Abstract
M.Ed.
This treatise, which deals with "Effective Teamwork" as an educational imperative for
school principals, will hopefully serve as an information source for the school principal.
From this study it has become clear that the school principal of today has a
comprehensive and complex role to play, a role characterised to a great extent by the
responsibility to ensure educational excellence in his/her school.
Achieving this objective is not an easy task, since education today is constantly subject
to change which may include internal and external factors and may also vary in
complexity and intensity.
In this continual quest for excellence in education, the school principal must have the
skills to:
identify the changes; and
effectively handle the changes.
However, the task of identifying and handling changes and continually achieving
educational excellence is too comprehensive for the school principal to carry out alone,
and all the role players in his school will have to be involved. In this study the spotlight
falls on the teachers as a functional team assisting the principal in his task of delivering
excellent service in his/her school.
From the above the problem addressed in this study flows, namely:
How can the school principal (as team leader) go about guiding and training his
teachers to function as an effective team so as to ensure educational excellence within
rapidly changing conditions. In an attempt to resolve this problem, research has been undertaken into:
the essential aspects of an effective team, i.e. to determine the nature, functions
and characteristics of an effective team; and
essential team leadership, i.e. to determine the nature, functions, skills and
characteristics of an effective team leader.