This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Science Teacher on Nov. 21, 2024, available at https://doi.org/10.1080/00368555.2024.2404955

In classrooms implementing science education reforms such as those laid out in the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012), it is important for students to spend time working in groups, discussing their thinking, and building on each other’s ideas. Collaboration like this is a skill and students need support to learn to collaborate effectively (Cohen & Lotan, 2014). In this article, I will share how I use group roles as a tool to help students learn how to collaborate equitably and productively and to engage deeply with each others’ ideas.

Why use group roles

I started using group roles in my classroom not long after I started using a curriculum that relied heavily on small group work and student-to-student discussion. I initially found that a small number of students, mostly white boys, tended to take charge in their groups and to speak the most during discussions. As I started to look for ways to shift this pattern, I found social status was a useful way for me to think about this problem. Students unconsciously assign each other status based on factors including social savviness, race, gender, economic status, and many others that have very little to do with science  (Cohen & Lotan, 2014). The status someone is seen to have has significant impacts on the ways that students interact during group work. For example, boys’ ideas tend to be taken more seriously than girls’ ideas in mixed-gender groups (Wieselmann et al., 2019), which I realized was happening in my classroom. In addition, the more unstructured an activity is, the more inequitable participation tends to be, which explains why this problem became so much more apparent in my classroom as I worked toward students driving the sense-making and engaging deeply in the science practices. I noticed that girls, especially girls of color, were less likely to be listened to by their peers or excluded from small group discussions during guided-inquiry activities than during more structured labs. Group roles can disrupt status by giving students some structure for their interaction without getting in the way of students’ responsibility for how they are doing the science. It is important to keep in mind that no one strategy is a guarantee of equitable, high-quality collaboration, so group roles are most effective when combined with other strategies to promote effective collaboration, such as those described in Cohen and Lotan’s Designing Groupwork: Strategies for Heterogeneous Classrooms (2014).    

Types of roles

When students collaborate, they tend to either split tasks, with each person taking responsibility for some definite aspect of the larger task, or to share tasks, with students engaging directly with each others’ thinking to complete the task together (Doucette & Signh, 2022). Different types of roles can support these different types of collaboration. I call roles that support splitting task-oriented roles, since they usually describe the specific jobs that students will hold, such as timer, recorder, or materials gatherer. These types of roles are useful when students are doing something like a lab activity where several things need to happen at once. I avoid having fixed task-oriented roles that we use consistently in my classroom, instead discussing with students what smaller tasks are necessary for the day’s activity and tailoring the roles we will use to fit the activity. For example, one of the first labs students do in my class is constructing a position vs. time graph for a buggy moving at a constant velocity. During the whole-class discussion preceding the lab, we identify the tasks groups will need to complete and develop task-oriented roles. The exact roles vary, but typically include a role to release and catch the buggy, a role to mark the position of the buggy, and a role to run the timer. In their groups, students then decide who will take each role the class identified. As students get more adept at effective collaboration, I shift to having students determine with their group what roles they need. For example, when students do a lab to find variables that affect the period of a pendulum, they first write out the procedure they will use. Then, each group identifies the tasks they will need to split and come up with roles that usually include running the timer, releasing the pendulum, measuring release angle with a protractor, and recording data. Because collaborating by splitting tasks feels relatively natural to students (Doucette & Singh, 2022), I find students can begin taking responsibility for managing this type of collaboration relatively easily.

There are a few important considerations with task-oriented roles. First, status can influence what roles are assigned to which students, with gendered patterns being especially powerful. For example, in mixed-gender groups, students will often default to assigning a role like “recorder” to a girl while boys will take roles that involve manipulating equipment (Doucette et al., 2020). This is something I see frequently in my classroom, usually justified by saying the girls have better handwriting. One strategy I’ve used to address this is to share that observation with students, which is enough for some boys to volunteer to be the recorder and for some girls to push back when a peer suggests they be the recorder. Another strategy is assigning roles to students myself     , but this gives students less opportunity to manage their collaboration, so I use it sparingly. I’ve had the most success disrupting those patterns and ensuring students see the recorder as an active participant when, during the whole-class discussion about roles, I suggest pairing recording with another task that involves manipulating equipment.

I also find relying too heavily on task-oriented roles encourages what I call “parallel play”, where students each complete their piece of the task with minimal interaction with each others’ thinking. For example, while working problems that include representing the same motion using different types of diagrams using task-oriented roles, I often see groups decide on roles where each person is responsible for one type of diagram. Not only does that mean each student only thinks about one type of diagram, but they don’t think about the connections between the different diagrams and there is minimal discussion about how students decided to draw the diagrams. This is a prime example of a finding from Doucette and Singh (2022) that students tend tolearn less science when they are splitting tasks instead of sharing since they are not challenged to explain or revise their thinking and are not engaging with a variety of perspectives about the task.

