Professional Documents
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Group Work Articles Learning and Understanding G 6 f1
Group Work Articles Learning and Understanding G 6 f1
Roll no – 46
Sub – Social Group Work
Guide – Dr. Chitra Rajuskar
List of Articles –
Article – Group work for women- gender and group identity In Social
Dilemmas.
Jane Westergaard1
Abstract: A key outcome of support work with young people, it is hoped, is increased
self-awareness and autonomy on the part of the recipient. Engagement in one-tone
interventions with youth support workers can enable this process to take place.
However, a valuable alternative approach to the work exists, which focuses on
helping young people to enhance their personal learning and development (PLD) in
a group interaction.
This chapter will explore how youth support professionals can facilitate PLD
effectively in a group context. It focuses on the following:
• Identifying what ‘personal learning and development’ means
• Examining how groupwork can enable young people to learn about themselves,
develop greater self-awareness and make decisions about their lives
• Evaluating ways in which being part of a group can lead to positive outcomes for
individuals
• Analyzing the role of the youth support worker in facilitating PLD in the group
context
In addition, the chapter offers a model to inform the planning, preparation and
delivery of PLD groupwork with young people.
These areas are addressed in all aspects of the curriculum, but offer a particular
focus within Careers Education, and Personal Health and Social Education where
there could be a clear role for youth support workers to be involved in the delivery
of PLD sessions.
In response to the lack of literature on groupwork in the fi eld of career education
and guidance which focuses on developing self-awareness, opportunity awareness,
decision making and transition skills (Law, 2001), Higgins and Vestergaard (2001)
set out to defi ne the key characteristics of what they termed ‘guidance groupwork’.
1. The topic addressed in the session should focus on the personal needs of the
individuals in the group. The facilitator takes responsibility for identifying a
focus for the session that will be relevant and useful to the group members.
Consideration is given to a number of points. First, where the participants are
‘at’ in terms of their development (Harper, 1993; Coleman & Hendry, 1999).
What are the key issues for them at this point in their lives? Is there a specific c
need (developmental, educational, emotional or behavioral) shared by a group of
young people that could be addressed through groupwork? The youth support
worker, in discussions with other professionals where appropriate, should make
an assessment of the needs of the group prior to the session, in order to select a
topic that will be relevant and useful to address in a PLD session. The skill
required by the youth support worker at this early stage in the planning process
should not be underestimated and will be examined later in this paper.
2. The session should include an opportunity for each individual to revel act on
their own position in relation to the topic. Bound et al (1985) emphasize the
importance of planned revel action in learning. This suggests that although the
topic has been identifying ed as being helpful and relevant to the group, each
young person’s response to it could be quite different. For example, a youth
support worker prepares a PLD session on ‘Options at 16’ for young people who
are reaching the end of their compulsory schooling. Each young person in the
group is provided with the opportunity to revel act on what the post-schooling
options are and, importantly, helped to consider which option might suit them
best. Not every young person will select the same option, as each group
member’s needs and responses will be different.
3. The PLD session should also consider the specific c action that each individual
needs to take concerning the topic. It is not enough that the topic is discussed,
underlying issues are explored and the session ends with a greater understanding
for individuals within the group. Positive though this is, PLD groupwork goes
further in
that group members are helped to think about how they would like ‘things to be
different’, to set goals and to identify specific c actions that they can take as a
result of the session to effect some change. To return to our session on ‘Options
at 16’, each group member will have the opportunity to think about what they
need to do next in relation to the options that suit them best. Action steps identify
Focus
The fi rest step in the process of planning a PLD session is to select an appropriate
focus or ‘topic’ for the session. It is the responsibility of the youth support worker
to undertake an assessment of the needs of the group with whom they are working,
to ensure that a relevant topic is selected. This is no simple task; rather it requires
the youth support worker to draw on a range of skills and knowledge in relation to
assessing needs. This assessment should be informed by the following three factors:
First, the practitioner will be aware of the age of the participants, their gender and
their level of learning and education. Are they, for example, about to make a
Aim
Once the needs of the group have been assessed and a focus for the session has been
identify ed, the youth support worker can begin to plan the groupwork in detail. The
second stage in the planning process involves establishing an aim for the session.
