Collaborative relationships among community members

In professional learning communities focused on making ongoing improvements to student learning, educators need to be able to do more than share their ideas and support each other; they also need to collaborate to critically examine the impact that their ideas and practices are having on student outcomes. This means that they need to develop relationships that promote collaborative inquiry and the co-construction of shared knowledge about effective learning and teaching.

What the literature says

Collaborative professional relationships:

• break down cultures of isolation and provide opportunities for educators to learn from each other;

  To be sure, high quality instruction depends upon the competence and attitudes of each individual teacher. But in addition, teachers’ individual knowledge, skills and dispositions must be put to use in an organized, collective enterprise. That is, social resources must be cultivated, and the desired vision for the social resources within a school can be summarized as professional community.

King and Newmann, 2001, in Bolam, McMahon, Stoll et al., 2005, page 15

• foster reflection and inquiry around shared problems of practice, contributing to:

  the establishment of a school-wide culture that makes collaboration expected, inclusive, genuine, ongoing, and focused on critically examining practice to improve student outcomes.

Seashore et al., 2003, quoted in Bolam et al., 2005, page 6

• are based on mutual trust and respect;

  Mutual respect and understanding are the fundamental requirements for this kind of culture. Teachers find help, support, and trust as a result of the development of warm relationships with each other. “Teachers tolerate (even encourage) debate, discussion and disagreement. They are comfortable sharing both their successes and their failures. They praise and recognise one another’s triumphs, and offer empathy and support for each other’s troubles”. (Wignall, 1992)

Hord, 1997, page 4

• are based on a distributed model of leadership and expertise;

  In a professional learning community, administrators are committed to sharing decision making with staff and providing opportunities for teachers to serve as leaders … Collective decision making results in increased morale, ownership, understanding about the direction and processes of change, shared responsibility for student learning, and a sense of professionalism, all of which help to sustain improvement efforts.

Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL), 2003, page 1

• foster dynamic professional exchanges and learning conversations that help people to critically examine their beliefs and assumptions and to address and resolve difficult issues.

  In learning conversations people recognize the importance of treating different accounts of a problem as a resource for learning better ways of thinking about and resolving it. This means they are open to learning from others about the adequacy of their assumptions, beliefs, and values.

Robinson and Lai, 2006, page 41

Implications for ISTEs

ISTEs need to experience collaborative working relationships in their own learning communities, both to support their own learning and to give them experience they can draw on in developing such relationships with teachers and school leaders. For ISTEs to develop collaborative relationships, they need to find ways of communicating that help all parties to better understand each other. Conversations between educators should foster positive relationships while maintaining a rigorous focus on the effect of teaching practice on learning.

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