What Teams Are
Group versus team
| Group | Team |
|---|---|
| People in the same place | People with a common goal |
| No mutual accountability | Mutual accountability |
| No task interdependence | Members rely on each other |
All teams are groups. Not all groups are teams.
Types of teams in schools
- Permanent: departments, year groups
- Project-based: total quality management, accreditation teams
- Temporary: short-term, task-focused
Elements a reflective practitioner watches
- Task characteristics: clear, relevant, doable
- Team size: smaller is more cohesive, but big enough to deliver
- Team composition: homogeneous (efficient) or heterogeneous (creative)
A teacher’s reflection sits inside an organisation, and an organisation runs on teams. Before reflecting on what a team is doing, the practitioner needs a working definition of what a team actually is, and how it differs from a group of people who happen to share a staffroom.
A group is not the same as a team
The difference matters. A group is a collection of people in the same place. A team is a group with a common goal and mutual accountability for the work.
A staffroom of fifteen teachers having tea is a group. The same fifteen teachers, acting as a single year-group team accountable for student outcomes in grade nine, is a team. The membership has not changed; the structure has.
Three features separate a team from a group.
- Common objective. Every member is working toward the same goal. The goal is named, not assumed.
- Mutual accountability. Members can be held to account for each other’s work, not only their own. This is the test most groups fail.
- Task interdependence. Some members rely on others to get their tasks done. The dependence is not optional.
A useful sentence holds the relationship: all teams are groups, but not all groups are teams. A reflective practitioner who treats their department as a team without checking whether it has these three features may be reflecting on something that does not exist.
Types of teams in a school
Different kinds of teams sit inside a school, each with its own life span and shape.
Permanent teams
Permanent teams stay in place across years. A department team, a key-stage team, or a senior management team is permanent. The membership shifts as people join and leave, but the team itself continues.
Reflection on a permanent team is long-term. The same patterns return year after year, and a reflective practitioner can study them across cycles.
Project-based teams
Project-based teams come together for a specific piece of work that is bigger than a single task but smaller than a permanent function. A team formed to redesign the assessment policy, a total quality management team, or an accreditation team falls into this category.
These teams need clear scope and a clear end date. Without them, project teams either drift into permanence or dissolve before finishing the work.
Temporary teams
Temporary teams are short. A team formed to organise a single school event, run a one-week professional development workshop, or write a particular report belongs here. They focus on one task and dissolve once the task is done.
Temporary teams move through their life cycle quickly. The reflective practitioner sees the same stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing, but compressed into days or weeks instead of years.
What a reflective practitioner watches in a team
Teams have an internal design that affects what they can do. A reflective practitioner pays attention to three elements in particular.
Task characteristics
Teams perform better when the task is clear, relevant to the members, and achievable with the time and resources they have. A team handed a vague brief, “improve student engagement”, will struggle. A team handed a specific brief, “redesign the grade-eight reading list and pilot it in two sections by November”, has something to act on.
The reflective practitioner asks three questions of any team’s task: Is it easy enough to start? Does it have enough interdependence to require a team? Do members share inputs, processes, or outcomes that justify the team structure?
Team size
Smaller teams are usually more cohesive and faster to decide, but they need to be large enough to do the work. The right size depends on the task. A working group of three to five is usually faster than a committee of twelve. A whole-school project may need more.
A common school problem is over-sized teams. Adding a member because they would feel left out otherwise weakens the team’s ability to work. The reflective practitioner notices when a team has grown too large to be useful.
Team composition
Composition is the mix of people. Two patterns are worth knowing.
A homogeneous team has members with similar backgrounds, skills, or perspectives. Coordination is easier, satisfaction is higher, and the team is less complex to run. The cost is creativity. Homogeneous teams tend to produce predictable solutions because the members think alike.
A heterogeneous team has members with different backgrounds, skills, or perspectives. Conflict is more frequent and the work is slower. The gain is creativity. Heterogeneous teams produce more original ideas because the differences force assumptions to be tested.
Neither type is better in the abstract. A team that needs a routine task done well benefits from homogeneity. A team that needs a fresh approach benefits from heterogeneity. The reflective practitioner reads the situation and notices what kind of team has formed.
Common objective, mutual accountability, task interdependence
A common objective gives the team something to aim at. Mutual accountability makes members responsible for each other’s work, not only their own. Task interdependence means some members rely on others to get the work done. Drop any one feature and the team is really a group.
Why this matters for reflection
A reflective practitioner reflecting on team dynamics is reflecting on something concrete only if a team actually exists. If the staff meeting is a group of solo performers giving updates, reflection on team performance is reflection on nothing.
Once the practitioner has the definition straight and can see which teams in the school are real, the next questions are about how those teams develop, cohere, and work. The rest of this chapter takes those questions in order.