Practice & Communication In Social Work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Practice & Communication In Social Work - Essay Example Many of the groups that a person is a member of can impact greatly on their lives – either positively or negatively. Throughout the ages, writers and researchers have been interested in the dynamics of groups. How a group forms, how it changes over time, how it comes to an end, and how a group structures itself, has been investigated by numerous researchers (Adams, 1990). What I have come to learn from this course is that to understand others, I need to understand group processes. For this semester’s social work course, a reflective journal assignment was set, focusing on my working within a group. I was in group D and our task was to raise money or provide Service User support for a local charity of our choice. I was at this stage of the course aware that our group would go through a process of stages, and so I chose Tuckman’s model (1965), that he later revised in 1977. The aim of this report is to evaluate the effectiveness of the group and my contribution to the group over the semester. Tuckman’s (1951) model of group dynamics states that all groups go through four stages: forming, storming, norming and performing. Tuckman contends that groups usually form when people test the boundaries of others. We had ample opportunity to do this, I think to our advantage, as we all knew each other from this class. I was fortunate to have mostly teamed up with people who had similar motivation levels to me. However, on reflection I can see how being placed into a group, instead of choosing one myself to be in, would represent many group formations in the professional world. In the workforce, people are often put into teams without having a choice.