Students negotiating group norms: a research and pedagogical approach to team agreements

Presenters

Oskar Hagvall Svensson, School of Education, Gothenburg University; Anna Norrstöm, Department of Communication and Learning in Science

This seminar will consist of two presentations followed by a discussion and questions.

Oskar will present recent work concerning group norms in engineering groupwork, focusing on how students negotiate group norms in group norm exercises.

He will reflect on common ideas about how engineering educators can contribute to positive group dynamics in student groups, taking the group contract as an example. He will suggest an alternative approach focused on “group development norms”, that is, context-specific expectations for what groups and group members can and should do to improve groupwork. The discussion will be based on a recent article published in Journal of Engineering Education together with colleagues at CLS.  

Anna will then present a newly developed group contract, developed for Chalmers students.

This contract represents a shift in how we approach group agreements, aiming for meaningful engagement rather than a checklist of points to address the complexities of working together. By focusing on five main categories—goals, interaction, structure, cohesiveness, and interdependence—we created a framework that encourages deeper engagement and active communication among team members

Reference

Hagvall Svensson, O., Johansson, A., & Adawi, T. (2024). How do students negotiate groupwork? The influence of group norm exercises and group development norms. Journal of Engineering Education, 113(3), 533–554. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20596.