Collaboration
‘Collaboration means working smarter together, rather than harder alone’
(Educational Leaders website, New Zealand)
What’s it about?
As we move well into the 21st century, collaboration is widely embraced across all areas of our system, from what happens within classrooms between students, to what happens within schools among staff, to what happens between schools and other agencies.
Collaborative approaches are foundational to effective pedagogy in education, as well as in the way schools themselves function in an increasingly networked world. The ability to work effectively with others is a key element of employability and a key desirable outcome of a successful educational system. Those who can work in teams and who can use and promote a ‘collective intelligence’ are often sought-after employees, as well as effective leaders in education and business settings. This means there is a real urgency to learn how to work collaboratively as well as collaborative practice underpinning effective education.
Collaboration is different to cooperation. Collaboration requires working with specific intent, an agreement to a common purpose or goal, and to a common way of achieving that. Fullan (2013) describes the collaborative power of a group as social capital that along with the talent of individuals (human capital) and the wisdom and expertise to make sound judgments about learners that are cultivated over many years (decisional capital) are the anchor stone of professional capital — the capital that is found in countries that are more equal, higher-attaining, healthier in just about every way that counts. Teachers in these countries are nation builders, as they social cohesion, and social justice.
Collaboration is built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. There is an underpinning expectation of vulnerability and exposing one's own practice to critique and feedback. The focus is generally on improvement, and often some form of critical reflection (formal or informal) supports the development of collective skill and expertise. Through working closely together and working towards a well-understood and aligned vision, members of a team can maximise their efforts. There are explicit and implicit ways of working that value ‘positive abrasion’1 and encourage diversity of thought and new ideas.
When working collaboratively individuals and whole organisations can more effectively:
- Learn from each other and from different parts of the organisation
- Innovate, prototype, and embed change quickly
- Generalise effective practices and process quickly and effectively
- Avoid repeating errors and ineffective practice
What's driving this?
Our world is becoming more complex, requiring the collective intelligence of the many to address the ‘wicked problems’ we face on a day-to-day basis — most of which are beyond the capacity of any individual. We see this reflected in the way the modern workforce is organised — the work used to be the domain of an individual, now there are teams involved using their respective strengths and abilities, to achieve the common task.
Educational institutions are certainly not exempt. Embracing collaboration must be fundamental to the way these organisations work. It is not sustainable for individual teachers to assume responsibility for the wide range of tasks and roles expected of them in the past – ‘isolated’ in the way they operate with groups of students in individual classrooms. Individual schools cannot continue to operate in isolation, competing for resources, staff, and students. Education into the future must be fundamentally more collaborative at every level.
A second significant driver from an educational point of view is our understanding of collective teacher efficacy (CTE), which refers to a staff’s shared belief that through their collective action they can positively influence student outcomes. With an effect size of 1.57, CTE is ranked as the number one factor influencing student achievement (Hattie, 20162). According to the Visible Learning Research (Table 1), CTE is beyond three times more powerful and predictive of student achievement than socio-economic status. It is more than double the effect of prior achievement and more than triple the effect of home environment and parental involvement. It is greater than three times more likely to influence student achievement than student motivation, concentration, persistence, and engagement.
What examples of this can I see?
Collaborative activity is growing in several areas of our education sector. Often, they are organisations that reaching into schools as they see that through working together on local, national, and global issues there will be better outcomes for all.
Student-student collaboration
- Passionfruit – a curriculum integration project at secondary school
- Language learning – a collaborative approach supported by technology
Teacher-teacher collaboration
- Strategic planning – describing how the senior leadership team operates at Pakuranga College
- Collaboration and PLD across the Katote Cluster
- Collaborative teaching in a year 5–6 innovative learning environment (video)
School-school collaboration
- Manaiakalani Project – a collaborative education programme achieving significant improvement in student achievement outcomes for 12 mostly decile 1A schools in the Auckland suburbs of Glen Innes, Pt England and Panmure.
School-wide community collaboration
- Grow Waitaha – collaboration between schools, Ministry of Education, local iwi, and professional learner providers that supports schools and learners through the process of change happening in Canterbury
- Communities of learning/Kāhui Ako Learning partnerships forging new collaborative arrangements that extend the reach of individual schools to community organisations.
- Sticks and stones Sticks – a student led collaboration focused on taking positive action online to stop both Bullying online or in person.
How might we respond?
The shift to a truly collaborative culture in schools presents significant challenges within a system that has been traditionally very hierarchical.
Some questions to act as a stimulus with your colleagues include:
- What examples of student-student collaboration can you identify are happening regularly in your school? Are the skills and dispositions that students need to collaborate successfully identified and explicitly addressed through the school?
- How are staff currently engaged in collaborative approaches to designing and implementing learning programmes in your school? Are they supported to develop the skills and dispositions to be successful in this, and to deal with the ‘creative abrasion’ that occurs? Is there a shared understanding of the goals being pursued, and of the protocols and processes for working collaboratively?
