Team small group model

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The team small group model is an educational form of teaching developed at integrated comprehensive schools .

Historical development

It was developed in parallel in the 1970s at the comprehensive schools in Cologne-Holweide , Cologne-Höhenhaus , Göttingen-Geismar and Hannover-Linden : three classes of each year are taught by the same group of teachers during secondary level I and the different students in one class work also together in groups. This concept was inspired by the school-in-school system in the USA .

The establishment of comprehensive schools was supported by the incumbent education politicians in the interests of greater equal opportunities for all children, and the city of Cologne in particular planned new buildings for four large schools of this type. The educational openness of the time also had an impact on the fact that one year before the new comprehensive schools were set up, positions were created for school psychologists who were supposed to help develop a planning concept. With its new comprehensive schools, the city of Cologne wanted to offer space for as many students as possible and had therefore planned very large schools that would start with twelve parallel classes each year and, when completed, would have around three thousand students. This initial situation led, for example, the didactic committee of the comprehensive school in Cologne-Holweide to consider how such a school could be subdivided in order to create a living and working environment that is tolerable for teachers and students. The new school was also planned as an all-day school . At the same time, more democratic structures should be anchored in the school organization and cooperation between teachers should be institutionalized. The team small group model was created as an answer to these questions and as a solution to various problems in existing comprehensive schools.

The importance of this new educational concept became apparent very quickly. A completely different type of school emerged. This new group concept represented a common basis for all teachers of the college, which also connected all teams with one another, even if they worked relatively independently of one another. Although the school expanded from year to year with around thirty new teachers, this unifying function of the concept was retained.

trouble

At the beginning, the teacher groups had difficulties teaching the very heterogeneous student body in groups because they had no training and the school did not yet have suitable methods. Some of the teacher groups felt overwhelmed with the problems of building a school with this cooperation structure. Problems also developed in their teams. Discussions that were later held under the pair of opposites “claim and reality” reflected these difficulties. Despite the not inconsiderable burden, the teachers never wanted to fundamentally change the cooperation structure of the school.

The school worked successfully despite many problems and a team cooperation between teachers was taken up by more and more schools. In the meantime, new comprehensive schools in particular have been organized as team schools, but grammar schools have also begun to be interested in cooperative structures among teachers. Because of the new tasks of the school described in the pedagogical discussion, which arise, for example, from the increase in divorced families, an increase in drug consumption and violence in schools, more and more educators felt overwhelmed as individual teachers.

Organizational principles of the team-small group model

The openness of educational policy, which had led to the establishment of comprehensive schools, made the necessary changes to school structures possible as a prerequisite for realizing changed educational goals. The colleges of the newly established comprehensive schools had freedoms that were not available to them in the traditional framework of the tripartite school system. The planning teachers and school psychologists were freed from the otherwise effective bureaucratic structures of the old school forms due to the status of the comprehensive schools as experimental schools for which new structures had to be developed and only little experience was available about their functioning. In addition, the German Education Council recommended that schools should be given more independence:

“The increased independence takes into account the fact that the complex processes of the lesson cannot be centrally determined in detail. The participation of those involved takes into account the fact that an institution cannot make effective decisions and act independently of the people working in it. " (1973, p. 17)

With the greater independence of the institutions and the participation of employees in the planning of their work, the German Education Council had demanded essential features of the human-relation model for schools, which they partially detached from the principles of administrative bureaucracy that apply to the entire school system.

For example, in the comprehensive school in Cologne-Holweide, in the year in which the didactic committee (consisting of teachers who wanted to work at the newly founded comprehensive school Holweide) planned the future school structure, an instituting process took place that largely corresponds to self-determination. The "separation between leaders and executors, between rulers and rulers" (Lapassade) was largely eliminated during the development of the school concept within the planning group, the future college and its school management. How far the planning group had deviated from the hierarchical structures of the school's administrative organization despite observing the applicable framework conditions was shown by the critical reactions of the school supervisory board after the school's planning report was presented to it. The following form of organization was developed for the Holweide comprehensive school, which is also basically similar in other small-group schools:

  • Three classes each together with a group of six to seven people form an educational unit. The teaching team teaches its classes in all subjects and stays with them during lower secondary level.
  • Each class is divided into heterogeneous small groups of five or six students who remain stable over a longer period of time, i.e. H. remain unchanged in their composition. The groups are composed heterogeneously with regard to the characteristics of gender, school performance and social behavior.
  • As part of the overall conception of the school, the teaching teams have extensive educational and organizational independence. You determine the distribution of lessons yourself and your timetable according to organizational requirements. They regulate their substitution lessons and plan their educational approach. The teachers in the team have equal rights.