An aim or ‘goal’ determines what the session sets out to achieve, provides direction
and clarity about the chosen topic and establishes a clear focus (Malakoff, 2004).
Any groupwork that does not have an explicitly stated aim is at risk of lacking
Aim: Managing moving away from home and independent living Objectives:
Participants in the session have the opportunity to:
• identify the positive aspects of independent living
• list the issues and barriers that they may face in living independently
• describe ways in which these issues can be addressed and the barriers
overcome
Outcomes: Students will take appropriate action before they move away from home
to manage the transition effectively.
The risk at this stage of the planning process is that the youth support worker is not
always entirely clear about the terminology and the distinction between aims,
objectives and outcomes. A result of this lack of clarity could be that aims,
objectives and outcomes are not considered in any depth and ‘sketched over’ rather
than thought through, resulting in a session that may lack direction and have limited
learning potential.
Once the aim and objectives for the session are established, the youth support
worker should detail both on a session plan. This will ensure that the groupwork is
purposeful and keeps on track, acting as a clear reminder for what should be
achieved. In addition, it will also provide a useful tool for evaluation at the end of
the session. See fi gore 1 below for the beginnings of a session plan for the PLD
groupwork outlined above.
Structure
For a PLD session to run smoothly and provide the optimum learning experience
for the participants, it should be well structured. In the same way that one-to-one
interventions are purposeful and forward moving, PLD groupwork should also have
a clear sense of direction, starting in one place and ending in another, where action
steps, leading to change, have been planned. A structure that can be applied to PLD
sessions draws on a recognized and respected model that informs one-to-one helping
relationships. Egan’s (2006) skilled helper model is used to great effect in one-to-
one helping interactions in a range of professional contexts and can be adapted easily
to provide a structure for PLD sessions. Similarly, Reid and Fielding’s (2007) Single
Interaction Model develops Egan’s work but applies it to ‘one-off’ interactions that
youth support workers may undertake with young people. Both models focus on the
following three stages:
Stage 1: Where I am now and what are the issues I want to focus on?
Stage 2: Where do I want to be and what are my options for getting there?
Stage 3: How am I going to get to where I want to be? What action steps do I need
to take?
In groupwork this means starting the session by introducing the topic and enabling
individuals in the group to see its relevance, encouraging them to revel act on the
issues raised, and to consider the signify cancel of these at this moment in their lives.
It means taking time to establish what the PLD session aims to achieve and
encouraging the group to engage with it in a purposeful way.
Once the group members have revel acted on the focus of the session and its
relevance, the session can move forward to consider options for change. This
provides an opportunity for group members to revel act on how they want their lives
to be different. This ‘consideration of options’ could include ideas relating to future
Techniques
All the planning in the world will not in itself ensure the effective delivery of PLD
group sessions (although it will certainly help). In addition, the facilitator should
ensure that they have developed appropriate techniques and skills to use when face-
to-face with a group of young people (Geldard and Geldard, 2001). The key skills
which are utilized in group interventions include:
• active listening
• helpful questioning
• summarizing
• challenging • information sharing.
