Evaluating and Improving the Quality of Teacher Collaboration

Abstract

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.

Teacher collaboration: A systematic review

“…Hence, in the next step this review attempted to provide a clarified terminological framework by defining different forms of teacher collaboration and possible ways for them to be structured and conceptualised. Gajda and Koliba (2008) (teacher teams as part of communities of practice, which are in their turn part of professional learning communities) 6.1.1. Overview of terminology As argued above, there appeared to be a lot of conceptual confusion concerning teacher collaboration.…”

“…These can then be divided into communities of practice (e.g. Gajda & Koliba, 2008) or teams (e.g., Rone, 2009).…”

“…Community of practice (CoP). As suggested above, CoPs can be perceived as the building blocks of PLCs (Gajda & Koliba, 2008;Lima, 2001). CoP was described as one of the three central elements to be found in most conceptions of teacher community (besides community of understanding, i.e., common values, shared beliefs, goals, and norms; and community of affection, i.e., personal meaningful relationships among teachers) (Lima, 2001).…”

“…First of all, deep-level collaboration inevitably requires touching teachers' underlying beliefs, which will inevitably lead to disagreement and conflict. This seems difficult because teachers tend to restrict collaboration to more safe and less threatening aspects, focusing on psychological safety and cohesion, avoiding conflict, and preserving their norms of privacy and autonomy (Achinstein, 2002;Gajda & Koliba, 2008;Gunn & King, 2003;Hargreaves, 2001;Levine & Marcus, 2010;Lima, 2001;Ohlsson, 2013;Somech, 2008;Supovitz, 2002). Striving for an optimal balance between room for cognitive conflict and constructive controversy on the one hand and a focus on personal ties on the other hand proved to be a challenge in teacher collaboration (Kelchtermans, 2006;Lima, 2001).…”

Group, team, or something in between? Conceptualising and measuring team entitativity

“…The core of their job, teaching, is mostly performed individually in their classroom. 'Egg-crate schools' characterised by teacher isolation in classrooms and the accompanying culture of individual work, together with teachers' preference for individually exercised autonomy may withhold a collaborative, teaming culture to take shape in education (Gajda & Koliba, 2008;Lortie, 1975, in Westheimer, 2008Somech, 2008).…”