Grassroots organizations have a critical role in supporting learning within many urban communities (Sobeck, Agius, & Mayers, 2007). Unfortunately, many informal organizations are short-lived as funding disappears and volunteer participation wanes. The Unspun Heroes, an informal fibre arts group committed to learning and developing skills…

Play is an increasingly popular process for working with groups of adults in a range of contexts. We are increasingly sophisticated in our ability to integrate creative forms of play into our facilitated work with groups, often with excellent outcomes. Experience and research have deepened our understanding of how to design and implement powerful…

Reading groups or book clubs have become increasingly popular in recent years, with many libraries, bookshops and workplaces hosting meetings, while a wealth of support is available online. They provide a chance to read, share opinions, chat and have fun--each one will be unique in how it works. Discussing books can help to reinforce, change or…

The Reader Organisation's Get into Reading programme is all about getting people together in groups to engage with serious books. The groups are mixed and the participants sometimes challenging, but the outcomes are often remarkable. Jane Davis, who founded the Reader Organisation and continues to oversee Get into Reading, has witnessed a massive…

Teaching researchers commonly employ group-based collaborative learning approaches in Teaching of Psychology teaching activities. However, the authors know relatively little about the effectiveness of group-based activities in relation to known psychological processes associated with group dynamics. Therefore, the authors conducted a meta-analytic…

Highlighting the application of ethnomusicology beyond the traditional boundaries of the academy, this article investigates the use of music in adult literacy education. In 2005, as part of the Literacy and Equality in Irish Society (LEIS) project, adult literacy tutors working in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom (UK), were invited to enrol in…

This research is an investigation into English as a Second Language (ESL) and content area teachers' perceptions of collaboration after they completed a joint professional development program called the Collaborative Teaching Institute (CTI). The overall objective of the study was to identify how CTI and other joint professional development…

The origins of study circles can be traced back to the Chautauqua movement in the USA in the late nineteenth century. However, interest diminished in the USA and the Swedes discovered and enthusiastically imported the study circle idea as a remedy to their problems of poverty and illiteracy and to educate the broadest possible spectrum of society…

Employers seek employees who possess soft skills. Employees who do not have excellent soft skills may not experience success in obtaining and sustaining employment. McEwen's (2010) framework for skill-building--introduce, explain, practice, and reinforce--was used to describe activities for enhancing soft skills. Soft skills building activities…

Purpose: Employees' work in innovation processes generates ideas, but more often it serves to create conditions so that new products or services can be effectively produced or delivered. Self-organizational activities involve proactively handling new possibilities, unexpected situations, problems or tasks. The aim of this paper is to provide…

The present study intends to explore the role of collectivism and group potency at group level in predicting individual Internet self-efficacy (ISE) and individual e-learning outcomes for people aged over 45. Group learning has been widely discussed in the research into online formats. However, less study has been carried out about how…

While many studies have sought to understand challenge courses and their benefits, less emphasis has been focused on understanding participants' perceptions of these programmes. In this study, 16 adults working at a dental office attended a one-day challenge course programme designed to teach lessons about co-operation. Data were collected via "in…

Purpose--What is required of job design and production planning, if they are to result in a work group taking a self-starting approach and going beyond what is formally required of it? This paper aims to contribute to group research by testing a theoretical model of relations between job design on the one hand (captured as completeness, demand on…

Free riders are individuals who decide not to participate in cooperative learning group activities and often lower the group's morale, productivity, and effectiveness. This research paper presents a review of free riding and the results of a research study to examine the perspectives of faculty members about free riders and how they address them.…

Although previous research indicates that nominal groups generally outperform interactive groups at brainstorming tasks, companies still favor group interaction because of its presumed benefits beyond the brainstorming task. This study assesses the effectiveness of both types of groups in two domains that follow idea generation: selection of ideas…