NCTCA 2022

A typical human being is smart, rational, and predictable. But when you put a bunch of them together, that can quickly fall apart. From Black Friday shoppers stampeding at the mall, to rioting Canucks fans at the end of a playoff run, examples of “dumb” crowds aren’t hard to find. But why? After all, when you put individual animals into groups, the opposite usually happens. A guppy within a school of fish makes faster and more accurate decisions than it can when it’s alone. A group of cockroaches can solve math problems well beyond what any individual cockroach can do. In the past few years, the science of group dynamics has revealed many jaw-dropping phenomena, and the fascinating but understandable mechanisms behind them. I’ll discuss this work, with a focus on tangible lessons for teachers and administrators who work with groups of students in a classroom, or teams of staff-members in a school.