re: group construing

anima@devi.demon.co.uk
Wed, 15 May 1996 21:19:01 +0000

Said to myself "I must stop being boring by sticking my oar in every
night's postings to this newsgroup, but Bill Ramsay's latest on group
construing was irresistable. Sorry!

Discussing the classroom exercise in which a group of students
>went on to produce _agreed_ ratings for members of the Technical Education
>>Department as teachers and recorded these on a single group 'grid

he says
>I don't think this is an example of group construing in the sense that it's
>been discussed, but I'd be interested in your views on the validity of the
>process or even just on what's going on here.

Dunno about :"the sense that's being discussed" or validity; but it strikes
me that the value of what Bill's group did lies in the negotiation in which
they engaged in order to arrive at entries in the "single group grid". They
would have had to debate & argue, being able to resolve differences in only
two ways: a) learning about each other's construction systems by trying
them on for size (sociality)
and
b) agreeing to differ and _not_ making an entry into the group grid for
those particular issues.

Given that the social constructs would be explicable by the participants by
definition (just ask them!) what would be particularly interesting would be
rather to explore with them the occasions on which they had to agree to
differ: why? Fascinating!

Kind regards,

Devi Jankowicz

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