Introduction
Studies, about learning techniques, have not only refined existing learning techniques, but also they have developed new learning methods/techniques that facilitate students to understand and absorb information more efficiently. Also, these learning techniques also ensure improved academic achievements, which is one of the primary goals for any student. Therefore, learning techniques has great relevance. The systematic scrutiny of evidence also suggests that these instruments about learning techniques are perpetually improving and students are playing a vital role in their improvement as they are appropriating these tools/instruments by frequently employing them. One such tool/instrument is Cooperative Learning, which we used as a strategy that not only augmented learning, but also developed leadership skills.
Section 1
Identify personal insights, issues, moments of critical questioning, and revelation/connection with ideas, moments and comments (by you, other members, teaching staff) that struck you and offered the potential for reflective insight or significant learning as to ‘you’ and your approach to leadership.
The team cooperation promotes some skills like communication, autonomy, the leadership of everyone in the team. But there are some problems, such as in the process of cooperative learning, someone lacks analysis and problem-solving skills, which caused team low efficiency. Someone lacks critical thinking and leadership, which caused the team lack of cohesion. This article discusses the challenges when I am in team cooperation, and everyone’s behaviour will impact of the outcome, during these, how to show a good leadership in the team, and how to cooperate with others. Cooperative learning refers to the learning approach that students work in teams with a clear division of labour to complete common tasks. The process of building a team includes: grouping, cooperate, evaluate. In the workshop of 212Course, the teacher gives us a topic, let each group of students voice their opinions, objective and fair to analyse and solve problems, and then through the analysis and evaluation of teachers, make all students can learn in the teamwork and interaction (Levi, 2014). Cooperative Learning not only focuses on teamwork, but also on leadership, as it requires one of the group members to lead the group. Leadership style and strategy of a leader depends upon various factors, which include his/her personality. Although cooperative learning can increase learning quality, some problems may also arise during cooperation and affect the final result. For instance, in our cooperation, team “We chat”, there have been the following problems: some members only echoed the views of others, some members followed others blindly, and some members just sat back and left others to find a way out and so on. These problems seriously hindered our team’s development. During the first week when our team was just set up in the workshop, we had seven members, including six Chinese and one New Zealander, Grace. Thus, in our discussion, Grace, who has English as her first language could always understand and respond to the questions quickly. She was also the major “provider of feedback”, while the other six Chinese members usually agreed with her opinions, even Grace doesn’t our team leader; we are her follower not the real leader’s follower (Ladkin, 2013). So, our answers were mostly centred on Grace’s thoughts, and we just put forward some ideas to support her argument. In consequence, our team often came up with single methods or ideas, and our division of labour was also improper. Besides, some members were not very active due to their slow comprehension of English. Instead of thinking carefully on their own, they got used to listening to Grace and other members who have better English competence. Or they would give up thinking and let other members complete the tasks. The consequence was that our group study had become something exclusive to some members, and had failed to promote mutual learning among and common improvement of team members (West, 2012). This required a proactive leadership role and bold decisions, on the part of the leader of the group. It is also defined as per the role theory. The role theory assumes that people define their roles and others based on social reading and learning. People also form expectation in terms of the roles they and others have. The theory explains that every employee has internal schemas of the role the leaders have to play as per the social learning and they subtly send signals to leaders for the expectations of role. The balance of decisions depends on the followers and the leaders for their roles. In organizations, there is formal and informal information related to the role of leaders and followers (Winkler, 2010).
