Professor, Dr.Biol. R.A. Yusupov¹
Professor, Dr.Hab. T.T. Sidel'nikova²
Associate Professor, PhD Sh.R. Yusupov^2
1Kazan National Research university – KAI, Kazan
²Kazan (Volga region) Federal University, Kazan

Keywords: team, team establishment, team competences, student team, competitive team, teamwork, real team, high-efficiency team.

Background. Presently operations of the modern sport organizations are in need of new concepts due to a variety of unpredictable and serious global challenges and many associating factors that may be of large influence on sports – however distant they may seem, including different global political events and processes, corruption and doping scandals etc. Furthermore, modern sport organizations are inclined to build up increasingly complicated structures and increase the numbers of the permanent staff and contracted personnel, and such growth always requires new efficient institutional forms and team self-management methods being implemented to improve the corporate management standards.

In opinion of L. Thompson, “growth of management labour efficiency depends on how clearly we understand the fact that every team member must contribute to the product of collective labour and share the “joint business philosophy” with its “team” value being ranked among his/ her base priorities in the interpersonal relationship building process launched in the studentship years” [1].

Presently, however, university athletes are not always prepared to accept the Rudyard Kipling’s “we be of one blood” idea in the teamwork to help implement the more efficient institutional forms and team management methods that ideally must be highly effective, reasonable and well-timed. This reluctance obviously comes in conflict with the modern challenging conditions that give a high priority to the teamwork skills – all the more that teaming abilities are increasingly appreciated as valuable competences by the sport industry regardless of the professional sport activity area. The education process to help students master such competences is increasingly popular as a “social demand” since it creates indispensible human resource both for the national elite sports and the professional athletic training at modern higher education establishments.

Objective of the study was to explore the teamwork phenomenon taking university teams for a case study to find the key educational conditions for the teamwork competence being formed in the academic class education and athletic training process.       

Study results and discussion. It should be noted that university sports are basically focused on accomplishments, i.e. assume the competitive progress trends being positive with the team making success due to individual contributions of its members. Presently university graduates are expected to possess a set of key professional qualities that are listed by many researchers like N.N. Grachev [2] and S.A. Druzhilov as follows:

- Communication skills in the professional/ business domain;

- Respect to standpoints of other people;

- Ability to easily come in contact with other people;

- Ability to rank own interest second to the team interests;

- Team spirit;

- Responsibility for the team success;

- Ability to sympathize and understand the others’ frame of mind;

- Ability to assert the personal viewpoint in the context of the teamwork, etc.

The process of professional competences being built up in university students by the academic physical education curricula was given a high priority in studies of M.Y. Vilenskiy, one of the leading national researchers of the higher education [4]. Of considerable interest in this context are also the study reports by S.I. Filimonova. Her work “Methodological approaches to the junior and qualified athletes’ training process management: theoretical analysis”, for instance, underlines the need for the athletic training process being designed in compliance with the modern research theories and the best athletic training process management concepts so as to build up both the individual and teaming competences [5].

It may be pertinent to note that the generally accepted meaning of “university team” is somewhat contradictory and vague as it gives no precise definition of what particular students’ teams are concerned; what are their operational contexts and formats; how old they are; and what of their joint activities are geared to mobilize the qualities assumed by the definition. In this context, any sport team on the whole and a university sport team in particular is to be designed as a strictly structured group of athletes. Depending on sport discipline and the training process specifics, a sport team will be considered as a “stable association driven by the known social and psychological regularities specific for small groups of people” [6].

It is quite clear that a university team and a competitive university team are basically different in a variety of their specifics. It is commonly believed that a group of 5-7 people is sufficient and necessary for an interactive communication in a moderation mode. However, this qualitative criterion is unlikely appropriate in case of a competitive team. Notwithstanding this fact, many study reports with concern to the group activity development levels offer a few types of teams that are applicable to the competitive sports as well. Each of the teams may be ranked using the following types of the group activity development levels depending on the team efforts, dynamics, rules of the relevant sport discipline, and the teamwork efficiency [7]:

            - Work group;

            - Pseudo team;

            - Potential team;

            - Real team; and

            - High efficiency team.

As opposed to a professional competitive team, life of a university competitive team is always limited by the students’ academic years at the university and, hence, this period is not always long enough for the team members to form a real or highly efficient team. Therefore, each of the above group levels can be found in modern university sports. In professional sports, however, the first three group levels are either ineffective or poorly effective.    

Work group means herein the group of people who feel no need for the joint labour efficiency being improved or have no chance to form a team.

Pseudo team means the group of people feeling the need in the joint labour efficiency being improved or having a chance to evolve to a team, albeit such a group is normally totally focused on the joint work process and makes no attempts to improve it.

Potential team means the group that feels a serious need for the joint labour efficiency being improved and tries to do that, but it lacks a clear vision of the development path, objectives and process design; and it assumes no joint responsibility for the actions.

Real team means the limited group of people with complementary skills who are determined in their joint development track and strive to attain the process objectives in a businesslike manner; and they are mutually responsible; fully agreed on joint activity procedures and process control to attain joint goals; however, their individual self-fulfilment missions are still unfinished.

High efficiency team means the real team driven by the super-responsibility of every its member for a teamwork. Methods of the teamwork and cooperation in the team are designed to encourage the personal growth and success of every team member so that the team is propelled by extraordinary synergic effects and its real success may be beyond expectations.

The last two options are apparently the most preferable for the success-centred competitive team performance format. The only problem is that real teams and high efficiency teams are far and few between in the university sports, i.e. they are found rather occasionally. 

