The authors pursue three aims in this article. The first is to underscore critical praxis as an especially valuable approach to understanding and enabling teamwork. The second is to offer four dimensions of teamwork—vision, roles, processes, and relationships— as salient areas to interrogate using critical praxis. The third aim is to consider the implications and methods for teaching teamwork in the classroom context. In the process of doing so, the authors highlight limitations of prevailing theoretical approaches and note changes in their own practice of teaching and facilitating teamwork that have occurred through a commitment to critical praxis.
In this article, the authors examine argument in the interactions of members of a naturally occurring jury ( State of Ohio v. Mark Ducic). Using the structurational concept of contradictions and a thematic analysis, the authors examine the forms and functions of group argument structures and the role of argument structuring in the jury’s penalty deliberation. Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and methodological implications for structuration argument theory.
Role ambiguity—the lack of clear, consistent information regarding one’s role, responsibilities, or position—is a critical factor in team sports in which alignment of roles is vital to collective performance and team success. However, how role ambiguity evolves over time and is managed is understudied. This qualitative longitudinal investigation examined how role ambiguities emerged and impacted the members of a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I collegiate men’s basketball team. Working within the organizational tensions theoretical framework, data on role ambiguity were collected through participant observation and ethnographic interviews and thematically coded and analyzed. Findings indicated that role ambiguities, such as with player leadership, were influenced by numerous contextual factors and recursively influenced the meanings of some of those factors. These complexities also produced tensions, and members’ attempts to manage these tensions produced dualities that further increased role ambiguity. When members realized they could not resolve ambiguities related to their roles, they concocted unorthodox role management strategies to accomplish their responsibilities amidst the ambiguity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.