Students just talk when they're supposed to be working in groups.

I occasionally teach graduate courses in the teacher education department. The students over there are all teachers or K-12 administrators, and I love it. We get to talk about real problems and work together on solutions, which is much better than imagining future problems that students might face in their careers.

One teacher shared a personal challenge she was facing in her classroom, which was that students would chat casually when they were supposed to be working in groups. It's a familiar problem for teachers who use or who have experimented with small groups, and the question gave me a chance to reflect on my experience with group work--both as a student and as a professor.

Here was my response:

Let me tell you a story. My senior year of college I still needed a lab science in order to graduate, so I registered for Physics. The professor sat us in groups of three, and each class period we listened to a short lecture/demonstration before working together in groups on a worksheet. We could leave whenever we were done, but we always took the whole hour and spent it mostly chatting with each other. We did this all semester. Remarkably, my group began to meet socially outside of class. Now, 15 years later, I remember almost nothing from college, but I remember almost everything from that class. I can still see the faces of my group members, who once visited me at my job as a restaurant server. (The same goes for classes in high school, now that I think about it.) What I remember most are the relationships.

Today I now understand that the group chatting/working supports the psychological need for relatedness. This makes whatever the task--no matter how boring or mundane--more enjoyable and satisfying. But it only works when the professor/teacher lets it happen. 

My position on small group / big talk has changed considerably over the last 5 years. Today, I am pleased when students fill the class period with chatter. I know that they're getting something that few get these days (that is, non-digitally-mediated socializing), especially not in the context of school. In education we talk about blurring the line between classroom and life--we like to think that life and learning will become integrated, but in practice we hate it when life enters our serious classrooms of learning.  But now I welcome it. If I'm concerned that course objectives aren't being met, then I share that and enlist students in coming up with a solution. But if they are comfortable enough with their teacher (that is, if student trust them) enough to chat in their teacher's presence, then students can get a bunch done together in a short amount of time.

In sum, I think professors are doing something right when students are able to work together, have fun cutting up, but still get their work done. In my opinion, this means that they are comfortable being themselves AND working, which is much better than absently toiling away on work that will be forgotten as soon as they leave the classroom.

I sometimes feel irresponsible if students are doing anything other than answering serious questions. I have to remind myself that my own learning process is anything but linear. After 12 years of practice, I still have to get away from writing/teaching and sort of zone out for awhile. It isn't despite zoning out that I am productive, but because of it. It's part of the process.