I call roles that focus on the way students share tasks process-oriented roles, since they describe different ways of interacting. These include roles like facilitator, summarizer, and, my favorite, skeptic. Process-oriented roles describe ways that students can draw out and respond to each others’ thinking. My students are often slower to complete tasks when they are using process-oriented roles, but have much richer conversations, which mirrors research that students tend to take more time, but learn the science more deeply when they are sharing tasks (Doucette & Singh, 2022). I tend to use these roles much more frequently than task-oriented roles since this is a more challenging type of collaboration for students, but one that I want to prioritize in my classroom. I adapted process-oriented roles from University of Minnesota Physics Education Research Group (2012) to develop the roles shown in Figure 1 all year so that students have repeated practice with the skills called for by each role. Students often come into my classroom unsure of what this kind of collaboration looks like in practice. Early in the year, their priority is often completing the task  and approaches like splitting up a problem set and copying each others’ answers is a very efficient way to complete a problem set quickly.  I students to prioritize understanding the task, so I need to get them to slow down and see the value in discussing their thinking. Process-oriented roles help students understand how to effectively respond to each other’s’ thinking, giving them a chance to see for themselves how that kind of interaction supports their learning. Experiencing this helps students see the value in meaningfully engaging with their peers’ thinking, showing them the time and effort required to develop and use these skills is worth it. The roles also ensure that every student holds some status within the group since each student is responsible for ensuring the group engages in a particular type of thinking. With time, students come to recognize that everyone in the class, regardless of race, gender, or other identity, has something meaningful to offer the group which makes them less likely to ignore, exclude, or dismiss a peer simply because they do not have high social status.

Figure 1: A set of group role cards

Regardless of which type of role I ask students to use, I am careful to avoid roles like “manager” that reinforce status. A student who is placed in a role that carries the connotation of being in charge is going to hold a lot of status in the group. I find that especially when the student in that role holds other identities that tend to be privileged in science classrooms, such a white boys, it becomes very easy for the student in that role to dominate the group, even when that is not their intention. When I used a manager role, some students would tell their peers what to do, rather than working collaboratively to figure it out. I also often saw the manager’s ideas given more weight than ideas proposed by other students, giving them significant influence over how the group approached the task. Avoiding roles that imply a hierarchy helps communicate to students that I see a high-functioning group as one where everyone is an equal contributor, thereby reducing how much students are attending to status within their groups.

Logistics

While group roles are a valuable tool, they are also challenging for students to use since they are another factor that students must pay attention to during group work. There are several strategies I use to help students get comfortable using roles to support their collaboration. First, I am very strategic about the first activity where I have students use group roles. I usually choose an activity a few days into the start of the school year, when students are starting to make sense of routines, procedures, and other aspects of how to be a student in my classroom. I also try to make sure the first activity where we use roles is one where students will be able to see the value of the roles. On the first day of class, I give students a very open-ended task to create a graph that models the motion of a buggy moving at a constant speed and do not use any roles or other structures for collaboration. This first lab is a chance for students to get used to the idea that they will be working in groups and discussing with their peers in my class without having to worry about how to manage the collaboration. As part of the debrief, we talk about how the collaboration went and how we can improve how students are working together. We next repeat the lab with a more well-defined goal of a position vs. time graph for the buggy and with task-oriented roles that we determined during a whole-class discussion. Even though most groups naturally use task-oriented roles in the first lab, students typically recognize that taking some time to discuss the roles helped them split the responsibilities more equitably and efficiently.

To introduce process-oriented roles, I choose an activity that will have a lot of sensemaking, such as when students are attempting to construct a model or working on applying something they learned in the lab. In those kinds of activities, students can immediately see how the roles are helping them draw out and respond to their peers’ thinking as well as how the roles ensure they have opportunities to share their own ideas. I also try to pick an activity where the science concepts students are working with are relatively accessible while still having some room for depth.      When students don’t have to think as hard about the disciplinary core ideas, they can pay more attention to how they are interacting with their peers and what the group roles are asking of them. I introduce process-oriented roles when students are doing problems to practice translating between different representations of motion with a constant velocity, including position vs. time graphs, velocity vs. time graphs, verbal descriptions, and motion maps. The content is accessible enough that students can usually give some attention to their collaboration, but there is still enough challenge for them to have meaningful conversations about the problems, so they see the value of engaging with each other’s thinking. Just like many of the other skills we practice in science, as students gain experience with the group roles and the skills associated with each one, they need less attention to use those skills and can lean on them when the science is more challenging.

