Knowledge Creation in Teacher Teams

Abstract

AbstractIn a changing work landscape, teamwork and team learning often represent strategies to engage ill-structured or sizable projects that require sophisticated solutions, which individual professionals alone may not be able to provide. Creating knowledge in teams implies that team members are acting jointly to generate new ideas and materialize these into artefacts or practices that can have instrumental value for the team’s work and learning. This chapter advances understanding of the epistemic nature of teamwork by university teachers. It does so by examining and further developing conceptualizations of collaborative knowledge creation and by examining empirically, discussing and illustrating the way knowledge is created in a team of teachers who worked collaboratively on curricular innovation over the period of an academic year. The chapter analyzes mechanisms of collaboratively generating new ideas and knowledge and teachers’ teamwork on shared knowledge artefacts – new curriculum elements, which serve both as focus of their epistemic inquiry and as mediating tools for improving and innovating their teaching. Dialogical action and jointly developed material, together with awareness of complexities and constant adjustment to team dynamics are recommendations for professionals engaging in team work. The chapter proposes a conceptual framework for knowledge creation in teams, and reflects on the importance of collaborative knowledge work in professional contexts where ill-structured problems require joint efforts and complex solutions.KeywordsTeamworkKnowledge creationInteractionShared artefactsAcademic teachersQualitative analysis