In-Vivo Observation Paper
Rebecca A. Galloway
Anderson University

In-Vivo Observation Paper
American high schools today have their own sets of cliques, who not only threaten parental authority, but often come with undesired changes in adolescent behavior. During adolescent years, students obtain membership in a clique in order to avoid anonymity and make the transition to secondary school easier. The types of cliques found in a school vary significantly because of the variation in adolescents’ personalities, which are encouraged in these cliques. Some typical types of teen cliques that are observed include: geeks, jocks, outsiders, hipsters, preps, and nerds. An in-vivo observation was conducted at Riverside High School in Greenville, South Carolina of both preps and nerds in a tenth grade social studies classroom. Both groups consisted of four girls, which at the time of observation, were working on a cooperative learning activity involving the history of the United States. This activity involved making a timeline of the American Civil War between the Union and Confederate armies and reconstruction.
For the prep group, a powerful, yet unstable social hierarchy occurred that structured the interactions between group members; rare is the group where all members enjoy equal amounts of authority, status differentiation almost always takes place. One member was observed to be the leader or “queen bee,” two sidekicks, and another a floater. The leader first maintained power over group membership by inviting only her clique to be a part of the project group; another student was even rejected by the group when the leader stated the group was full, even though there was no cap on size given in the instructor’s directions at the beginning of the class period. This leader’s style matches the leader-member exchange theory. It was observed that the leader gave the floater the hard part of the project, since the floater often roamed around the room associating with other cliques and students during class time. The leader had a social dominance orientation because she strove for power over the others by only using her ideas in the cooperative learning activity. For example, she did not ask the others how they wanted to design the poster, she just started designing it the way she wanted.
Even though it is obvious to many in the classroom that this group is unhealthy, these girls are considered the stars of the school; at the time of observation, they were the hub of attraction by the teacher and other students of both sexes. Other people in the classroom talked to this clique the most and paid more attention to their needs. This particular group exercised a great amount of power in the classroom by bullying other students. Bullying was conducted mostly through verbal abuse and exclusion. This clique was relationally aggressive, often gossiping about people while they were conducting the activity. I thought it was interesting that when the floater visited with other groups, the clique gossiped about her; this shows that she is on the fringe of group membership. I think the floater knows about her low status in this particular group, and that undercuts her motivation to please them.
In common with the prep group, the nerd group also had a social hierarchy; however, there was one leader and every other girl was equal in status. Even though every member in this group is above average in intelligence, the leader is higher in intelligence than all of the others. The leader took charge of the cooperative learning activity from the onset, often giving ideas and answers before any other group member had the chance to respond. Also, the leader was always the one asked when a group member had a question about the activity. The nerd group’s leader made the group itself excellence-oriented, in that they all strived for a perfect grade on the cooperative learning activity. This leader emerged because the group favored the member that best represented their ideal of academia; therefore, this goes along with the social identity theory of leadership emergence.
However, unlike the prep group, the nerd group had more social loafing they had to counteract. Often times, one of the girls in the group would not do any work, but sit in the classroom playing on her phone. This is interesting to me as an observer because she is not lacking in intelligence. Next time in order to counteract this tendency, I think the leader should set specific goals for each member in the group and communicate these goals to them at the beginning of the cooperative activity. This way each group member will be on task the entire class period. However, it is just not up to the leader of the group to counteract social loafing; I think the teacher could do a better job at establishing ground rules for cooperative learning activities, instead of just expecting students know. Instructors should explain these ground rules when going over the directions for the activity.
Another characteristic of both the prep and the nerd group was that they both were task oriented during the time period when they were working on the cooperative learning activity. I think the school setting influenced this task orientation; each group knew that they should be accomplishing the activity in a timely manner or they might get in trouble by the teacher. The teacher in this classroom is really strict about students being on task. Since there was a task orientation within these two groups, there was more task leadership than relationship leadership seen in the two leaders. Both leaders promoted task completion by assigning tasks to members; however, the nerd group made these attitudes less clear, which is why a scapegoat occurred. I think the leader never said anything regarding this lack of work because of her shy personality and her dislike of conflict.