Collaboration and collegiality are crucial to a doctrine of change as well as critical strategies in promoting teacher professional development.Collaboration and collegiality take teacher development beyond individual reflection, or reliance on external experts, to a point where educators can learn from one another, sharing and building expertise together.
Hargreaves (1994) argues that the confidence and self-assurance that comes with collegial sharing and support leads to a greater willingness for educators to experiment and take risks. Often, this same confidence leads to a commitment to continuous improvement and development among teachers as well as an acknowledged component of their professional obligation.
In a sense, collaboration and collegiality are an essential bridge between school improvement and teacher development. In studies of school effectiveness, those forms of collaboration and collegiality that incorporate factors such as shared decision-making and staff consultation correlate positively.
Collaboration and collegiality are the glue that holds teacher development and curriculum development together.
Yet the value of these two processes starts to degrade where collaboration and collegiality meet the reality of implementation.
Important questions that guide the effectiveness of collaboration and collegiality include:
- What is meant by collaboration and collegiality in terms of teacher professional development?
- How do we teach teachers to be collegial and collaborate?
- What structures (technical, managerial, environmental) can a school provide to make these things happen?
- Who guides and controls collaboration and collegiality?
- How do the patterns of relationships among teachers affect collaboration and collegiality?
- How do the sociopolitics of the educational setting, i.e., power and control concerns of administrators to achieve preferred outcomes, affect collaboration and collegiality?
Hargreaves’ research bears out a fundamental dichotomy between what might be called genuine collaboration and it’s counterpoint, contrived collegiality.
For Hargreaves, genuine collaboration and collegiality are noted for spontaneity, for being voluntary, that it is pervasive across time and space, unpredictable, and development-oriented.
Contrived collaboration and collegiality is noted for being administratively regulated, compulsory, fixed in time and space, and predictable.
According to Hargreaves (1994), mandated or contrived collegiality makes it difficult for programs to be adjusted to the purposes and practicalities of particular school and classroom settings. It overrides teacher professionalism and the discretionary judgment which comprises it. And it diverts teachers’ efforts and energies into simulated compliance with administrative demands that are inflexible and inappropriate for the settings in which they work (p. 208).
Can collaboration and collegiality be mandated effectively among teachers? Or will it delay, distract and demean them? What strategies can degree programs designed to foster teacher leadership for school improvement offer to be both meaningful, trusted, desirable, and effective for participants?
Sensitivity and flexibility are offered as two solutions for managing collaboration and collegiality by administrators and teacher educators. Ultimately it is a matter of empowerment. The question remains, are teacher educators, school system administrators, and politicians willing to bite that bullet?
Reference:
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern age. New York: Teachers College Press.
