The interdisciplinary team in the middle school

The interdisciplinary team is an integral part of the middle school concept. This inquiry studied how team members relate to each other and the roles played by each team member. This study investigated five middle school interdisciplinary teams during their team meetings. The purpose of the study was to analyze interaction patterns as topics in team meetings. The collected data were used to answer the following related research questions: 1. What is the role of each teacher during team meetings? 2. How significant is the role of the team leader to the success of the team? 3. How do counselors and administrators influence team meetings? 4. What do teachers talk about during team meetings? 5. How closely does the substance of team meetings relate to effective schools research? The study was conducted with five mature teaching teams who had been teaching together as a team for a minimum of three years. Each interdisciplinary team included a language arts, social studies, math, and science teacher. Each team was videotaped twice during regularly scheduled team meetings during a fall semester. The videotapes were analyzed and coded into categories related to effective school characteristics. [...]