The Seminar: Cambridge Group Work General Course
Abstract
The Seminar: Cambridge Group Work General Course By M. L. J. ABERCROMBIE THE difficulties of combining theoretical teaching and experiential work in courses on group work training have been discussed recently in papers by Hughes (1983) published with comments by Bramley and by Christie (1984) published with comments by Andrew Powell. Brown (1984) has also commented on group work in a training environment. In Cambridge we have tackled this problem by drawing theoretical issues out of participants' own practical experience as they describe it in seminars. Lintott and Speirs (1982) have described the development of the group work course given in Cambridge. At present it consists of weekly meetings, over three terms of ten weeks. In the first and third terms seminar groups of eight to ten people meet for one-and-a-halfhours, then join the rest of the class for tea before meeting with a different set of people for small-group experience. During the second term the seminars are replaced by a Large Group. In planning the 198 1-82 version of the course in Cambridge we took note of something that had happened in tertiary education nearly twenty years before, when university students all over the world rebelled against