Intellectual authority and participation in group work
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Date
2025
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Abstract
In group work, learning is mediated by participation: participation involves actively contributing to group decisions and activities and accepting these contributions from peers. From this starting point, we integrate the perspective of power relations, assuming that classroom interactions are not neutral and that asymmetries may mediate students’ participation in group work. Although there are studies on the distribution of intellectual authority among peers, how intellectual authority is related to participation has yet to be studied more deeply. Our study’s primary purpose is to understand how the distribution of intellectual authority relates to participation in group work. A qualitative approach research and case study was conducted. Participants are four groups of elementary and middle-school students from two large cities in Chile. Through deductive-inductive coding performed by constant comparison, three different modes of distribution of intellectual authority were found: shared, concentrated, and disputational. Opposite to concentrated authority, shared authority is related to the predominance of cohesive group work. Disputational authority is related to group fragmentation and invalidating discourses among students. In conclusion, by having autonomy in the distribution of authority in group work, students build participation structures that can give or take away the floor to the contributions of others. Implications are discussed.
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Keywords
Participation, Group work, Intellectual authority, Power relations