Abstract:

The perception of ineffectiveness and disrepute that surrounds team meetings is neither recent nor characteristic of just one type of organization or area of the globe. At the same time, there are not many scientifically validated instruments to assess the effectiveness of these working moments in the field of education.

Many team meetings are considered unproductive, ineffective and unnecessary, however they appear to be an “essential practical aspect of managing a school” (Mafa, 2016, p. 61) studies suggest that “they are often unproductive and expensive” (Cohen etal., 2011 , p. 91), many meeting participants highlight, among others, problems related to a “poor organization [..] content of little relevance […] the participants’ perception of lack of impact” which can be seen as “lack of consideration ” for their contribution (Geimer et al.,2011, p. 2022-2023). Given that meetings are an integral part of the work associated with teaching, this study was carried out with the aim of adapting and validating the Team Meeting Effectiveness Questionnaire (SMEQ[1]) in Portuguese, for later application in the educational context. It was applied to 14 bilingual individuals and an apparent similar interpretation was found in the application of both versions of the questionnaires. The results must be interpreted cautiously given that the low number of participants does not allow the application of the Central Limit Theorem.

The data obtained seems to indicate a similar interpretation in the application of both versions of the questionnaires. This is equivalent to saying that the participants appear to interpret the questions in an analogous way, regardless of the language used. There is a question whose p-value is below the reference, however, this data in itself does not imply compromising validation, since other studies with non-significant correlations had translations considered valid. The results must be interpreted cautiously given that the sample size does not allow the application of the Central Limit Theorem, safeguarding what was stated above, it is possible to note that the data point in the direction of non-rejection of the null hypothesis.

Keywords:

Team meetings, effectiveness, questionnaire, validation.