Many youth support workers have been trained in the use of these skills in their
one-to-one practice. They should feel confit dent in their ability to demonstrate
empathy through active listening, to help young people to explore by asking open
and probing questions, to show understanding through summarizing, to be congruent
and encourage realism by challenging and to enable informed decision making by
References:
Boon, W. R. (1961) Experiences in Groups. London: Tavis tock/Routledge
Belbin, R.M. (1993) Team Roles at Work. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann
Bound, D., Keogh, R., and Walker, D. (1985) Revel action: Turning experience into
learning. London: Kogan Page
Brown, A. (1992) Groupwork. London: Heinemann
There is very little information about how to plan group work with young
individuals, FAAST model of group work is beneficial while planning group work
for young people, it was designed for youth support workers training so that they
can be aligned with proper group work planning –
FAAST model –
F- Focus
A – Aim
A – Activities
1. Focus – It is a first step in planning group work session for young people,
support worker need to asses needs to frame topic for the session. While
assessing needs for selecting topic of group work one needs to take inputs
from others and also need to think about current issues. Social group worker
needs suggestions from other professionals who have knowledge of these
young people. To asses surrounding of young individuals, for ex – is there
small group of young people involved in drinking, drug experimentation if so
then need to find out what was the motivation behind doing these things.
There may be various barriers in group which are hindering progress of group
members, like members are concerned about job search and lacks interview
techniques, so youth support worker needs to plan separate session to guide
these individuals about teaching various skills required for interview, the
practitioner should be confident that focus of the session will be relevant to
all group members.
2. Aim –
The second step while planning session for young people involve setting aim,
aim helps group members to see what the session sets out to achieve, if group
work has no aim, then group may be at risk of loosing purpose and direction.
Along with framing aims session should also identify objectives of session.
objective is a specific task or activity which students needs to perform, which
leads to positive outcome in following session. For ex.-
Aim - Managing moving away from home and independent living
Activities –
Once focus, aims, objectives are set, then the youth support worker can look
for various activities for personal learning and developing skills in youth. The
activities should be linked to aims and objective of group work process.
Objectives provide indicators for group worker while planning activities. EX
– identify what the benefits of living independently might be. worker should
allow members to choose activities for active and participative learning. In
this regard Kolb’s experimental learning cycle helps in choosing delivering
method.
Structure –
Group work needs proper structure to run smoothly and provide best learning
experience for members. Group work should have a clear sense of direction.
Egan’s skilled helper model is used to great extend for planning one to one
helping interactions. Similarly Red and Fielding’s single interaction model
develops Egan’s work. Both these models focus mostly on these three states.
Stage 1: Where I am now and what are the issues I want to focus on?
Stage 2: Where do I want to be and what are my options for getting
there?
Stage 3: How am I going to get to where I want to be? What action
Techniques –
While working with young people support worker needs skills which are
useful in group interventions these skills are as following
• active listening
• helpful questioning
• summarising
• challenging
• information sharing.
* Joseph Varghese
The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention 4(6): 3541-
3545, 2017 DOI: 10.18535/ijsshi/v4i6.04 ICV 2015: 45.28 ISSN: 2349-2031 ©
2017, THEIJSSHI
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Group work is very useful in the community. We have discussed in detail the most
widely used type of groups in the community- the SHGs. In this unit the other types
of groups will be discussed. Any number of natural groups is found in the
community. Most of them are spontaneous efforts by the people themselves to
control their lives by helping others and getting help from others. Most of them
receive no or minimum help from professionals. However, they are effective in
assisting those who are part of it. The members do not think of their membership in
the group as something outside their normal course of life. It is part and parcel of
Social work is not only associated with treatment and delivery of services, it is also
involved in challenging discriminating practices and advocating the rights of
According to Rothman the goal of social action is to bring about a shift in how
resources and power is distributed in the society. It is their belief that there is
asymmetrical division of power and resources, which leads to the dominant sections
using power to attain their goals at the costs of the community. Consequently, the
disadvantaged sections experience injustice and deprivation. Conflict,
confrontations, agitation, protests, PILs, negotiations and strikes would be some of
the techniques to be used
For example, an industry lets untreated affluent to the river, which causes pollution,
contamination of water bodies and land degradation. If industry is unwilling to listen
to the pleas of the people the only strategy that would yield results would be
challenge the factory using the legal means, holding protests and publicizing the
problem using the media.
