Team Teaching Processes and Outcomes
This research covers important ground toward effective instruction and curricula. Teaching is a team sport that requires communication and cross-course, cross-instructor thinking.
We define clear decision-making processes as the process by which team members discuss and agree on how to go about making decisions relevant to the team and the team’s work. We consider statements that team members agree on how and by whom decisions are made to be evidence of the clarity (or lack of clarity) of decision-making.
In all but one teams, team members described the importance of establishing clear decision-making processes. Some teams explicitly discussed these processes, e.g., establishing that instructors had the ultimate say over the ways that they would implement instructional changes. On other teams, decision-making processes emerged organically and were understood by all the team members. For example, the Material Science and Engineering teams explicitly established that individual instructors had the authority to implement changes in any way they wanted to, while the team would reach a consensus on their major goals and recommendations.
... On the other hand, the Physics team organically established that decision-making would revolve around consensus-building. Eventually, if consensus could not be reached, a final decision would be weighted slightly towards opinions that were supported by education researchers and/or experienced practitioners. Tanya described this process: 'Jack didn’t impose things on people but I would say made decisions based on the person whose opinion he thought was most expert.'
For example, Nick was considered one of the experts in the lecture implementation. Jack would ask Nick what he thought would be best in terms of online homework and various things like that and make decisions.