I have chosen to observe a group of thirteen to nineteen-year olds who regularly attend a Youth Club provision, at which I am currently a staff member. The group consists of a number of young people of both sexes

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3rd March 2005

Working With groups.

One of the tasks for this module, Working With groups, is to identify a group that I will be able to observe for a period of twenty to thirty minutes.

I have chosen to observe a group of thirteen to nineteen-year olds who regularly attend a Youth Club provision, at which I am currently a staff member. The group consists of a number of young people of both sexes although it is predominantly male in membership statistics. I furnished the group with an activity in order to ascertain leadership styles and group dynamics in order to gauge whether they were ‘task’ or ‘process’ orientated.

The group meets for a variety of reasons. Some members attend because they appreciate the need for social interaction/recreation, as indeed do the majority of young people. This is an overt need in most individuals in that they need to feel accepted by peers and society in general. Other attendance reasons are for support. As they mature in age, my client group show signs (covertly in most cases) of requiring extra support, not only from their peers but also from Youth Workers in the environment. The majority of members in this group are in an educational establishment and so the need to learn new skills does not seem, at this point, relevant to them, however, the staff do provide learning opportunities for the young people and this is done covertly, in that, young people are participating in recreational and fun activities which, at the end of, they are able to take away valuable information and new skills.

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I decided to observe the group covertly because I felt that if the group had realised that they were being observed, they would have behaved differently and I would not have been able to assess the group dynamics appropriately. At the end of the observation, I consulted with the group in order to seek permission for this information to be used for the purposes of this assignment and ensured them that information gathered from the exercise would remain confidential.

Bruce W Tuckman, a well respected, Princeton Graduate, observed groups from a wide range of society and came ...

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