Another controversy with these groups is the foreign funding and its role in the
emergence of these groups. Prakash Karat (1984) accused action groups of building
micro social movements with the intention of breaking the larger workers and
peasant’s movement, which had a greater chance for social transformation worker’s
movement, peasant movements and women movements. According to him foreign
agencies promote this role of the action groups in mind when they fund the action
groups. So, he concludes that social action groups organize people into micro
movements, which aim at small changes while neglecting the macro level problems
of capitalism and imperialism. However as mentioned above these groups emerged
when large formal organizations like political parties and the bureaucracy failed in
attaining their objectives.
Political leadership of even revolutionary parties lost their radical agenda when they
attained state power. (Michel, Robert, 1915). Therefore, social activists were more
comfortable while working in small groups in which the members knew each other
personally and ideologically similar rather than large organizations that could be
manipulated by the leadership for serving selfish motives. Moreover, small groups
can give importance to every member opinion, thereby reducing alienation of its
members.
Social action groups have been helped by the Supreme Court and High Courts
accepting Public Interest Litigation (PILs) to deal with problems. Public Interest
But it cannot be denied that there are number of shortcomings of action groups. Some
of them are as follows-
1) Factionist and frequent splits in the groups
2) Personal factors often interfered with professional conduct leading to blurring
of line between professional and private.
3) Empire building and monopolizing of issues
4) Working for publicity and fame and thereby neglecting the real causes
5) Often outside leaders of these groups have overshadowed community leaders
because of their knowledge and social network.
6) Corruption and mismanagement.
7) Leadership is authoritarian and dictatorial 8) Foreign fund-based activity and
priorities
Some of the areas, which action groups have contributed, are as follows-
1) Promotion of human rights issues including protection of the under trials; police
atrocities including custodial deaths rights of the arrested; encounter deaths;
juvenile justice; rights of sexual minorities. The People’s Union for Civil
Liberties and Human Rights Law network is just two examples of action groups.
2) Rights of people are displaced due to Development Project. Examples -the
Narmada Bacha Angolan and Protest Movements against Tehri Dam in
Uttarakhand.
3) Women rights issues like domestic violence, dowry, and sexual harassment.
Many of legislations have been passed and existing laws modified due to the
pressure from action groups. For example, the Vinaka judgment, which deals
with sexual harassment at work places, is result of the action group’s case against
atrocity in Rajasthan on a community worker.
4) Tribal issues like land alienation, displacement and exploitation
1) Engaging
The process in which the group worker engages the target group- a community
(a village where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is not
implemented properly); a section of society whose rights are denied (sexual
minorities); collection of people whose rights are violated (workers whose
factory have terminated their services illegally). The engagement phase will
include familiarizing herself with the various dimensions of the problem. The
laws related to the problem, government policies, the response of the local
authority, research available and news articles could be studied. Another step in
the process is build rapport with the existing leadership in the community and
knowing their limitations and strengths.
Initial reflections- the group worker must understand the situation and identify
the principles that will guide her action and her relationship with the target
group.
Assessing system barriers- the group assess the various barriers that stand in
between the target group and its objectives. Some of the barriers can be related
to the situation (like government indifference to the issue) or to the target group
themselves (lack of awareness) or be related to the other issues (leadership of
the group, past events).
Bhat, Anil (1989). Development and Social Justice; Micro action by weaker
sections, Sage Publications, New Delhi.
Garvin, Charles, D. et al (ed), 2004, Handbook of Social Work with groups, Rawat
Publications, Jaipur.
Malakoff, A. (1997). Group Work in the Prevention of Adolescent alcohol and other
drug abuse. In Greif G. L. & Epirus. P.H. Group Work with Population at risk.
Oxford University Press. New York.
Kothari, Rajni (1984), “ The Non Party Process”, Economic and Political Weekly,
Vol.XIX, No.5.
