Meredith Belbin’s Team Roles

Belbin suggests that when working collaboratively (in a community of practice for example) there are a number of different roles which have essential parts to play in producing successful group work over a period of time.  She suggests that the preferred roles are linked to our personalities and categorises them into 3 groups: doing/acting, thinking/ problem solving, people/feelings.  She also makes it clear that in order to achieve the most effective result; a combination of these roles must be in place as “more of the same won’t work” Scottish Executive (2006) (cited Scarlett, V., 2010). 

                                                                                                               ARTSFWD (2012).

I did a lesson in the primary school where the children were to work collaboratively in groups to create a board game.  I gave each group a set of cards with different roles on them, to help them decide who was going to do what in order to complete the project.  This way it was a lot less likely for someone to completely take over and do everything, or for someone to sit back and do nothing.  “There are many forms of cooperative learning, but in most all models a group is given a specific task and each member of the group is assigned a role or specific activity that will contribute to the completion of the task” Green T., Brown A., Robinson L. (2008, p.14).  The role cards worked really well and allowed all children to participate more fully as they had a designated role, so although they were working together to create the board game they still had an individual role to fulfil in the process.

Belbin’s roles can be linked to the Curriculum for Excellence’s principle personalisation and choice:

“The curriculum should…support particular aptitudes and talents. It should give each child…increasing opportunities for exercising responsible personal choice… There should be safeguards to ensure that choices are soundly based and lead to successful outcomes” Scottish Government (2008).

By allowing the children to choose what role they would like to carry out, keeping in mind what best suits their personality definitely accomplishes the principle: personalisation and choice.

From looking at Belbin’s roles and the roles I gave to the children, I can definitely see a link.  I am glad we have learned about Belbin’s roles today as now I understand the theory behind the roles I created for the children (as I was unaware of the theory when I did the lesson).

References

Scarlett, V. (2009). A Social Work Perspective.  1CM1 Module, School of Education, Social Work and Community Education, University of Dundee.

ARTSFWD (2012). Building an innovative team. 
Available: http://artsfwd.org/how-innovation-works/5-steps/building-an-innovation-team/  [Last accessed: 10.2.12]

Green T., Brown A., Robinson L. (2008). Making the most of the web in your classroom: A teachers guide to blogs, podcasts, wikis, pages, and sites. London: Corwin Press.

Scottish Government (2008). Curriculum for Excellence: Principles for curriculum design. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

Available:http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/understandingthecurriculum/howisthecurriculumstructured/principles/index.asp  [Last accessed: 10.2.12]