Teamwork Mechanics? Give and Take?

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What I never understand is the concept of teamwork.

It seems to be when everyone is selfless and sacrifices their own needs just to satisfy the group.

I've never agreed with it.

I always thought teamwork should be about give and take, so that you may all work toward the same goal.

Like 'You help me, and I'll help you' or 'If I help you with this part, you have to help me with THIS part'.

At school in most group situations I seem to fail badly with this method. Apparently it's just not teamwork to do something for other's and expect something in return.

How are you in teamwork/group situations?

Teamwork is about getting the job done, not really a give and take situation.
Everyone should contribute what they can with the skills that they have to get the job done. What does what and how much should not really matter that much, you deliver the result as a team.

Most academic litteratur will differentiate between a group and a team. Im too tired to look up the specific definitions right now, but at a basic level a team is interdependent in its tasks and goals. if you can do a task within the timeframe necessary, and you have the skills needed, its not teamwork.
In the military I learned to work great in teams (learned mind you, not always easy), but then we very much needed each other to get the job done. No one really cared how much you contributed as long as you did what you could. Now in university we have to do all these group tasks, which is horrible. We have the time to do it alone, and we are all in the same class so we basically have the same skills, making 3-4 people do a job that could be done by 1 is just pointless. I suck in those situations, because the others bring nothing to the work which I could not do myself.

Teamwork in school situations has a cloudy definition at most times, sometimes group work is similar to team work and vice-versa. The give and take concept you suggested seems more like an group work system than a team, diplomatic policy of sorts. With a team, everyone should be working towards a common goal as Shoggoth stated, and does not need that kind of policy since everyone should be aiming towards a common goal.

Quite unfortunately, most teams are not perfect and are often plagued by the kinds of people who tend to bring the lesser aspects of human nature into a position obstructive to the progress of the team, and such blockades have to do more with a social nature than a physical one. People also tend to divert from the main task with various interactions and cues which can be rather, difficult to pick up (correct this if I'm wrong, as I cannot recognize them 99% of the time myself) and can lead to an unfortunate experiences when not handled properly.