LEARNING ACTIVITIES TO TEACH GROUP DYNAMICS

Group dynamics are the ‘actions, processes, and changes that occur within and between groups’ and there are many topics housed under this umbrella term, including leadership, cohesion, diversity and inclusion, teamwork, motivational climate, roles, and team resilience. Given the ubiquity of groups within and beyond sport, exercise, and performance contexts, it’s important that we create opportunities for students to learn how to be effective team members and facilitate effective group functioning. In this chapter, we will share learning activities to teach group dynamics in the classroom. To choose the activities, we drew from our own experiences as college teachers. We created a list of our favorite assignments and organized these into five broad categories: Starting the group dynamics conversation, building self-awareness, story-based instruction to bridge theory and practice, using simulations to experience group dynamics, and learning from the real world. We believe that these categories capture the many ways in which we can teach team dynamics, from building a base of foundational knowledge to using this information in active ways in the classroom, so students can experience team dynamics as they unfold in real time. What follows are descriptions of each category, including their purpose and sample activities.