Based on our experience of “We chat”, I summarised the problems we encountered in Course 212. When our team was first established, team members didn’t communicate with each other a lot due to our lack of mutual understanding. For instance, some members were unable to enjoy the team discussion very well because they were slow in comprehending English. It had affected our communication and resulted in some unfavourable situations. Also, in our team, there were always three members who discussed actively, while others just expressed their agreement without actually joining in the discussion and thinking. Due to the lack of fierce discussion, we merely got scattershot solutions or opinions, and our team’s answers were often impertinent or not thorough (Contu, 2012). Also, trying to avoid conflicts and argument, most of our team members seldom expressed our opinions actively. Even if we seemed to have reached agreement in our team meetings, the agreement was in fact passively reached, and the outcome was often far from our expectation. For example, when we were assigned writing tasks to our team members in the fourth week, most members chose to write the part that interested them. Member Shao did not issue an opinion, so it was believed that he was to write the rest. While, it turned out that Shao had not completed his part shortly before the deadline. At last, urged by our team leader, he finished his work hastily. His passive attitude directly lowered the quality of our overall assignment (Thompson, 2015). As a leader, one had to respond prudently to the situation and ensure that such attitude does not affect the overall performance of our group. One of the key leadership skills is to identify issues and address it. If team members couldn’t supervise or be responsible for each other, but place personal interests in front of team interests, they will surely bring a detrimental effect on the final result. Take our team for example, while dividing the work of checking the final assignment, our original plan was that Grace would be responsible for editing and proofreading the articles, while Grace dropped out of Course 212 in the fifth week because of personal reasons. As it was during the holiday and all members were enjoying themselves, none was willing to do Grace’s editing and proofreading work. So finally, our team leader checked the articles briefly and handed them in. The final result was of course unsuccessful (DuBrin, 2016). It became apparent to me that the leader has a vital role to play and in extraordinary circumstances, such as lack of cooperation from team-members, a leader must not be reluctant to take additional responsibility. However, he/she must address non-cooperative behaviour and attitudes of team members. Teamwork will promote the autonomy, cooperation skills and communication skills of everyone in the team. However, there are some problems. For example, in the process of cooperative learning, some team members cannot analyse and solve problems, and the lack of self-critical thinking. In this context, the import of critical thinking comes into being. It also reveals that the constitution of a group is of great importance. A group must be balanced, and a team-leader or group-leader must know about the capacity and skills of each member. It allows group leaders to make informed decisions, which positively affects the entire learning process. In our case, the constitution of the group was quite faulty, and it seemed imbalanced; six Chinese students and one New Zealander. The composition of the group affected the entire process of cooperation and learning (cooperative-learning) (Grint, Jones, & Holt, 2017).
In philosophy, “critical thinking” is also called “a dialectical attitude.” It means to hold a questioning attitude towards reality and analyse things from all aspects, to learn from our past failures and improve the quality and effectiveness of the event or activity. In practical terms, this means examining critically the assumptions underlying our actions, the simply practical terms; this means examining critically the assumptions underlying our actions, the impact of those actions, and from a broader perspective, what passes as good management practice (Ladkin, 2013). Critical Thinking is a very a very comprehensive process, and it is used as an instrument not only in the academic realm but also in the corporate system. Another aspect of it is that it can be employed before the decision-making or after it. For instance, it can be used as a tool to examine the assumptions, about a decision. Similarly, it can be employed to examine the aftermath or consequences of a decision. Therefore, critical thinking is an extremely significant tool or instrument (Levi, 2014). For a leader, who is leading a group of any type or nature, critical thinking is an instrument to improve decisions and make them more informed.
Section 2
Describe why these are important to you. What impact did they have and what dilemmas, questions or possibilities did they raise? Have they resulted in the order or chaos for you?
During the fifth week, Grace dropped out of Course 212 because of personal reasons, thus reducing our group of seven members of six Chinese students. We communicated smoothly, and those members who had been inactive in the past were also forced to join in the team communication. Meanwhile, the failure of Assignment 1 had brought mental pressure to all of us. Thus, in our team meeting, we reflected upon our tasks in the previous weeks and concluded that we needed to supervise each other, keep in touch and work more actively. So, fresh progress appeared in our team in the sixth week: we divided our work again, mutual trust increased among us, members with different ideas would debate with each other directly, all members became more responsible for the team and more active in making decisions and going into action. Our progress had also won our teacher’s praise in the class (Ladkin, 2013). Therefore, I believe that effective combination of critical thinking and cooperative learning can not only enhance the competitiveness and creativity of a team’s cooperative study, but it also strengthens the effect of cooperation and encourage all team members to give full play to their advantages, express themselves bravely and come up with diverse modes and answers, all of which will greatly promote the team’s development. However, I also acknowledge that better communication is a prerequisite of collective critical thinking. For instance, after Grace left the group (for personal reasons), it became essential for the group members to cooperate and therefore, we had to develop instruments of communication. It allowed members to be active and cooperative, which affected group positively. Thus, I learned that for any group to be effective, it is essential to developed communication instruments, especially, when there is a language barrier, as it was in our case (Harding, 2015).
