Inter-Professional Learning Reflection on Group Process

Through leading our first group session about self-care, Amanda and I gained valuable group facilitation experience that was helpful in leading our second session. Our second group facilitation had many strengths, including the fact that we moved closer to the working stage and helped members to explore guilt related to self-care, a common theme in the group. However, although the group went well overall, there are still ways that we could improve, such as using certain techniques to “go deeper” and better managing time.

In order to evaluate my role within the group it is important to identify what makes a group. A group must

Learning how to work effectively in a group situation is key to success in many professions as well as in social situations. Groups vary from each other based on the individuals that make up each group, all of us belong to various groups at one time or another. The roles that we fulfill vary from group to

In the 1970’s Meredith Belbin devised the Belbin team inventory behavioural test. It was aimed to assess how an individual behaves and interacts in a team environment before placing these people into 9 categories. A person may be spread across multiple categories -not defining them to a single possibility. Using the Belbin test has been shown to may improve work in a team. One piece of research used 84 teams to find that “forming groups based on Belbin role balance assumption might enhance group performance” (Curseu & Meslec, 2015, para 36). This means that having a full range of team roles in the group and understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses can impact team performance.

When the project is completed the roles of implementers and completer have their own place in a team. The Belbin theory allows every role to play a secondary role in a team. The secondary role possesses the second higher skills in results. In this way a role can perform more than one function to become a secondary role player in a team.

Effective reflection helps the practitioner to see the situation from an outsider's perspective, so that they can develop a better way to respond to a similar scenario in the future. Reflection is meant to achieve a change in practice, rather than simply repeating the same mistakes (Schon, 1983). Many different models exist for structuring the reflective process. Regardless of the framework used, the reflection models are meant to accomplish three things. They are supposed to promote reflecting on events, self-evaluation and analysis, and a plan to change actions in the future. This Reflective essay will utilize Driscoll's 'The What?' model as its structure (Driscoll, 1994). This model has three components"

I personally think I took on the roles of co-ordinator, team leader, monitor-evaluator and completer (Hartly, 2010 p.6), for example, I was the first to comment on the wiki and continue with the groups week to week activities to keep the group moving forward. I also kept the wiki up to date, while also making sure everyone was on task with the assessment. Even though it was a long drawn out process, I tried to get everyone collaborating on the group wiki provided and also took the lead to keep in contact with our eLA about the progress of a team, due to complications with team members not showing or disappearing through the

In this essay I am going to reflect on my experience working as part of a team and the preparation on an oral presentation I had to do in class with people from different courses, as part of the Foundations for Practice in Health and Social Care module. Reflection is educational and is used as a means of self-knowledge and to develop using a process of feeling and learning by thinking about what happened and what could have been done differently. (Rolfe, 2011, p.8-12) I will be using the Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle to do this. In this model there are 6 different stages to look at to help structure reflection, the description of the event, your feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and an action plan. There is more than one model

Tuckman proposes that groups develop via five stages; forming, storming, norming, performing and finally adjourning (Archee, Gurney, & Mohan, 2013a). The first stage, known as forming, involves clarifying the task and purpose of the group, and identifying boundaries of both the task and interpersonal behaviour (Archee et al., 2013a). For the presentation task we were randomly allocated into groups. This worried me greatly as I have struggled in the past with group members who do not contribute equally or see the task as important as other group members. To avoid this problem, the group collectively determined and agreed upon a number of ground rules. For example, we decided that all group members were expected to contribute equally to the presentation, all group members were expected to attend and contribute at all group meetings, and all group members would adhere to agreed upon deadlines. Having failed to do this in previous group assignments, this clarification stage

Teamwork can be complex and challenging given task and interpersonal issues, level of group motivation and expected performance standards. The concrete experience spoken about in this reflection piece is in reference to the effectiveness of myself as a group member and the group, working to write a report outlining the organisation and structure of Volkswagen. Dennison (2009) applies Kolb’s learning cycle (1981, 1984) which suggests that learning moves through a continuous cycle, between having an experience, and then reflecting on that action. This cycle has been developed from Lewin’s (1951) model for experiential learning. Reflection termed by Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) ‘is a forum of response to the learner to experience’(p. 18). On reflection, the early set group dynamics was a defining factor in the experience, and how the team conducted themselves throughout the task. Meyerson, Wick and Kramer (1996) note that ‘such rapidly converging groups require methods for developing “swift trust”’ (p. 8), which can explain why initial group dynamics are so important. I took on multiple team roles, including group leader, which could be translated into the team not performing collectively on a high level, however, I could view this as a personal ineffectiveness of my leadership style.

Groupwork can be defined as a method of social work that is utilised in order to help individuals to enhance their social functioning through purposeful group experiences and to help cope with their personal group or community problems (Konopka, 1972). The role of groupwork places emphasis on sharing thoughts, ideas, problems and activities, allowing social action groups for instance, to “empower members to engage in collective action and planned change efforts to modify particular aspects of their social or physical environment” (Toseland & Rivas, 2014, p. 38; Pyles, 2009; Staples, 2004). Therefore, reflecting on the processes of groupwork is an essential mechanism for all professionals in order to develop better communication skills, conflict resolution and enhance future performance. This essay will reflect upon the task group processes that were conducted this semester, while evaluating my own role within the group and what was learnt working within a small group.

My feelings about the group process was a little mix at first but, at the end I felt like we actually brought it together. Beginning of the group member were all over the place and had no direction, when we were able to take a breather in just think ideas started to flow. I felt like that took the communicator to make it happen. By reinsuring the other group members that everything will go smoothly if we just don’t overthink everything.

Belbin’s Team Roles are named by who created this team role, British psychologist, Dr Meredith Belbin. In 1969, Dr Belbin was invited to use this business game as a starting point for a study of team

This assignment will aim to define what group work is, outline the history of group work, its advantages and disadvantages and the use of group for individuals suffering from ill mental health. The second part of this assignment will be a reflection that will outline the authors personal experience of participating in a group in the university setting and the challenges and growths associated with that. Human beings naturally form groups and are shaped by them. Usually beginning in the microcosm of the family and extending to larger societal and cultural groups.

Our team comprised of four members; Emily, Cileena, Chelsea and I. We were all delegated with an individual role each term and I was designated team leader for the first term for our group. I felt at the time that this role did not suit me as I am the type of person who is more on the shy side. In addition, the course had just begun so I was relatively unsure of how the course was handled which also affected my ability to serve as the team leader to the best of my capabilities. During the first term, our team responsibility was the evaluation team. We created a well planned and carefully executed evaluation rubric to assess each group’s performance. The start of this term was when the phases of group development initiated. The first stage of any group is forming (Harris and Sherblom, 2010, p. 58). At this time, we were all still getting to know each other and were uncertain upon one another