Team development: A multidimensional approach

The management of education is currently preoccupied with the notion of collaboration and co-operation: people working together for the good of the school. Much of the rhetoric about shared effort refers to and promotes the use of teams. There is a tacit assumption, however, that increased performance will be an automatic consequence of team formation. Little consideration is given to the need for continuous development of teams. Unless teams are thoughtfully constructed and skillfully developed, collaboration and responsiveness may be simply an illusion. Team development is concerned with having the right individuals with appropriate skills, with systematic approaches to task accomplishment, with effective interpersonal and communication processes, and with a high degree of support from the school and its management. In other words, it has to be seen from a multidimensional perspective. After discussing briefly the research into team development and its associated problems, we attempt to demonstrate that such development necessitates a diagnosis of problems affecting performance in several areas or 'dimensions'. Copyright © 1995 New Horizons in Education. All rights reserved.