Oriented Analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 32, 233–241 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023056425648
Although this article speaks about structured or unstructured activities in a more extracurricular sense, it is interesting to see that students excel (developmentally and academically) most when they are participating in driven and structured activities frequently, reducing the time spent on passive, unstructured activities. This is a great resource to help us explain the benefits of structured and unstructured activities both in and out of school.
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To be in contact with the real world of teaching and learning, we are planning on reaching out to Peter Liljedahl, and I will definitely be talking to the teachers in the STEM program at my practicum school, including a math-based teacher Mr. Mike Hengeveld and his Tech Ed counterpart Mr. Carl Janzes who have incredible amounts of experience in coordinating group learning and group work in project-based classrooms.
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A good hands-on activity for this presentation will be splitting up the class into groups to complete a worksheet and having some groups be randomized, some predetermined, some structured and some unstructured. Debriefing the class experiences with going through the worksheet may lead to some interesting insights.
