©2018 Scienceweb Publishing Understanding of the team dynamics in adult education Thomas Georgas 1 • Georgios Giannoukos 2* • Ioannis Stergiou 2 • Sotiria Kallianta 2 • Vasilios Hioctour 2 • Konstantinos Argyropoulos 3 1 Institute of Education, University College London, UK. 2 Second Chance School, Greece. 3 Senior Education Officer, Regional Education Authority of Central Greece. *Corresponding author. E-mail: g.giannoukos@gmail.com. Accepted 23 rd July, 2018 Abstract. On the hypothetical case we analyzed, a group of trainees comes to a crisis, while going through the team development phases. Intense disagreement between the members of the group emerges, and the instructor is informed about it. Through this crisis, certain roles of the members of the team emerged, that affect the dynamics of the team. In this paper we deal with these roles and with the instructor’s attempt to discharge the intense situation. Keywords: Adult education, team dynamics, group formation. Case analysis Incident During an adult education training program, the instructor asked the participants to form groups of five members, to draw an adult educational program of a topic and a target group of their own choice and to present their work to the whole team (which consists of 20 members). In one of the groups, tension came up as one of the group members was not consistent with the choice of the cognitive topic of the other members. The instructor had to intervene and asked the members of the group to stop interrupting each other and to work out the topic choice taking into account all the different opinions, even if they come from only one member. The team continued their work until the break, without however corresponding completely to the task they were given, while they reached their decision for a topic after a majority election. During the break, the trainee who had the objections to the selected topic shared confidentially with the instructor his wish to change group or even leave the program because he was sensing hostility from the other group members. A. Group formation phase: This specific hypothetical group is on the phase 3. All the differences of the members’ thoughts and their approach to the cognitive subject of the educational program they were expected to design appeared, were expressed and were the cause of confrontation and disagreement, when they had to deal with the imposed decision for the educational topic. The members of the group started interrupting each other, making it necessary for the instructor to intervene, and the emotional state of the group was agitated and intense, facts that clearly indicate the third phase. The request that the fifth member made, about abandoning the group, shows that the group didn’t make it to the next phase 4, meaning that they didn’t make good use of the crisis and the instructor’s intervention, so as to make clear any ambiguities they had and to rearrange the situation. Had they succeeded in doing so, feelings of satisfaction would have emerged, the members’ relationships would be improved and the group would have regained interest on the program. Voting didn’t help the group get over their differences, which had as a result for the group to remain on phase 3 instead of moving on the creative phase 4. Journal of Educational Research and Review Vol. 6(4), pp. 61-62, September 2018 ISSN: 2384-7301 Case Study