Meaningfulness and Community in the Classroom: The Role of Teamwork in Business Education

This research proposes that teams benefit the business education process because they enhance the task assessments that are suggested to be the basis for intrinsic task motivation or empowerment. Presented in this article is a theory supporting the use of teams to create a sense of meaningfulness and community in the classroom. The results of this study suggest that teams successfully enhance students' sense of meaningfulness and their sense of community. This study also supports the role of individual differences (global assessments of meaningfulness) as influential on how students respond to teams. Implications and directions for future research are also addressed.