The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Group Work/Learning Teams

This guide provides resources to support research into teaching and learning in higher education.

Suggested Search Terms

Group work/learning teams are known by interesting terms within databases. Group work is often seen as one word, groupwork, and in the subject headings, it's called social group work. Learning teams are referred to as such in titles and the text of articles, but in the subject headings, it's called team learning approach in education. In order to capture the use of both the language used in the text and in the subject headings, a good approach is to search for variations of the term group work without limiting it to the subject headings and to include "team learning approach in education" as a phrase in quotation marks, as well as the phrase "learning teams," also in quotation marks to look for that phrase only. Since all of these are synonyms for the same concept, they can be placed in the same search box: (groupwork OR "group work" OR "team learning approach in education" OR "learning teams"). To find information about group work in higher education, include a terms relating to higher education (higher education OR college OR university OR post-secondary OR postsecondary OR undergraduate OR graduate) in the second box, with the subject headings selected from the drop-down box. A completed search box might look like this: 

Screenshot of search box

Additionally, a third term could be added related to a subject area. 

Suggested Databases

While all of the education databases listed on the general resources page will have information on group work, the one listed below may be helpful for research related to higher education.

Searching multiple databases at once may also be helpful; find instructions here

Suggested Resources