Reconsidering teamwork

Teamwork is often seen as an inseparable part of sport and physical education. Other than work done by sport psychologists however, the topic has received scant attention. The broad aim of this paper is to stimulate discussion on the topic. Specifically, I examine how we can think about and ‘do’ teamwork in an alternative way to that presented in current psychological literature. I illustrate how a psychologistic model of teamwork – teamwork as cohesion – is based on a positivist metaphor and argue that this is simply one possible interpretation. I then propose a different metaphor which has its roots in constructionist thought. I suggest this constructionist metaphor leads to alternative research questions and methodologies and helps us to understand teamwork more wholly.