SOCIOGRAM COOPERATIVE CLINICAL ASSIGNMENT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this clinical assignment is threefold:

1. to give you experience in a cooperative group activity where all four members must contribute equally in an interdependent fashion in order to accomplish the task. In this sense the activity is somewhat modeled after Shlomo Sharan's Group Investigation (G-I) approach to cooperative learning.
2. to master the social-psychological techniques of "sociometry" - the quantitative and qualitative diagnosis and interpretation of classroom climate through peer friendship patterns.
3. to give you experience with the use of various internet technologies (downloading, installing, and running a program, as well as using word processing techniques).

DIRECTIONS: Materials... Each member of the group will have available to them, on the net from the web: 1. "Sociometry in the classroom: How to Do It". This item should be addressed in your report and also included in your reference section at the end of your group paper.

2. One copy only for the entire group of an intact classroom report. This includes a single page report for each child in the classroom entitled "sociometry Report, McGuffey - EDP 621... Class=##.

Assignment. After reading the instructions in Sherman's ON-Line Sociometry In The Classroom: How To Do It, each member of the four/five person team will:

1. Decide which of the 4 questions each of you will diagram: e.g., Lunch, Movie, Study, Rejection.

2. Cut off the portion of the report dealing with your question.

3. Using the installed sociometrics program the group should collectively enter the data for the four questions. This file should be sharred with all team members.

4. Create a copy of the bar Graph (Figure 3) and sociogram (Figures 16 or 17) for each of your sociometric questions. These two items will comprise each of your individual contributions ... almost like chapters in a book. That is, one set of graphs for each question (lunch, movie, study, rejection) per person in your group. If there is a fifth person in your group the group should determine other "coordinating" activites that they might engage in: eg., pulling the whole paper together, maintaining the database for the group, etc.

5. After sociometrically diagraming each of your individual questions, including 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices, each team member will identify the code numbers of the children in your individual sociogram who are (see step 3 and step 4 in the on-line instructions):

a. Stars
b. Isolated
c. Rejected,
d. Ghosts (neglected children)
e. Controversial children
f. mutual choice pairs
g. cliques

These items are also addressed in chapter 13 of your McDevitt/Ormrod book. Each member should do this independently and later the group will compare what each of you has found, looking for similarities and differences among the set of questions.

6. As a team, describe the relationship between the sociogram patterns and children's gender, both for each of your individual sociograms, as well as the collective set of four sociograms.

7. As a team or group of 4/5, compare the similarities and differences between each of your sociograms. There are many of each. The more the better. Be creative.

Resulting Product. These activities should result in one paper including:

1. A cover page with the group number, team members names, as well as the classroom ID number of the classroom which you are analyzing.

2. An introductory chapter in which you try to give a general description of the classroom all of you are analyzing. This introductory section should also point out who is analyzing each question and how you as a group decided this.

3. Four individual chapter contributions by each member which will include:

a. the bar graph like figure 3
b. the sociogram like figure 16 or 17
d. your individual identifications of the sociogram status types described in number 5 above, as well as comments regarding gender differences and patterns. Be sure to indicate by name who is doing each question. Within each of your individual chapters use the McDevitt/Ormrod text material, and at least one other reference determined from a search in the ERIC indexes.

4. A sixth chapter which attempts to synthesize and integrate your individual contributions and draws a group conclusion when addressing numbers 6 and 7 above.

5. In addition I would like you to have a "Reference" page that should include a reference to our McDevitt/Ormrod text and at least 4 additional references that you use and were determined from the ERIC indexes. You should also reference the web page, Sociometry in the Classroom: How To Do It.

6. Lastly, this is a group project that all members of your team will own. All four of you should have an electronic version of this paper that will be in your electronic portfolio at the end of the class!