Teacher team commitment, teamwork and trust: exploring associations

To investigate relationships between teamwork, trust and teacher team commitment.

Research has confirmed the value‐added effects of organizational commitment in terms of job performance, organizational effectiveness, and employee retention. This study focused on teacher teams as the unit of analysis, and posited associations between teamwork, viewed as team skills, trust and teacher team commitment. Data were derived from responses of elementary school teachers to an instrument including established measures of teamwork component skills, affective‐ and cognition‐based trust, and team commitment.

Teamwork was found to be a significant predictor of teacher team commitment. Respondents showing higher levels of teamwork skills perceived higher levels of team commitment. Results, while not entirely confirmatory, suggested the importance of trust in the commitment equation.

This research was limited by the study sample of elementary schools. Future research should test initially confirmed associations in different school contexts with substantially dissimilar teacher demographics, and include consideration of dispositional antecedents that may impact teacher perceptions.

School leaders concerned with teacher commitment and related implications for teacher retention should consider strategies to strengthen performance‐enhancing teamwork and support satisfying teaming processes.

This study provides an initial understanding of teacher teamwork and affects on commitment in the context of teams viewed as building blocks of organization in locally‐managed schools.