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Learning from contrasting teams.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

An exploratory action-research investigation was conducted of two diverse teams composed of aspiring school principals. The eleven team participants were inner city teachers enrolled in an educational leadership program at a private university. Business concepts were applied to the teams. Results illustrated that developing team contracts and instructional monitoring was necessary to provide foundational support to teams. In spite of the diversity and determination of team members, one team was able to share leadership and achieve "team" status, while the other remained a "working group."

Purpose and Background of the Study

The purpose of this case study was to conduct an exploratory investigation of two diverse teams in an educational leadership course composed of eleven urban teachers who were aspiring school principals. The eleven participants were inner city teachers enrolled in an educational leadership program that combined business, educational and technological concepts in its courses. This was the first leadership course in the program. Because teams are an integral part of leadership education and teaming is emphasized in schools today, the eleven adult students were placed into teams in order to gain experience interacting with diverse team members and producing a team product.

The cooperative educational group model has a long history in schools and a wide body of knowledge associated with it. Within the model, individual students produce specific parts of a group project and then meld the individual parts into a whole (Slavin, 1999). The metaphor often used is the completion a jigsaw puzzle with each individual completing a corresponding puzzle piece. The cooperative educational group model is part of an education student's repertoire of experiences as teachers apply it in the classroom. Cooperative education theorists posit that groups should be composed of diverse individuals so that acceptance and tolerance may be learned (Johnson & Johnson, 1999; Johnson, Johnson, & Maruyama, 1983). But according to team theorists, there is a difference between a cooperative group and a team (Katzenbach & Smith, 2003). The team model, which has been introduced in business settings, is different than the educational cooperative group model. The business team model emphasizes the task or performance primarily, while the cooperative educational model focuses first on teamwork values, like respect, fairness, equity, tolerance and cooperation. According to Kline (1999), teams work well if teamwork values are present along with an emphasis on performance. Katzenbach and Smith (2003) uphold that groups become teams through focused, disciplined action toward a common goal. They define teams as composed of "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable" (45).

Problem

Unfortunately, much of the positive research that has been conducted on cooperative learning...

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