Trecker, Harleigh (1972), Social Group Work, Principles and Practices, Follet
Publishing Company, Chicago
Community based groups are based on neighborhood, caste and extended kinship
ties. Groups can also be formed on the basis of many different criteria- members
may be suffering from the same illness; members may be recovering from
alcoholism or drug addiction; etc. One important type of group that is increasingly
These methods are usually considered part of the domain of the social work method
of Community Organization. three models of community organization are- Social
Planning Model, Locality Development and Social Action. Though community
organization aims at mobilizing the community it is the groups that actually that does
much of the work. Small groups maximize opportunities for participation in process
of discussion, analysis, consciousness raising, decision making and planning".
Before every event held in the community, smaller meetings are held for variety of
purposes including action research, leadership training, executive decision making,
strategic analysis, community education, recruitment, action planning, negotiating,
lobbying and evaluation. These tasks done largely in groups determine to large
extent the success or failure of the community organization process.
As you know group work groups are divided into two types
(1) Treatment group that consists of personality development groups, educational
groups, recreational groups, support groups and therapeutic group
(2) Tasks groups includes committees and councils.
The main purpose of the task groups is to accomplish that task or programmed that
has been entrusted to it. Social actions groups belong to category of Task groups. It
usually consists of a small number of members who may belong to the community
or are outsiders to the community or both. They take up an issue that they identify
as having an adverse effect on the wellbeing of the members of the community. They
identify the causative factors that lead to the problem. Institutions, practices and
values that cause the problems are identified.
Article 3
10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008. 00195.x
© 2008 President and Fellows of Harvard College
FigureTwo
Female,Low-IdentityGroup
Group
FigureSix
Male,Low-IdentityGroup
Figure Seven
FigureEight
Equity within the Groups
The pattern in Figure Eight mirrors that in Figure Seven. Women in high-identity
groups exhibited significantly more equitable outcomes (less within-group variance)
than women in low-identity groups. But this pattern was reversed for males. In our
study, males in high-identity groups reached significantly less equitable outcomes
than did males in low identity groups.
NOTE
1. Our particular setting follows parameters and structures theoretically developed
by Bagnoli and Lipman (1989), and previously tested by Marks and Crosson (1998),
among others. The interested reader should see Isaac, Schmidtz, and Walker (1989);
Bagnoli and McKee (1991); Ledyard (1995);Cadsby and Maynes (1998a);Croson
and Marks (1998);Cadsby and Maynes (1999); Croson and Marks (1999); Marks and
Croson (1999); Marks,
Croson, and Schansberg (1999); Rondeau, Schulze, and Poe (1999); Croson and
Marks (2000); Croson and Marks (2001); Poe et al.
(2002); Rose et al. (2002); and Rondeau, Poe, and Schulze (2003).
In this article it seems , designed the experiment such that meeting the threshold
of 125 tokens is good for the group, but the distance between the group’s
contribution and 125 is a measure of efficiency, because contributions above or
below 125 represent losses. The variance of contributions within a group is a
measure of equity. If everyone gave twenty-five tokens, we would see zero
within-group variance of individual contributions. We have used the observed
variance of contributions within a group as a measure of the equity exhibited by
the group.
. In Figures One and Two, which show contributions by all female groups, the
variance of group contributions was noticeably greater in the low-identity groups
than in the high-identity groups. As Figure Seven shows, the high-identity all-
female group experienced lower deviations from the desired threshold of 125
than did the low identity female group, which we believe is a result of better
coordination among the group's members. In contrast, we found the exact
opposite pattern for men: our results indicate that all-male groups with higher
group identity had significantly worse coordination than those with low identity.
In all-female groups, when participants were part of a larger organization with
high social identity, the group's coordination, efficiency, and equity increased. In
all-male groups, however, high social identity decreased these measures. We
believe this competition for dominance is activated in male groups whose
members interact on a frequent basis.
It is found that for women, negotiating with someone in their group will increase
the cooperative drive and decrease the desire for competition. For men, however,
negotiations with others in their own group seems to have engaged the desire of
competition. The researchers suggest interesting and testable hypotheses for
future studies.