Teamworking in Two Dissimilar Secondary Comprehensive Schools: An Account of Team Roles, Interaction and interdependence in Action

Asong, Sophina Besong (2005). Teamworking in Two Dissimilar Secondary Comprehensive Schools: An Account of Team Roles, Interaction and interdependence in Action. EdD thesis The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.000101b9

Abstract

This study investigates team working in four middle level teams within two socio economically and geographically dissimilar secondary comprehensives. Over a period of two years, data was collected using Belbin’s (1993) Self-Perception Inventory, administered to a total of thirty eight teachers at various levels of responsibility within the two schools. The response rate was 91.9%. A total of twelve team meetings were observed, videoed and analysed using Bales’ (1950) Interaction Process Analysis schedule. The result is a descriptive account of how teachers and their leaders deploy their roles and interact as they work together in teams.

This study found that, although school cultures assumed that teachers would work in a team structure, both teachers and their leaders seemed either not to have a conceptual understanding of their team roles, or considered it unimportant in the pursuance of their day to day work. Interactions in meetings did not always reflect teachers’ self-perceived team roles, and interdependence tended to be predominantly task-focussed. The study revealed that the quality and extent of teamworking was problematic in many respects. The practice of teamworking in the school contexts studied showed gaps between the prescription and advice proffered by management literature, and the reality of teamworking in key areas of team management such as leadership, goal management, vision making and conflict recognition/resolution.