GROUP DISCUSSION There is talk about group discussion everywhere but, as far as I have seen, not much of RESEARCH about it has been done. At present it is the street vendors of soft skills who go from college to college and persuade their managements to engage for orienting their final year students that decide by default what a good group discussion is and should be. There is need for research about group discussion from the perspective of the prospective employer on the one hand, and the topic and participants on the other. I hasten to add I have come across titles of full length books like Models of Multiperson Interactions. One direction for empirical research about group discussion would be identifying models of successful and non-successful group discussions--rather, fitting the successful ones into just one or more of the extant models. It can be done even mathematically if we have a large volume of data as it is done in statistical curve-fitting. Another strategy would be to observe, without pre-conceived MODELS, and identify by generic or common sense/outcome based criteria instances of group discussion that will be readily accepted by a majority of professionals knowledgeable about the field as superb and then go about extracting underlying generic models. As and when this is done, the structure of a fairly sound curriculum for training in group discussion can be outlined, Two days ago my nephew came to me telling me one such soft skill vendor is going to conduct a preparatory program for campus interview and sought tips from me on how to fare well in the mock program. I did tell him whatever I have read about and seen first hand in group discussions as a member of selection committees in universities and told my nephew there is no guarantee what the street vendor of soft skills tells you will be followed exactly in real time campus interview of high profile companies--unless, of course, at least one member of the team of street vendors of soft skills has been a part of a real time campus interview. And, after my briefing I directed him to my son-his cousin--who has been in charge of campus recruitment in high profile institutions all over India like the IIMs, IITs etc..for about 3 years for a Indian multinational software company and so should know both by instinct and experience how such group discussions roll out. authored in the late fifties or early seventies. But even this book is not based on empirical research. This calls for empirical field research about group discussions taking place in real time as a base for curriculum development in group discussion. As I was observing my interaction with my nephew in a meta-cognitive mode I found that the moment I touched a point about which he knew something he jump-started his reply and his listening was dimmed, if not completely shut off. I can understand the enthusiasm of a 19 year old to impress me with what he knew about. About 50% of the time he had gone off at a tangent. Then I patiently explained to him that if the interviewer knew and appreciated the rationale of prescribing group discussion as a filter for communicative competence of the interviewee he must be monitoring the proportion of intervieweeI-talk and interviewer talk: Flanders Interaction Analysis adopts the proportion of teacher-talk and student-talk in classroom as a instrumental criterion for assessing democratic versus autocratic style of teaching. I advised to listen out to the interviewer before he responded; and, if he was not sure he had understood what the interviewer said, to parapahrase what he understood, get the interviewers concurrence about his understanding and then proceed-es. Research scholars in personnel management--especially in the recruitment process will find this topic at once challenging and fruitful. Yes, there are interesting variations: how does GD roll out when gender is a factor say, when all the candidate-participants are boys, when all are girls, and the group is mixed and the optimal size for the group for GD [The concepts of family density and sibling constellation in the social psychology of family comes to my mind. I will reflect on Group Discussion in other contexts later. I must mention here the pecking order adopted in the Mahabharatha and thus implicitly commended: When the 5 brothers are in council, to deliberate on the decision to be taken after the wicket gaura cousins flatly and peremptorily refused to return their kingdom to them though they have come back after fulfilling the conditions they were obliged to submit to: The eldest Dharma asks the youngest Sahadeva for his opinion. It is surprising because the Hindu ethos accords the status of primus interpares [I am not sure whether my spelling is right here1] and Dharma, who must know, asks the youngest Sahadevan. Rajaji explains the rationale-- it is the best order. If elders first voice their opinion then the younger ones will be inhibited from freely speaking their minds. Even if the younger one voices is opinion after the elders, and if the younger ones choice is better the elder will cut a sorry figure. Reversing his decision will entail loss of face for the elder. If, on the other hand, the elder persists and the outcome is disastrous, it will be a double loss: loss of face and loss of what had been at stake. This pecking order, from the youngest to the eldest, in group discussion preserves at once both democracy and respect for elders. Of course, this aside is not an integral part of the main theme. Yet, I thought I could touch upon it to show an awareness of the dynamics of group discussion has been there since the days of the Mahabharatha I hope to streamline and prune each post into a more academically respectable format soon. If too many posts accumulate I may not have the patience to sit and process a voluminous collection!
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 11:44:03 +0000
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