There are many benefits of working in teams and applications of those benefits for an individual's learning teams. These include better and more efficient creation of processes, improved competitiveness, increased equality among members and more efficient communication among group members, which ultimately result in high-quality decision-making (DeJanasz-Dowd-Schneider, 2001). Team members feel satisfaction and have a greater sense of self-confidence and achievement on successful achievement of team objectives and goals.
Not all groups are necessarily teams. There are distinct behaviors and characteristics demonstrated by productive teams groups may not have. Productive teams demonstrate the following behaviors according to our studies: (1) "high levels of interaction," (2) "desire to confirm to group expectations," and (3) "use of creative and productive approaches to achieving goals" (DeJanasz-Dowd-Schneider, 2001 p. 159; Billington, 1997, p. 3). A group as described below is merely a gathering of individuals who may or may not have a common objective or goal in mind.
A team is not the same as a group as outlined in this paper. A team refers to a "formal work group" including people working together to achieve a common goal or create a product "through collective effort" (DeJanasz-Dowd-Schneider, 2001, p. 310). There are many stages of team development. These include: (1) the formation of the team, where members get together to accomplish a task; (2) storming, or the period where a group may differ in opinion about leadership roles or work style; (3) "norming", where a team openly works to confront issues including conflict to create new tools and processes for working together; (4) performing, where a team carries out the functions it is meant by creating a stable, openly communicative en
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