Response Groups

Response groups are a research and pedagogical tool that can be useful in a wide range of contexts, including peer debriefing and interpretation of data. Response groups have derived from the work of literacy researchers and educators in relation to reading, writing, and oral communication. Response groups enable a community of researchers/participants to share perspectives and also support the notion of research and writing as a collaborative venture. Through participation in response groups, researchers both provide and seek oral feedback to their data or their formulating ideas and analysis. Development of a community fosters awareness of audience for researchers, and knowledge of audience enables researchers to become more aware of possible strategies for interpretation and response to interview and document data. Effective data analysis and interpretation is enhanced through anticipation of an audience, and response groups provide a real audience and genuine reactions from a community of researchers/participants.

Writing response groups encourage writing as an activity of social and communicative nature, and they provide not only a genuine audience but also a real [Page 792]purpose for which to write. The writing of research findings becomes a purposeful activity that is located within a research community and provokes action. Response groups enable researchers to have their writing responded to in a constructive processual manner through participant or peer debriefing.

Writing and research writing in particular are interactive activities and should be purposeful and meaningful; researchers need to continually remember who they are interacting with and the purpose of their research. Hence, response groups have, until recently, been conceptualized as face-to-face encounters, with members of the group being close together in such a way that all voices can be heard and shared. Writing is shared in a variety of ways, including reading aloud, distributing printed copies prior to the response group meeting, and sharing copies at the time of the meeting. Response group members read or listen to the text being discussed before responding.

Since the more recent developments of technological tools, computers have provided an alternative way to conceptualize response groups. A new social organization via online interaction has enabled a variety of peer collaborations and communities of researchers and participants to develop.

Literature response groups involve communities of learners in exploring issues and genuine questions related to common research interests in relation to their own lives. Through response groups, readers are invited to extend and revise their thinking about concepts or theories. Response groups as part of a process of learning from literature encourage prolonged involvement with a concept or theory.

Response groups have provided an approach for encountering data in process rather than only as a product. Response groups can, by virtue of the existence of real and meaningful interaction, encourage development and revision of ideas and of ongoing interpretation and depth of understanding of findings so as to best reach the intended audience in the most engaging ways possible.