In teamwork, I think, critically about my behaviour, which is to ask critical questions in all aspects of my team cooperation process, then I need to analyse these questions carefully. In this way, I will improve my contribution to the team and develop my behaviour to help the team work better. Introspecting is essential as it allows us to question and examine our actions and decisions, which directly affect the group and its performance. I learned that there are various methods and techniques to introspect or self-examine my performance. However, I learned that the some of these methods or techniques are better and relevant than the others (Cunliffe, 2004). For instance, I chose the role of “timekeeper” in the first week. At first, I thought that being a timekeeper, I merely needed to inform other members of the time of our meetings. Due to my lack of knowledge of my role and duties, and because of my irresponsible attitude, our team cooperation wasn’t very smooth at first. Later, I reflected upon my previous work and decided to change myself. Therefore, in our third week in the workshop, I came to understand my duties as a timekeeper: in fact, I should not only remind my team members of the time arrangement, but also actively invite and guide all members to take part in the team discussion and try to ease the tense atmosphere and solve conflicts in fierce discussions. Moreover, it’s also necessary for me to timely remind other members of our work schedule. Sometimes, I also talked with other members in private to learn about their opinions, and then we would discuss together.
It is because I learned that some group members feel uneasy to express their opinion more boldly or in front other team members. Therefore, I decided that with such members of the group, I must talk in private, where they might be more expressive. We have to acknowledge that good opinion may come from anyone; therefore, it is essential to take the opinion of every team member or group member. At last, I would tell the discussion result to our team leader for him to make decisions (Thompson, 2015). Furthermore, the following points should be taken into consideration in one’s critical self-examination of one’s contributions to the team: first, whether one’s assigned duty is clear, precise and proper; next, whether one’s information communication with other team members is unobstructed, convenient, accurate and comprehensive; finally, whether there exists any problem in one’s cooperation with other team members, including the interpersonal relations, the connection of different links, the cooperation between members. To sum up, I believe that in teamwork, first, ask others to do something, and you must obey it first, such as not being late for meetings and completing tasks on time. Second, control your emotions and input positive and optimistic energy into the team instead of passive emotions. It means that one must lead by an example. One bad example, of disobeying instruction of group leader, would badly affect the efficiency of the group. Therefore, it is essential that there must be good examples of the following instruction. However, it is also necessary that not only task must be assigned to that individual, who has the capacity and skills to perform that task, but also instructions must be very explicit, clear and comprehensive (no room for error in communication) (DuBrin, 2016).One of the attributes of leader is to identify strengths and weaknesses of team members.A leader, no matter what his her leadership style is, would not be able to produce results without have the capacity to identify skills, strengths, weaknesses of its team members.
Section 3
So, what are you going to do now? What issues, questions, and dilemmas are you going to explore further? Why and how? How will this influence who you are and how you relate to others? What relational nets can you construct/connect with to continue this process of reflective and critical learning?
A good team leader is supposed to lead the team to solve problems and accomplish tasks. Then how to become a good “leader”? In my opinion, our team leader Wai was very responsible, while he was not so resolute in making decisions. For instance, when Grace withdrew from our team, Wai failed to timely assign her work to other members, and thus brought about some negative influence on our final result. Through my experience of attending Course 212 from the sixth week to the ninth week, I believe that a good leader should have the following qualifications: first, have an outgoing personality, be able to listen to others’ opinions modestly, know how to praise other team members to boost their working enthusiasm; second, be responsible, for instance, can “shoulder risks bravely”, “face the consequences of mistakes” and “be courageous to make decisions” when making mistakes, because a leader who blames his own mistake for others is bound to lose other members’ trust; third, have enough trust in other team members and do not interfere too much with their work (Thompson, 2015).