Another strategy I use is to give students cards that have sentence starters for each role, such as those in figure 1. This gives each student a physical artifact they can place in front of themselves as a reminder of what their role is. The sentence starters also help students understand what it means to engage in each of the roles and gives them a scaffold in engaging with their peers’ thinking. I very intentionally made most of my sentence starters questions. This disrupts status by showing students how they can contribute to their group even if they don’t know the answer. It also places explicit value on questions, an important science practice that students often undervalue since questions also mean showing ignorance. Many students have experienced negative reactions from peers when they ask questions and, for students with a marginalized identity, those reactions can include microaggressions. Early in the year, students can justify their questions as part of their role, even when it comes from genuine confusion. With time, students experience how valuable questions are and stop reacting negatively to their peers’ questions. I frequently get feedback that students feel safe asking questions in my class.

Once I introduce students to a set of process-oriented roles, I stick to those roles so that students can get comfortable with those roles and ways of engaging. I let students decide with their group how to assign roles the first time so that most students can take a role that plays to their strengths, which makes it easier to stick to the roles. Students are sometimes resistant to using roles since they associate them with younger grades, but letting students pick their roles can reduce this resistance by giving them some autonomy. After using the roles a few times, I start assigning roles randomly and discuss with students that this will help them expand their repertoire of ways to respond to others’ thinking. The cards provide a natural way for students to randomly select roles since they can simply place the cards face down and each pick one.    

Typically, I use the roles at least once per week early in the year but use them less often as students get better at collaborating. My decisions are always a judgment call based on my observations of the class and what I see in student reflections on their collaboration. With time, students start using the skills associated with each role with less prompting and internalize the useful aspects of the roles. As a result, the roles become less necessary as a scaffold.

But kids don’t stick to their roles!

Other teachers consistently ask me how I make sure that students are sticking to their assigned roles. The short answer is, I don’t. The reality is there is no practical way for me to enforce students following roles, especially process-oriented roles. That doesn’t mean that roles don’t serve a purpose when students aren’t strictly following them. Whether or not students follow them, having roles sends a message that I believe everyone can and everyone should contribute to the group, which reduces the impact of status in groups. The roles also communicate what productive collaboration looks like and give students language for productive ways to engage with each other even when they are not using the roles. The first year I used group roles, an instructional coach observed me as students did a lab before I introduced roles and a few days later when students had roles. I was frustrated because students were not using the roles, but the coach pointed out their collaboration was much better when they had roles because of the clear expectation that everyone can and should contribute.

The roles are also available for students as a tool when they are stuck. On many occasions, I have seen a student who did not see the roles as valuable fill the awkward silence by making a show of picking up their role card and reading a sentence starter in a tone intended to mock the card     , only to start a productive conversation that moved the group forward. I sometimes have groups ask for the role cards after I’ve phased them out because they are struggling and want a tool to help their group think the task through. By viewing the roles as a resource, rather than a requirement, I’ve been able to see it’s okay that students won’t always follow them.

Conclusion

Teaching students how to collaborate effectively and equitably is challenging, but necessary to implement science education reforms that call for students to share their thinking and engage with each other’s ideas. Group roles are one strategy for reducing the impact of status in how students interact and for teaching them what it looks like to work together effectively and equitably. In particular, using process-oriented roles can help students learn how to take their collaboration beyond splitting tasks and make meaning together.

References

Cohen, E. G., & Lotan, R. A. (2014). Designing groupwork: strategies for the heterogeneous classroom third edition. Teachers College Press.

Doucette, D., Clark, R., & Singh, C. (2020). Hermione and the secretary: How gendered task division in introductory physics labs can disrupt equitable learning. European Journal of Physics, 41(3), 035702.

Doucette, D., & Singh, C. (2022). Share it, don’t split it: Can equitable group work improve student outcomes? The Physics Teacher, 60(3), 166-168.

National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. National Academies Press.

Physics Education Research Group. (2012). Cooperative group problem solving. University of Minnesota. https://groups.physics.umn.edu/physed/Research/CGPS/CGPSintro.htm

Wieselmann, J. R., Dare, E. A., Ring‐Whalen, E. A., & Roehrig, G. H. (2019). “I just do what the boys tell me”: Exploring small group student interactions in an integrated STEM unit. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 57(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21587