Master of Arts

This study describes and discusses the ethnographically observed academic and social interactions of Secondary 4 Express stream and 5 Normal Academic stream students in groups of 3 to 5, of an after-school structured group study programme in a Singapore secondary school. Videography and perception surveys were the main modes of data collection. Perception data on students and their peers’ involvement in the programme and the academic leadership competencies were also collected and analysed.

In the academic realm, students perceived that group study would help them improve their academic results. They rated their peers positively on interdependence and their leaders on academic leadership competence. During the small group discussions, the formal roles assigned were generally adhered to. The leaders were normally the main responders to queries and they also performed most of the administrative functions. The students were observed to share materials and information readily and were on task 93% of the time. Their verbal exchanges followed an initiate-respond pattern, and their discussions seemed to operate on an opt-in mechanism. The quality of discussion ranged from one-word responses to responses with clearly stated principles/concepts and explanation of their application. The depth of discussion appeared to be determined by the design of the tasks. Conflicts observed were mainly due to cognitive disagreement, divergent dialogue foci, negative pre-disposition, unaccepted role reversal, impatience and value differences. The most common forms of conflict management strategies used by the students were avoidance and humour. Self-praise was more common than mutual verbal praise. Peer regulation, spontaneous group processing and peer feedback were rarely observed.

In the social realm, students’ perception of their ability to work with assigned group mates was very positive. Although there was no significant perceived improvement of their ability to work with each other at 95% confidence intervals when comparing survey data of the pre- and post-group study survey. Nevertheless, students cited examples of increased communication and inter-ethnic as well as inter-gender bonding. Students seemed to have established implicit class and group norms as inferred from the leaders making a point to check the progress of other groups and standardising the number of questions to submit as a class. The use of Singapore English, Singlish for short, was common. There was no clear pattern in the frequency of use of Singlish by students of different ethnicity and gender. Instead, students’ prevailing popular culture, family background and their circle of friends seemed to have greater influence on the choice of terms of one language inserted into a sentence that was largely of another language. There was hardly any exchange of personal information during the group study sessions. Infrequent mild bullying, teasing and gossiping were observed and these were often done in a joking manner. Larger scale studies could be conducted to verify the generalisability of the above findings.