Team work in education and school success: an empric study at the schools in İstanbul

The recent quick changes effect education organizations like all organizations. The organizations evaluate their own structure and view of management and adapt a lot of changes. Many countries like Turkey face education problems. They couldn?t solve these problems with the systems developed up to now and the classical reforming efforts. Trying to find a solution for years has come up with new approaches to solve the education problems. One of them is Total Quality Management (TQM). It aims to increase the quality and the efficiency of not only the product and the service but also the whole management. It takes team work as a main factor to increase efficency and in this kind of management human factor is in the first place. The success levels of the students graduated primary schools which apply team work and not are compared in this research. It is found that the students of the schools which apply team work is more successful. Besides, teachers and managers? opinions about team work are examined by an enquiry and some differences are observed according to their demographic properties. It is found that teachers and managers between 21-30, 41 and above, single ones and teachers have more positive opinions about team work. Key Words: Education, total quality management, team work, problem solving teams