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Practitioners of experiential education programs often use variations of Bruce Tuckman's stage model of group development in facilitator training and as a basis for group program design and facilitation. Tuckman's model, published in 1965, remains one of the most commonly cited models of group development today (Cissna, 1984; Smith, 2005; Worchel, 1994). Tuckman's model was formed from a meta-analysis of 50 research-based studies of group development and is identified by the labels Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing (Adjourning was added by Tuckman and Jensen in 1977). Thirty-seven of the 50 studies used in his meta-analysis came from research on psychoanalytic studies of therapy and laboratory training groups. Tuckman (1965) recognized that the transferability of his model must be limited: "What has been presented is mainly research dealing with sequential development observed in therapy groups" (p. 395).
Research Question
In this qualitative analytical study I considered the question of whether Tuckman's model adequately describes group development for use by practitioners wishing to develop groups outside of a therapy context. In so doing I wished to bring further clarity to group development for use by experiential practitioners in a variety of settings. The question to guide this study was: Can further clarity for practical use be brought to the concept of group development by means of a typology synthesized from practitioner-authored group development models?
Methodology
The methodological framework selected for this study was informed by Soltis (1978), who suggested that a search for conceptual clarity must begin with common and typical examples of a concept. These examples are then gathered together according to themes. By determining what distinguishes different themes from each other, a typology of the concept is determined. Soltis indicated that the typology should then be tested against new and different examples of the concept in question. I chose to use books as the basis for my data collection rather than people because books gave me access to the concept of group development as described by therapy, business, and educational practitioner-authors from across North America, as well as allowing me to select from a wide sample pool. I selected group development literature from three disciplines in which group development is facilitated: therapy, education, and management. I felt that selecting models from a broad range...