From Team Work to Teamwork in Education

Abstract

Our understanding of team work, team leadership and team learning in education has not been helped by the dearth of research which might provide evidence to inform practice. Most of the discussion about what constitutes effective team work and team leadership has taken place outside education and been used, not always appropriately, to inform the debate inside education. A major purpose of this chapter will be to unravel from the range of mainly small-scale research and informed discussion inside and outside education what has relevance for the work of teams in education, with a particular emphasis on management teams. Comprehensive summaries of the literature relating to team work outside education and their relevance to education can be found in (Gronn 1998; 1999). This chapter, in contrast, will concentrate on teams in education. While using the springboards to developing conceptual frameworks for understanding teams provided by the non-educational literature, it is important to take into account the historical and cultural contexts of teachers’ roles, leadership and management, professional associations, and the changing conditions within which schools, colleges and universities must operate. Analyses of team work in non-educational settings provide useful perspectives and methodologies but much of the language, as well as tasks, roles and purposes, is inappropriate to education. We need to use education’s own language as far as possible and only those other studies that resonate with educational concerns.

Published posthumously. Sadly, Valerie Hall died in May, 2002. Thanks are extended to Mike Wallace for his assistance in copy-editing Valerie’s manuscript (Sect. Ed.).