Increasingly, collaboration between business, non-profit, health and educational agencies is being championed as a powerful strategy to achieve a vision otherwise not possible when independent entities work alone. But the definition of collaboration is elusive and it is often difficult for organizations to put collaboration into practice and assess it with certainty. Program evaluators can assist practitioners concerned with the development of a strategic alliance predicated on collaboration by understanding and utilizing principles of collaboration theory. The Strategic Alliance Formative Assessment Rubric (SAFAR) is an assessment tool that captures central principles of collaboration and has been used as part of a four-step evaluation process to help alliance leaders, managers, and members in Safe School/Healthy Student Initiatives to quantitatively and qualitatively gauge, celebrate, and communicate the relative strength of their collaborative endeavor over time. The collaboration principles and corresponding assessment processes described in this article can be used by evaluators of large- or small-scale initiatives that seek to capitalize on the synergistic power of the “collaborative effort.”
Collaboration" is a ubiquitously championed concept and widely recognized across the public and private sectors as the foundation on which the capacity for addressing complex issues is predicated. For those invested in organizational improvement, high-quality collaboration has become no less than an imperative. However, evaluators and program stakeholders often struggle to assess the quality of collaborative dynamics and the merits of collaborative structures. In this article, the authors describe an approach to demystifying and assessing interpersonal collaboration and use their consultancy work with school improvement stakeholders to illustrate a multistage collaboration evaluation process. Evaluators in a wide range of organizational settings are encouraged to utilize collaboration theory and the evaluation strategies presented herein to cultivate stakeholder capacity to understand, examine, and capitalize on the power of collaboration.
Teacher collaboration is an essential element of substantive school change for which principals have responsibility for cultivating. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for school leaders to employ models of supervision that focus on the performance and improvement of collective teacher behavior. In this article, the authors present a field-tested, action-research leadership framework for evaluating the quality and improving the performance of teacher collaboration at the secondary school level.
This study reports on findings from a survey of Massachusetts' school principals that examined their perceptions of the nature and quality of certification programs. Results indicate that when participants were certified (pre or post NCLB) and where they were certified (public, private, alternative programs) has a significant influence on the perceived content and quality of their preparation. These findings reveal that accountability measures may have led to changes in the content and structure of principal preparation programs over time and suggest a need for state standards that influence the development, delivery, and evaluation of principal preparation programs to reflect the requisite skills principals need and want in the 21st century.
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