Technology and Group Work: Inclusion or Diversification of Talents?

Group work was popular at school before technology became important and it became a typical strategy when ICT was introduced. But what does really happen inside the groups, as students work together? Who does what? Who is learning what? In what sense can we call the learning process “inclusive”? This paper addresses the issue on the ground of the empirical evidence accumulated by Learning4All (www.l4allportal.it), a three-years, government-funded project. 274 educational experiences were closely scrutinized, through interviews and direct observation of materials. Additional data will come from an extensive survey about inclusion administered both online and on site to 258 teachers. Results show that heterogeneous group work is the preferred solution, but it runs the risk of generating different benefits when some students are given lesser roles while the best do the most difficult jobs. It works well for generating motivation and participation rather than curricular benefits, same for all. Homogenous group work, instead, emerges as a viable strategy to push all the students to improve all their performances.