In addition to the pedagogical reasons described, the division of the school into manageable units also had a practically imperative background. In 1975, the city of Cologne, as the school authority, planned to set up 12 parallel classes with approx. 400 pupils every year for its three comprehensive schools, which were to be founded at the same time, in Holweide, Höhenhaus and Chorweiler, and thus to accept over 3,000 pupils and 200 teachers. The vision of this mass school frightened the teachers planning the didactic committee of Holweide. By dividing the school into smaller units, teachers and students alike had to avert the disorientation that was threatening due to its size. From this perspective, too, the structure of the team small group model appeared to be the appropriate solution for the problems to be expected.

literature

  • Affeldt, Udo / Ratzki, Anne / Wensky, Gudrun: The team small group model at Holweide comprehensive school. In: Comprehensive School 3, pp. 19-21, 1977
  • Bauersfeld, Heinrich: Inner differentiation in mathematics lessons at the IGS Cologne-Holweide. In: IDM. Vol. 17, pp. 162-191, 1978
  • Brandt, Horst / Eckart Liebau: The team small group model. An approach to pedagogy in schools. Munich 1978
  • Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Gesamtschule , Ed .: Social Organization, Social Learning and Differentiation. Issue 3. Practical reports: Köln-Holweide. Hamburg 1978
  • Hebing, Elisabeth / Gudrun Schulz-Wensky / Hermann Wübbels: Is integrated school counseling still up to date? In: Greuer-Werner, Marlies / Lothar Hellfritsch / Helmut Heyse, ed .: Reports from school psychology and educational counseling, pp. 321–334. Bonn 1985
  • Hesse, Horst / Arndt Fischer / Rainer Hoppe, eds .: Communication and cooperation in class. Hohengehren 1992
  • Keim, Wolfgang, Hg .: A school needs an educational concept. The example of the comprehensive school in Cologne-Holweide. In: Die Deutsche Schule 3, pp. 363–377, 1986
  • Keim, Wolfgang / Ratzki, Anne / Mönkemeyer, Michael / Neißer, Bärbel / Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun / Wübbels, Hermann (eds.): Team small group model Cologne-Holweide - theory and practice. Peter-Lang-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1996
  • Mönkemeyer, Michael / Neißer, Bärbel / Ratzki, Anne / Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun / Wübbels, Hermann / Laskey, Louise (eds.): Team Small Group - A Whole School Approach. Hawker Brownlow Education, Australia, 1999
  • Ratzki, Anne / Gudrun Wensky: Experiences with heterogeneous stable small groups at Holweide comprehensive school. In: Gesamtschulinformationen, <differentiation in comprehensive schools> 2, pp. 134-139, 1977
  • Ratzki, Anne: Conditions of social learning - experiences from the Holweide comprehensive school. In: Fromm / Keim, ed .: Discussion - Social learning, pp. 134–149. Baltmannsweiler 1982
  • Ratzki, Anne: Small Groups and Teaching Teams - Ways to Reduce School Anxiety. In: Democratic Education 3, 1977
  • Rolff, Hans-Günter: Diagnosis of the comprehensive school. In: Bernischer Lehrerverein, Ed .: Gesamtschule. Practical Aspects of Internal School Reform, pp. 21–41. Bern, Stuttgart 1973
  • Rolff, Hans-Günter: Sociology of school reform. Theories, research reports, practical advice. Weinheim, Basel, 1980
  • Rolff, Hans-Günter: Theories of social change and exploratory educational research. In: Bolte, KM, Hg .: materials from sociological research, pp. 582–594. Munich 1978
  • Rolff, Hans-Günter: Change through self-organization. Theoretical foundations and practical tips for a better school. Weinheim / Munich 1993
  • Schlömerkemper, Jörg with the collaboration of Klaus Winkel: Learning in a team-small-group model. Biographical and empirical studies on social learning in the integrated comprehensive school in Göttingen-Geismar. Frankfurt / Bern 1987
  • Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun, with the assistance of Wolfgang Möres: Student assessment of group work in mathematics in grades 5-7. Unpublished results, 1978.
  • Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun: General psychological problems of teacher isolation and their change through cooperation. In: Hesse, Horst / Arndt Fischer / Rainer Hoppe, ed .: Communication and Cooperation in Classes, pp. 112–115. Hohengehren 1992
  • Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun: Methodical and institutional aspects of school psychology work at the comprehensive school in Cologne-Holweide. In: Intermediate Steps 1, pp. 31-37, 1985
  • Schulz-Wensky, Gudrun: Cooperation in the teaching team. Psychological investigation of teacher groups in the team-small group model. Dissertation Cologne 1994
  • Spangenberg, Kurt: Chances of group education. Group dynamic models for education and teaching. Weinheim, Basel 1974
  • Teschner, Wolfgang P .: Team teaching, subject integration and flexible differentiation in Sweden: The Malmö VGL project between expectation and experience. In: Dechert, HW, ed .: Team Teaching in School, pp. 268–289. Munich 1972
  • Warwick, David: Team Teaching - Foundation and Models. Heidelberg 1973
  • Wellendorf, Franz: Article Team Teaching. In: Horney, Walter u. a., Ed. Päd. Lexikon Vol. 2, pp. 1165 ff., 1970