Manager, Facilitator, Motivator, Advocate: Setting Up Group Roles That Really Work

Any collaborative group—soccer team, robotics team, marching band—functions best when each individual member has a distinct, indispensable role. The same goes for students working together in middle and high school classrooms.

Defining academic group roles clarifies expectations, increases efficiency, supports engagement and critical skill building, and promotes a more positive experience for all. In contrast, when students lack clear, effective roles, they inevitably invent their own, like “Kid Who Does All the Work Because She Lacks Confidence in Her Peers” or “Kid Who Lets Others Take the Lead Because He Lacks Confidence in Himself.”

Of course, it’s hard to ensure that every student holds a unique job, and even harder to ensure that every unique job promotes meaningful responsibility, learning, and growth. Many traditional group roles only scratch the surface of students’ capabilities, and they do little to prepare kids for the complex, collaborative world of work that awaits after graduation. (Think about it: When was the last time you saw a job listing for a scribe or a timekeeper?)

When we instead assign authentic, challenging roles, we support holistic student growth by setting the same high standards for social and emotional work as we do for academics. We demonstrate respect for kids by allowing them to exercise the impressive interpersonal abilities that they already possess. At the same time, we help them hone these abilities in preparation for professional and personal success in the future.

In our book, Leaders of the Class, we present four group roles designed for secondary school students and inspired by the 21st-century world of work: Project Manager, Facilitator, Motivator, and Advocate. Individually, each role empowers the learner to take responsibility, practice crucial skills, and contribute to a positive, collaborative culture. Collectively, the roles increase team autonomy and minimize student reliance on the teacher. Let’s break down each role.

Project Manager

The Project Manager practices executive functioning and communication skills while promoting team productivity. This individual manages materials, takes notes, supports absent team members, and oversees the project’s overall progress, ensuring that the team hits important milestones on time and with academic integrity. Helpful prompts for the Project Manager include the following:

• “Are we clear on what we need to accomplish and by when?”
• “Do we have what we need?”
• “Do you know what you can be doing?”

Facilitator

The Facilitator focuses on fostering a productive and positive team culture by using communication, comprehension, and analysis skills. The Facilitator internalizes and then explains assignment directions, reviews work with an eye for consistent quality, and oversees the exchange of feedback to ensure equitable and effective team talk. When necessary, Facilitators also support conflict resolution. An effective Facilitator often asks these questions:

• “Can we pause to review our work before moving on?”
• “Is there anything we can do to improve our responses?”
• “What other ideas do people have?”

Motivator

The Motivator uses positivity to promote productivity, leveraging their emotional awareness and communication skills to support group reflection about interpersonal dynamics and individual motivation. When necessary, the Motivator takes steps to motivate the team. The Motivator furthers these goals through the following questions and statements:

• “How are you/we feeling?”
• “I appreciate how you/we…”
• “Is there something you/we could do differently that would make this feel better?”

Advocate

Ah, the Advocate! Teachers often tell us that this is their favorite role. Instead of 10 kids asking you the same question in quick succession, you’ve got one Advocate on each team who uses their inquiry and communication skills to represent their group, promoting productivity and positivity in the process. In addition to asking the teacher questions when they arise, the Advocate circulates to learn from other teams and also meets regularly with fellow Advocates, along with the teacher, to gather and share information that will support their team’s progress. The Advocate’s prompts to their own team include the following:

• “Is there anything I can request to help us reach our goals?”
• “Is there anything I can learn from others that would help us solve this problem?”

Additional Structure

We recommend a few other actions to help students play their parts successfully. A big one is to set norms—or, better yet, to facilitate student norm-setting. Many teachers we work with report students pushing back when directed to work in groups. Often, this resistance stems from anxiety. With collaborative norm-setting, students experience a level of control that counteracts their anxiety. Plus, they‘re able to advocate for the collective conditions they need to undertake authentic, messy interpersonal work that reflects the team’s diverse perspectives and skills. We suggest promoting norms that explicitly focus on promoting positivity (such as agreeing to call out good work) and productivity (such as agreeing to mark deadlines in a shared calendar).

A second action is to adapt group roles to meet student needs. We frequently hear teachers observe that kids lack foundational social skills. This observation makes sense since students today spend less time interacting with their peers outside of class compared with earlier cohorts of kids. Rather than giving up on group work, we encourage educators to help students close collaboration skill gaps by providing them with short-term scaffolds and supports, such as conflict-resolution protocols, agenda templates, and team assessment tools. (On the Leaders of the Class landing page, we offer tool kits for each role. The tool kits are free, but you do need to create a Solution Tree account.)

If students demonstrate proficiency in their roles, or if you are designing a longer-term project, you will likely want to layer in additional responsibilities. While education researcher John Hattie recommends one month to one semester as the duration that’s most effective for collaborative learning, there is also value in assigning these roles for shorter-term teamwork. You may opt to pair these roles with other jobs that are either specific to the discipline (such as Economist, Precision Expert, and Bias Checker) or specific to the format (such as Event Planner, Influencer, Web Designer, or Podcaster).

However you use these roles, you will be empowering students to take the lead in their collaborative learning. And by doing so, you’ll likely find that you have more time to circulate, assess, and enjoy observing students supporting each other to reach their individual and collective potential.