- If you are a part of a cluster, how are you working to ensure you are collaborating effectively? What frameworks or supports are you using?
- What opportunities for collaborating with parties outside of your school might be pursued (i.e. parents, businesses, support agencies etc.)
- 10 Reasons Team Collaboration Should Be Part of Your 2017 Project Management Strategy
- Hattie, J. (2016). Third Annual Visible Learning Conference (subtitled Mindframes and Maximizers), Washington, DC, July 11, 2016.
Videos
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Links
Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako – collaborating
Creating a culture of collective responsibility is at the heart of how an effective Community of Learning operates.
Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako – resources
Includes key resource the Community of Learning | Kāhui Ako toolkit, which contains information about the tools, resources, and services available to support Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako to meet their achievement challenges and deliver personalised learning pathways for all ākonga.
Snapshots of learning: teacher inquiry
Many of the spirals of inquiry snapshots are done collaboratively, the focus of the snapshots is the inquiry process rather than the collaboration process in itself. However you can draw conclusions and make comments on the benefits of collaboration to support change in teacher practice across a team.
Collaborative professional learning cultures represent a complex and adaptive challenge. They take time, but they can build teaching effectiveness and result in better learning for all students.
Achievement: building and working with a collaborative team
Part of the New Zealand Curriculum Update, March 2012.
Structuring your classroom to facilitate collaborative learning
Structured, collaborative approach can provide students with specific roles and supports to build successful relationships. Create spaces that support and encourage students to work together.
The framework can be used as a formative self-review tool to help groups to identify what effective collaboration that makes a difference for learners looks like, next steps towards becoming a more effective collaborative group, and as way of monitoring progress towards the collaborative state.
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Articles
Promoting collaborative learning cultures
Collaborative learning cultures (CLCs) represent a profound shift – from isolation and autonomy to deprivatised practice.
Promoting collaborative learning cultures: putting the promise into practice
This issue of Ideas Into Action explores research foundations supporting collaborative learning cultures, and presents a sampling of current findings and resources that will help school and system leaders deepen their understanding and practice of this core leadership capacity
West Auckland principals collaborate
An impressive collaboration has been underway in Waitakere, West Auckland for many years. In 2007 a group of principals from a range of school joined forces to see if they could work together to make a difference to student outcomes across the region. This story explains how they did it.
Collaboration – so much more than parallel play!
From the CORE blog. What does collaboration look like, and how do we know it when we see it, hear it, and experience it?
This post from the CORE blog outlines why collaboration is so important, and some key ideas that come in to play when different organisations and community groups collaborate.
10 reasons team collaboration should be part of your 2017 project management strategy
Powerful learning: studies show deep understanding derives from collaborative methods
Cooperative learning and inquiry-based teaching yield big dividends in the classroom. And now we have the research to prove it.
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Research
Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako: collaboration to improve learner outcomes
This publication is designed to support Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako by bringing together research findings about effective collaboration in education communities. It is supported by the publication Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako: working towards collaborative practice.
Communities of Learning: working toward collaborative practice
This resource is designed to support CoL | Kāhui Ako as they work towards effective collaborative practice. It is framed around key questions in each of the seven effective practice areas and is able to be used both as evidence-based progressions and as a useful internal evaluation tool.
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Professional Learning
uLearn
Three days of continual PLD via keynote speakers, spotlight sessions, and over 230 breakouts. Join 1700+ delegates as you connect, collaborate, and innovate! 11-13 October 2017
CORE professional learning solutions: Collaboration across sites of learning
Building a collaborative culture in and across your learning setting, with your community, represents a profound shift – from isolation and autonomy to de-privatised practice. We work with you, implementing structures and processes to support you as you build your collaborations and become a successful networked learning community.
CORE professional learning solutions: Strengthening capability
Often building capability can feel like a one-size-for-all approach. We recognise strengthening capability requires inquiry, with a strong focus on professional practices and social cohesion. The ultimate result sees teachers developing solutions together, using shared evidence and research.
CORE professional learning solutions: Collaboration
Collaboration transforms teaching and learning. Though a collaborative culture is not quickly established, it produces educationally powerful relationships with learners, their whānau, and teachers.
CORE professional learning solutions: Inquiry approaches
Learners need opportunities to develop higher-order cognitive skills, and to really ignite a learner’s passion, the right opportunities need to be made available. We help you strengthen curriculum inquiry approaches, so learners are actively involved in their learning and using higher-order cognitive skills.
CORE professional learning solutions: Modern learning
Modern Learning is about learner agency, developing capabilities and relationships between learners and their teachers. It’s about working together to solve the problems of the future, the exciting new possibilities we haven't even thought of in our rapidly changing world.
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Readings
What works best in education: the politics of collaborative expertise
Produced by Pearson.
Tribes, institutions, markets, networks: A framework about societal evolution
This paper provides an interim overview of David Ronfeldt's framework about the evolution of societies.