Learning, Remembering, Believing Enhancing Human Performance (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Training in Teams
Training in Teams
Pages 140-170
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From page 140... ...
, assigned to training teams and given training, and then returned to their job situations (where the trainees work alone or as part of a team, which may be nested in a network of teams)
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; mediating variables (positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, and team processing) ; and outcomes (individual and team proficiency on the job; improved relationships; individual psychological health; changes in a team's norms, roles, mental models, and communication patterns; and team activities after training)
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142 - , If a\' to ,o' ~ Ct .m ~ f~ .
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Training intact teams seems to mitigate such pressures by providing a mutual redefinition of role responsibilities and job procedures and social support for implementing and maintaining the procedures learned in the training program.
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found that trainees who entered training expecting some form of follow-up activity or assessment afterward reported stronger intentions to transfer what they learned to the job. The fact that an organization would require them to prepare a posttraining report or undergo an assessment meant that they were being held accountable for their learning and apparently conveyed the message that the training was important.
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social support; 6. relevant attitudes; 7.
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In addition, in their meta-analysis, Johnson and Johnson (1989) found that both quality of individual reasoning strategies and level of individual cognitive processes were higher when persons learned in cooperative teams rather than competitively or individually (effect sizes of 0.79 and 0.97, respectively)
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Two studies conducted in a naval job training program have found that, compared with traditional naval training involving competitive and individual activities, training in teams resulted in greater conceptual mastery of the procedures taught, greater independent functional ability to perform job functions, a zero failure rate, and lower attrition from the program (Holubec et al., in press; Vasquez et al., 1993~. Performance on a computer-assisted problem-solving task involving map reading and navigational skills was found to be higher in cooperative than in competitive or individual instruction (R.T.
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Social support directly and indirectly promotes achievement and productivity, psychological well-being, physical health and management of stress. Social support is related to achievement, successful problem solving, persistence on challenging tasks under frustrating conditions, lack of cognitive
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From page 149... ...
and increases feelings of self-control and self-esteem (Cutrona and Troutman, 1986~. A metaanalysis of over 106 experimental studies comparing the relative effects of teams versus individual efforts on social support provides evidence that team experiences promoted greater social support than did competitive or individual experiences (D.W.
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From page 150... ...
Computer-assisted team learning, compared with individual efforts at the computer, promoted higher quantity and quality of daily achievement, greater mastery of factual information, greater ability to apply a learner's factual knowledge in test questions requiring application of facts, greater ability to use factual information to answer problem-solving questions, and greater success in problem solving (D.W. Johnson et al., 1986a, 1989, 1990; R.T.
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Team members may also benefit more from the social support function and vividness of feedback provided directly by other members. Positive Professional identity An important aspect of training programs is to create, modify, and extend a trainee's professional identity and esteem.
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Team training typically builds a stronger, healthier, and more positive professional identity than does individual training (D.W. Johnson and R.T.
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There are a number of variables that tend to mediate the effectiveness of team training. They include the degree of positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual accountability, and team processing.
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Johnson and R.T. Johnson, 1989~.3 Other methods of structuring positive interdependence that supplement and support the positive goal interdependence include: positive reward interdependence, when each team member group is given the same reward for successfully attaining the team's goals; positive role interdependence, when team members are assigned complementary and interconnected roles; positive task interdependence, when a division of labor is created so that the actions of one team member have to be completed if another team member is to complete the next actions; positive resource interdependence, when each member has only a portion of the information, resources, or materials necessary for the task to be completed; and identity interdependence, which exists when a team establishes a mutual identity through a name, flag, motto, or song (D.W.
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Positive interdependence can result in Promotive interaction. Although positive interdependence in and of itself may have some effect on outcomes, the faceto-face Promotive interaction among individuals fostered by positive interdependence appears to be the most powerful influence on efforts to achieve, caring and committed work relationships, and psychological adjustment and social competence.
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From page 156... ...
First, social loafing can be avoided by clearly structuring positive interdependence so feelings of personal responsibility for the group's final outcome are high. Personal responsibility adds the concept of "ought" to members' motivation- one ought to do one's part, pull one's weight, contribute, and satisfy peer norms.
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From page 157... ...
Such processing enables teams to focus on group maintenance, facilitates the learning of social skills, ensures that members receive feedback on their participation, and reminds members to practice social skills consistently. Although it is well accepted in the group dynamics literature that to be productive, teams have to "process" how well they are working and take action to resolve any difficulties members have in collaborating productively, there is actually very little evidence on the relationship between team processing and team productivity.
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Team training, furthermore, has tended to ignore the development of teamwork skills and behaviors that are demanded by the interaction requirements of the team task. What is indicative of the effectiveness
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. When only the methodologically high quality studies were included, team learning still promoted greater individual achievement than did competitive or individual efforts (effect sizes of 0.61 and 0.35, respectively)
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When the results were analyzed for type of task, team training resulted in better performance than individual training, structured competitively and individually on verbal tasks (effect sizes of 0.73 and 1.47, respectively) , on mathematical tasks (effect sizes of 0.26 and 0.86, respectively)
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, team training resulted in greater interpersonal attraction between handicapped and nonhandicapped individuals than did competitive training (effect size, 0.70) or individual training (effect size, 0.64~.
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Johnson, 1994~. Studies focusing on team performance found that cooperation promoted greater social support than did competitive efforts (effect size, 0.13)
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Studies focusing on individual proficiency that compared teams and individual efforts on self-esteem found that team training promoted higher self-esteem than did individual training structured competitively or individually (effect sizes, 0.47 and 0.29, respectively)
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Johnson, 1989~. For example, electronic discussion groups with a planted group member who criticized others produced more new ideas and achieved more than did groups whose planted member was highly supportive (Connolly et al., 1990~.7 Team Activities After Training Teams can influence the transfer and maintenance of what is taught in a training program by highlighting implementation goals, encouraging immediate use, holding trainees accountable for using what they have learned, providing social support for using what was learned, providing a climate for
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From page 165... ...
Teams can provide social support for using what trainees have learned by meeting regularly to ensure that members are implementing what was learned regularly, appropriately, and with fidelity, and receiving the help they need to solve implementation problems (Baldwin and Ford, 1988~. Teams can provide a positive transfer climate for trainees.
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The training processes are the procedures used to teach both taskwork and teamwork and to increase team performance. The mediating variables are positive interdependence, face-to-face promotive interaction, individual accountability, and team processing.
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From page 167... ...
Team training also provides opportunities to better master the taskwork procedures being taught and to increase the likelihood of transferring the procedures to the job situation and maintaining their use. Team training provides a setting in which trainees can practice and master many aspects of taskwork: construct and extend conceptual understanding of what is being learned through explanations and discussion; use the shared conceptual models learned in flexible ways to solve problems jointly; jointly perform the procedures learned; receive other team members' feedback as to how well the procedures are performed; receive social support and encouragement to extend one's competencies; be held accountable by peers to practice until the procedures and skills are well learned; acquire the attitudes (such as continuous improvement)
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From page 168... ...
There is no advantage to-telling trainees to work together if there is no positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual and team accountability, use of social skills, and group processing. If teams are going to be used effectively in training programs, the mediating variables must be structured in a disciplined way.
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Of course, this phenomenon is not unique to team training. Finally, as noted above, a major obstacle to team training can be the lack of trainees' teamwork skills.
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2Unlike the effect sizes reported in Chapter 6, those reported here are not correlation coefficients. Each is calculated as the difference between the experimental and control group averages divided by the pooled sample standard deviation.
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