I must acknowledge that it is not easy to make decisions; however, I have learned that the more informed a decision; more chances there are that it would produce desired results. Also, a leader has to take decisions; therefore, the ultimate responsibility, about the consequences of decisions, is of the leader (Cunliffe, 2004).
Cooperation among team members matters a lot to the success of team projects. In our team cooperation in Course 212, different members play different roles, and each role is of a different function of the team. For instance, team leader needs to actively cooperate with and lead other members to complete the tasks together; those doers in a team should consider carefully about each task, keep contact and share information with other members; the recorder should help other members to do self-examination regularly of the ignored risks and problems, and find out better ways to promote the common work. Therefore, it’s unnecessary for everyone to be the team leader to demonstrate his talent fully. The point is to find out the role that suits you best, and only in this way can one give full play to one’s abilities. The experience in Course 212 has made me realise that experience plus self-examination equates to growth and improvement. Thus, in the future team cooperation, I will self-examine regularly during the process of realising our common goal to make progress continuously (Contu, 2012).
Conclusion
In the end, in this academic discourse, we have deliberated, in detail, on cooperative-learning and how it affects learning abilities. Also, we have also learned that cooperative-learning not only affects or improves learning faculty, but also it teaches individuals how to work in groups. Furthermore, it appears that cooperative learning also enhances leadership skills, which is essential for a successful corporate career. Leadership strategy of a leader must be an extension of his/her leadership style. A leader must also be able to improve his/her leadership style, and strategy is per requirement. The different leadership styles depend on the different concerns for people and production, as per the managerial grid. The more preferable leadership style in these scenarios is the team management in which people are concerned with tasks and leader is concerned with people (Egner, 2009).
In a nutshell, cooperative-learning is an excellent strategy, which can produce desired results, such as skills to grasp or understand a subject/topic with ease and improved academic achievements. However, some studies also suggest that if the constitution of groups is faulty, then learning will be adversely affected by it. Also, leadership also affects the overall capacity of the group and its ability to achieve identified objectives. Therefore, we can say the cooperative learning is not limited to enhancing learning ability, but also it improves leadership skills.
Reference
Contu, A. (2012). Chapter 4-Groups and Teams At Work. In D. Knights, & H. Willmott, Introducing Organizational Behaviour and Management (2 ed., pp. 116-158). United Kingdom: Cengage Learning.
Cunliffe, A. L. (2004). On Becoming A Critically Reflexive Practioner. Journal of Management Education , 28 (4), 407-426.
DuBrin, A. J. (2016). Chapter 1-The nature and importance of leadership. In Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills (8 ed., pp. 1-34). USA: Cengage Learning.
Egner, T. (2009). Behavioral Leadership – The Managerial Grid. GRIN.
Grint, K., Jones, O. S., & Holt, C. (2017). What is leadership: Person, result, position, purpose or process, or all or none of these? In J. Storey, J. Hartley, J. L. Denis, P. t Hart, & D. Ulrich, The Routledge companion to leadership (pp. 3-20). New York. London: Routledge.
Harding, N. (2015). Chapter 8-Studying Flowers. In B. Carroll, J. Ford, & S. Taylor, Leadership: Contemporary Critical Perspectives (pp. 150-166). London: SAGE Publications.
Ladkin, D. (2013). From perception to flesh:A phenomenological account of the felt experience of leadership. Leadership , 9 (3), 320-334.
Levi, D. (2014). Chapter 4-Understanding the Basic Team Processes. In Group Dynamics in TEAMS (4 ed., pp. 61-79). SAGE Publications.
Thompson, L. L. (2015). Chapter 9-Creativity: Mastering Strategies for High Performance. In Making the team: A guide for managers (5 ed., pp. 231-259). Boston: Pearson.
West, M. A. (2012). Chapter 1-Conflict in Teams. In Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research (3 ed., pp. 189-198). BPS Blackwell.
Winkler, I. (2010). Contemporary Leadership Theories: Enhancing the Understanding of the Complexity, Subjectivity and Dynamic of Leadership. Springer Science & Business .
+447462439809