What makes a good team? If people understand teams to be collections of individuals who bring together their complementary knowledge and skills to accomplish a common purpose, then they can put together effective teams whether or not the individuals have a fondness for one another. Knowledge and skills are complementary when they combine in such a…

Discusses the need for middle school teaching teams to maintain boundary relations with other parts of the school. Provides a framework for dealing with group boundaries and recommends actions to preserve intergroup relations, including intergroup communication, acquiring a total-school perspective, and deliberately attending to boundary matters.…

Teams are incompatible with the scientific management philosophy underlying traditional curricular and organizational theory. This article examines J. R. Hackman's book "Groups That Work (and Those That Don't): Creating Conditions for Effective Teamwork" (1990), as it illuminates the experience of teaching on a middle school…

Restructuring efforts, including curriculum integration, require that teachers exercise intellectual skills transcending craft wisdom and recipe exchanges. This article explores the tension between teamed middle-school teachers' technical interest in seeking recipes and their deliberationist interest in engaging in fruitful dialog. Teachers…

Used the critical incident technique to study conditions that encourage or discourage teacher collaboration. Found that time, training, and organizational support were crucial to collaboration. Lack of structured support, pressures to "cover" curriculum and conduct testing, and traditions of tracking and separate-subject instruction discouraged…

Notes that a clearly defined purpose with identification of performance goals is crucial to the success of middle school teacher teams. Provides several practical ways for teacher teams to discover or define their purpose, including naming the team and identifying desirable qualities for team members. (HTH)

Describes the Integrated Secondary Teacher Education Program (I-STEP), offered at Northern Arizona University, which educates teachers for middle school careers. Describes program features: (1) integration; (2) field experience; (3) inquiry and problem--based learning; (4) intense collaboration; and (5) alternative student assessment models. (KB)