Effectiveness of teams : an investigation of teacher team learning in the context of educational innovation

This paper aims to gain insight into the team learning processes that promote team effectiveness. It provides a multidimensional view on higher education teacher team learning. By including multiple measures of team effectiveness, this research offers a broad picture of the concept and is therefore a useful addition to existing research. Additionally, it investigated interaction effects from inter-team learning on the relation between intra-team learning and team effectiveness. The effects of different team learning behaviors on team effectiveness were measured with a questionnaire that was filled in by 342 participants from 108 different teacher teams in a higher education context. Using a multiple regression analysis, the results imply that sharing, co-construction, constructive conflict and inter-team learning do not always predict team effectiveness. The analysis showed that not all team learning variables had an effect on the same team learning outcomes. Constructive conflict had a negative effect on team performance, whereas it showed a positive effect on student satisfaction. Furthermore we found a negative interaction effect from inter-team learning with constructive conflict on student satisfaction. Sharing information within a team was positively related to team performance and team viability, and a positive interaction effect was found from inter-team learning with sharing on team performance.