Team Learning as a Way of Education

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Team Learning and Its Essence
Personal Assessment
Author’s Opinions and Suggestions
Practices and Theories
Further Plans
Conclusion
References

Introduction

There are many ways of how people can gain new knowledge and develop the required portion of practice accordingly. People start getting their education at schools, colleges, and universities. Then, they begin working and become a part of a working team. Some people mistakenly believe that as soon as they find a good job and start earning money, they may forget about learning.

However, the importance of team learning should be never neglected because it helps to develop the required skills within groups and consider individual perspectives (Senge, 2010). In my opinion, team learning is an important stage in any worker’s life because it helps to realize how it is necessary to respect and consider the opinions of different people, introduce personal visions, and find the balance that makes a mechanism works.

Team Learning and Its Essence

Team learning is a collective working process that may take place anytime. Its main goal is to understand an objective that has to be achieved by a group. In addition to the necessity to realize what should be done individually, people should realize how they can do the required portion of work together.

It is hard to make people forget about their ambitions, demands, and opinions. That is why team learning aims at educating people think together as one unit. Team members have to share and obtain knowledge and use each other’s skills at the same time.

Personal Assessment

I think that it is a hard task to make a number of people work in a team. Before reading different books and articles about team learning, I want to create my one definition of team learning and clear up if my opinion corresponds to a variety of theories offered by the experts.

I understand team learning as a possibility to unite several people in a group and provide them with one goal to be comprehended and achieved with time. At the same time, I do believe that even teamwork should be guided by one person. It is impossible for different people to be united without a strong leader.

Author’s Opinions and Suggestions

According to Senge (2010), team learning is a crucial collective type of knowledge that has to be based on the ability to combine dialogues and discussions. People should be ready to suspend opinions, respect and treat each member of a team as a colleague, find out a facilitator that can hold the dialogue’s context, discover the balance of discussions, and introduce personal reflection to everything said and offered. The discipline of team learning is vital and complex at the same time (Senge, 2010).

Not all people are able to combine individual excellence and the necessity to work together. It is not enough just to have a common idea and stick to it all the time. All members should have the same goal and think about different methods that can be used to achieve the goal. Even if the methods are different, they should not be surprising for the team.

Practices and Theories

There are many other opinions about team learning that have to be considered. Even Senge points out two authors, who develop their independent opinions about this discipline: Bohm and Heisenberg. For example, Kozlowski and Salas (2009) admit that team learning is the process that roots in individual characteristics and certain motivational aspects.

It is important to motivate a team and explain the importance of learning and working together. Team members should be provided with a kind of psychological safety to achieve the required results. Another powerful idea about team learning is offered by Easterby-Smith and Lyles (2011), who define team learning as an ongoing process within the frames of which a number of changes should be made. The authors pay their attention to such concepts like adaptation and conceptualization that can make team learning effective.

They also want to underline the importance of team learning behaviors because a team is not the collection of individuals but one unit that cannot be divided. Bossche, Gijselaers, Segers, Woltjer, and Kirschner (2011) focus on the necessity to choose powerful methods that help to share knowledge and choose behaviors that meet the needs of a team. Their research is a powerful contribution of how people should treat a learning process and consider the fact that they should work in a team.

Further Plans

Regarding all these theories, team learning can be defined as an ongoing process with the necessity to suspend assumptions, unite people, make them respect each other, and consider the balance that is necessary for teamwork. In future, people have to learn how to work even if being hired already. It is necessary to support and develop the concept of team learning and analyze each situation separately to understand how a learning process should be organized.

Conclusion

In general, team learning should not be about the possibility to unite people with different opinions. Team learning is not about individuals. It is about a team. Though some people want to use the uniqueness of every person of a team, I want to believe that team learning can explain to people how to become a group with one mutual goal and various methods that can be predicted by each member.

References

Bossche, P., Gijselaers, W., Segers, M., Woltjer, G., & Kirschner, P. (2011). Team learning: Building shared mental models. Instructional Science, 39(3), 283-301.

Easterby-Smith, M. & Lyles, M.A. (2011). Handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Kozlowski, S.W.J. & Salas, E. (2009). Learning, training, and development in organizations. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Senge, P.M. (2010). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Random House.

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