Group Agreements

Group agreements (also referred to as class norms, participation norms, ground rules, community agreements, or group contracts) are rules, intentions, or guidelines for behavior and interaction that are communally formulated and agreed upon. They are a tool for fostering participation, inclusivity, and habits of explicit consent and accountability in the classroom. When inviting students to formulate and abide by group agreements in a class, some introductory framing is helpful to make the activity as productive as possible.

Why Might I Want to Create a Group Agreement?

You might wish to employ group agreements in order to introduce students to collaborative process¹ and decision making,² have students articulate the ground rules they need for an effective learning environment, practice conversation discourse,³ create a shared sense of responsibility for the classroom; and/or hold students accountable to agreed-upon behavior. Your goals for a group agreement might vary based on circumstance—for instance, creating a shared sense of community might feel especially important for post-pandemic in-person classrooms; creating guidelines for civic discourse might feel especially important in a course that discusses contemporary politics. Group agreements are often seen as a practice of equity, with explicit communication among instructors and students of what is expected of each other.⁴

The Stanford University Teaching Commons provides a handy reference for some of the benefits of classroom norms:⁵

• Transparency: instructor & students clarify expectations of each other
• Equity: making expectations explicit is fairer and more equitable for all students
• Gravity: instructors convey the seriousness of class behaviors and their effects
• Agency: students help shape their desired learning environment
• Representation: all students help shape the class learning environment
• Empathy: instructors and students consider each other’s perspectives
• Accountability: students share responsibility for their learning environment
• Solidarity: instructors and students are united in a shared project
• Community: instructors and students can develop mutual understanding and trust

Whatever your reasoning for having a class (or section) create group agreements, you should be clear with your own goals from the start, and communicate these goals to your students. For example, if class discussions or debates are important components of your pedagogy, you might convey what you hope students might learn or practice in this method of engagement.⁶ Your reasons should also then shape the method by which you invite students to formulate the agreements (e.g. by individually submitting proposed agreements and then voting, by brainstorming agreements in small groups and then compiling, or by pooling suggestions generated from the whole group at once). Unlike a class policy, group agreements might be best framed as aspirational, rather than punitive, returning to the documents created throughout the semester as a goal towards which the community is collectively striving.

What Kinds of Propositions Typically Appear in Group Agreements?

How Can I Establish a Group Agreement in My Classroom?

Because students may have different experiences with formulating group agreements, it’s important to articulate clearly both why you’re doing this exercise and how it will function in the class. You may want to start by sharing class policies, and clarify how norms are different. If you’re creating group norms in a seminar class, you might then transition into creating group norms; in a large lecture course, section might be a better place for these class agreements. Creating space for students to contribute to norms might include the expectation that everyone in the group is encouraged or expected to contribute, that challenges are accepted and alternatives are discussed before a decision is taken, and that the group will take responsibility for the decisions reached. You might start by asking students to list a condition of a previous class that functioned well, or ask them to answer a question such as: “How do you define respect in the context of course discussion?”

How Can I Make Sure that A Group Agreement is Sustained?

Be sure to communicate how the agreements will function in the class as a whole—it’s helpful to review the agreements once or twice in the weeks following the initial formulation session so that students have a chance to edit, subtract, or elaborate on agreements. After that, make sure to return to the agreements throughout the semester so that they don’t slip from memory. In addition to the above, you might add them to the syllabus document, post them on Canvas and give students the opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on the norms. You might use the midterm as a point of reference for students to self-assess their participation, and/or provide feedback about their sense of the class interactions and learning environment.

¹ “Peer relationships set the social context for school life…which makes attending school a more pleasant and welcoming experience … Feeling included and a sense of social belonging has been consistently shown to be an important predictor of academic outcomes … a greater sense of belonging … enhances positive emotions and makes it easier to focus on academic goals.” Christia Spears Brown, “The Importance, and the Challenges, to Ensuring an Inclusive School Climate,” Educational Psychologist 54, no. 4 (2019): 322–330.
² We should “conceptualize the classroom as a society that contributes to the functioning of students.” Instead of focusing only on individual students, we should think about the classroom as a microsociety. T.W. Farmer, et al. “Promoting Inclusive Classroom Communities in Diverse Classrooms: Teacher attunement and social dynamics management,” Educational Psychologist 54, no. 4 (2019): 286–305.
³ Neil Mercer has noted that while students seem to be expected to work out ground rules for effective discussion by themselves, they are an opportunity for important pedagogy. “Outside school, the ‘ground rules’ of everyday communication are usually taken for granted, and there is little meta-discussion or joint reflection on how things are normally done. This indicates a clear and useful role for schools, which are special institutional settings created for guiding intellectual development and understanding. Education should help children [students] gain a greater awareness and appreciation of the discourse repertoire of wider society and how it is used to create knowledge and to get things done.” Neil Mercer, Learning for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education (Blackwell, 2002), 147–148.
⁴ Some scholars have noted that well-intentioned norms like “assume good intentions” can also function as a way of policing behavior or avoiding uncomfortable dialogue. Suggesting that a student “not take it personally” can be a way of avoiding conflict-resolution in potentially heated discussions. The rhetoric of a “safe space” (or “brave space”) can interfere with achieving social justice education goals, if they are missing a sense of “discomfort,” which some see as a key to productive discussions. They have suggested that such practices ignore imbalances in discourse amplified by structural inequalities among the participants (such as race & sex), noting that while higher education tends to prioritize objectivity in discourse production, some topics will not feel “objective” to some students. Jasmine L. Harris, “ Uncomfortable Learning: Teaching Race Through Discomfort in Higher Education” in Difficult Subjects: Insights and Strategies for Teaching about Race, Sexuality, and Gender, Badia Ahad-Legardy, ed. (New York: Routledge); Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, “Respect Differences: Challenging the Common Guidelines in Social Justice Education,” Democracy and Education 22, no. 2 (2014).
⁵ A few other useful Harvard resources include the Graduate School of Education’s Norm-Setting at the Beginning of the Semester and Leveraging Norms for Challenging Conversations, and the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging’s Inclusive Dialogue Strategies. Some great resources from outside of Harvard are: Cornell’s Center for Teaching Innovation’s Getting Started with Establishing Ground Rules; Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education’s Establishing Classroom Norms and Expectations, and the University of Michigan’s Guidelines for Classroom Interactions, especially their Guidelines for Discussion / Community Expectations resource.
⁶ This might include, for example, helping students practice listening or debate skills, allowing them to be exposed to a greater diversity of opinions or communication styles, or giving the classroom the opportunity to develop a more critically informed understanding of class topics. See Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill, Discussion as a Way of Teaching : Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999).
⁷ Some educators use the LARA (Listen, Affirm, Respond, Ask Questions) framework. For more information, see The LARA Method for Managing Tense Talks.