Subject to the study was the organization specifics of a competitive basketball university team from Kazan National Research University of Kazan Aviation Institute named after A.N. Tupolev (KAI), Kazan town. Practical experience of the picked basketball team training at the University made it possible to design a few efficient methods and concepts of university athletes’ psychological conditioning in the athletic training process that serve as key components in the team-building process to create a real or high efficiency team.

The most efficient actions of the above may be listed as follows:

• Identify the psychological type of an athlete;
• Test the athlete’s personal special qualities and skills; and
• Establish a constructive coach-athlete dialogue and interaction.

Furthermore, the psychological conditioning program applied in the KAI basketball team training process includes a set of actions to shape up a sporting character – that is interpreted as the combination of the personality qualities that provide a basis for success in competitions. Methods applied in the sporting character formation process in the picked university teams are the following:

1. Dialogues with individual athletes and teams geared to design the mental and technical techniques of the game control process, with due actions to control every athlete’s psychological mindset;

2. Dialogues with the athlete’s teammates for an indirect influence on the subject athlete; and

3. Autosuggestion training.

In addition, the following basic training concepts are applied in the picked university team training process:

• Team differentiation, i.e. the team will be broken down into a first team and reserve, with the first team being composed of the formally qualified athletes and the leaders of the university competitions; and the reserve being composed of the prospects willing to succeed.
• The above mentioned methods and concepts of the university team training that have proved successful as the picked university teams have many times been among the prize-winners of the Republican, Russian and international tournaments [8].

It is a priory clear that it is unrealistic to expect that any university team may be developed up to the level of a high efficient team. However, the practical experience of the KAI university teams have demonstrated the promising team design models and technologies that give the real means to establish facilitating educational conditions as the key prerequisites for any competitive university team to design the academic education and athletic training processes in such a way so as to encourage the due competences being formed for team interactions in a highly efficient format.

So, what practical actions are needed to build up the team and whether or not the teamwork may be developed as an individual student’s competence in the academic education process? Solution of this issue may be found based on a set of efficient theoretical and practical provisions for the academic education and athletic training processes being created to facilitate the teamwork competences being efficiently built up.

The following key performance efficiency criteria may be applied for the teaming progress rating purposes:

• Cooperation degree in the joint activity;
• Teamwork progress through the joint activity focused on success; and
• Interpersonal relations in the team driven by the team spirit, tolerance, creative activity and self-fulfilment opportunities for the students in the academic education process.

Mind and body will be viewed as an integrated system of healthy body and healthy spirit and, hence, the teamwork in sports and the relevant competence in the students’ joint academic education, research and design activity shall in no case be designed to evolve in the “parallel worlds”.

Conclusion. The group interaction technologies applied in the academic physical education curriculum supported by active interaction forms in the other academic disciplines will help build up the teamwork skills in the students. The psychological conditioning process additional to the above two methods and geared to create a real or high efficiency team focused on success will be based on the athlete’s psychological type identification, personal special qualities and skills testing, and the constructive coach-athlete’s dialogue and interaction facilitating initiatives.

References

1. Vilenskiy M.Ya. Lichnostnoe razvitie studenta kak tsennost obrazovatelnogo protsessa po fizicheskoy kulture (Student's personal development as value of physical education learning process) / M.Ya. Vilenskiy // Pedagogicheskoe obrazovanie i nauka. – 2010. – № 11. – P. 4-8.
2. Grachev N.N. Psihologiya inzhenernogo truda: ucheb. posobie (Psychology of engineering work: study guide) / N.N. Grachev. – Moscow: Vysshaya shkola, 1998. – 333 p.
3. Druzhilov S.A. Psihologiya professionalizma: inzhenerno-psihologicheskie aspektyi: ucheb. posobie (Professionalism Psychology: engineering and psychological aspects: study guide) / S.A. Druzhilov. – Novokuznetsk: IPK, 1998. – 103 p.
4. Kolomeytsev Yu.A. Vzaimootnosheniya v sportivnoy komande (Relations in a sport team) / Yu.A. Kolomeytsev. – Moscow, 1984. http://www.twirpx.com/file/1853454/
5. Korolev G.N. Psihologo-pedagogicheskie aspektyi upravleniya trenirovochnyim protsessom sbornyih komand v vuze (Psychological and pedagogical aspects of management university team training process) / G.N. Korolev, A.I. Salmova // Sovremennyie problemyi i perspektivyi razvitiya sistemyi podgotovki sportivnogo rezerva v preddverii XXXI igr v Rio-de-Zhaneyro: mater. Vseros. nauch.-prakt. konf. (Modern problems and development prospects of sport reserve training system before the XXXI Games in Rio de Janeiro: Proc. res.-pract. conf). – Kazan: VRSAPCST (PGAFKSiT), 2015. – P. 156-157.
6. Thompson L. Sozdanie komandy (Team Building) / L. Thompson . – Moscow: Vershina, 2006, cit.: http://sibac.info/12222
7. Urovni razvitiya gruppovoy aktivnosti (Levels of development of group activity) http://talkbusedst.ru/kurs-lektsij-po-delovomu-obshcheniyu/290-ponyatie-...
8. Filimonova S.I. Metodologicheskie podhodyi v upravlenii podgotovkoy yunyih i kvalifitsirovannyih sportsmenov: nauchno-teoreticheskiy analiz (Methodological approaches in management of training process of young and skilled athletes: scientific and theoretical analysis) / S.I. Filimonova, G.N. Germanov, I.A. Sabirov // Uchenye zapiski. – 2014. – № 8 (114). P. 48-56.

Corresponding author: rinatbox@rambler.ru

Abstract

The study explores the growing interest to the teamwork efficiency building in the modern institutional environments in the context of the recent trends in the efficiency-centred management systems and modern educational developments in the interactive education sector. Special emphasis in the study was made on the team establishment in the academic education and training process and teamwork training systems.