Peer-facilitators as inside-outsiders: Supporting encounters with difficult knowledge in assessed group work

Well-designed group projects have the potential to cultivate a more inclusive learning environment. While the organisational difficulties of group work are well-known, the unequally distributed emotional and psychological burdens that group work can impose are less often acknowledged. To make sense of who finds group work difficult and why, we discuss a pilot project in which we employed second-year students to facilitate group projects on a core first-year Politics module. Based on analysis of student surveys, reflective reports by students and interviews with peer-facilitators, alongside our own teaching practice as lecturers, we reflect on how peer-facilitators can help to make group work more inclusive due to their positionality as inside-outsiders within the seminar room.