This book provides a clear and engaging description of group dynamic processes. Vignettes, case examples, and activities provide an experiential flavor to the book that will deepen the reader’s understanding of key concepts. Activities are also useful experiential teaching and learning tools for studying group dynamics and allow participants to engage in the group dynamic process itself. Another attractive feature of the book is a series of reflections by an individual who participated in an intensive two-weekend group experience. She shares her thoughts on the group’s progression through various stages of change and reflects upon its impact on her personal growth. Group Dynamics: Basics and Pragmatics for Practitioners will serve as an important text for students and professors and as a valuable guide for those who facilitate groups in a variety of clinical, counseling, educational, research, and organizational settings.

Working, learning and living in groups is a central feature of humans, and therefore the study of groups called group dynamics is a vibrant academic field, overlapping diverse areas such as psychology, sociology, business studies and political science. It is also highly relevant to language education because the success of classroom learning is very much dependent on how students relate to each other, what the classroom climate is like, what roles the teacher and the learners play and, more generally, how well students can cooperate and communicate with each other. This innovative book addresses these issues and offers practical advice on how to manage language learner groups in a way that they develop into cohesive and productive teams. Educators interested in communicative language teaching will particularly welcome this book as a useful guide in their day-to-day teaching practice.

Dynamic Group-Piano Teaching provides future teachers of group piano with an extensive framework of concepts upon which effective and dynamic teaching strategies can be explored and developed. Within fifteen chapters, it encompasses learning theory, group process, and group dynamics within the context of group-piano instruction. This book encourages teachers to transfer learning and group dynamics theory into classroom practice. As a piano pedagogy textbook, supplement for pedagogy classes, or resource for graduate teaching assistants and professional piano teachers, the book examines learning theory, student needs, assessment, and specific issues for the group-piano instructor.