What underpins interactive professionalism?

Collaboration and collegiality

A key feature of “interactive professionalism” is the establishment of collaborative work cultures (Fullan and Hargreaves, 1996). In collaborative work cultures, educators co-construct new meanings as they jointly inquire into real problems of practice. According to Hargreaves (2000):

[T]here are increasing efforts to build strong professional cultures of collaboration to develop common purpose, to cope with uncertainty and complexity, to respond effectively to rapid change and reform, to create a climate which values risk-taking and continuous improvement, to develop stronger senses of teacher efficacy, and to create ongoing professional learning cultures for teachers that replace patterns of staff development which are individualized, episodic, and weakly connected to the priorities of the school.

page 165–166

The focus on collaboration is based on the assumption that educators learn through inquiry into the complexities of teaching and learning across the professional lifespan.

An across-the-life-span perspective on teacher learning is more relational – making salient the role of communities and intellectual projects of groups of teachers over time.

Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999, page 293

In a collaborative culture focused on better learning outcomes for all, practice is deprivatised.

Leadership must create conditions that value learning as both an individual and collective good. Leaders must create environments in which individuals expect to have their personal ideas and practices subjected to the scrutiny of their colleagues, and in which groups expect to have their shared conceptions of practice subjected to the scrutiny of individuals. Privacy of practice produces isolation; isolation is the enemy of improvement. (Elmore and Burney, 1999, p. 20)

Cited in Fullan, 2001b, page 264

Lima (2001) explains that “In collaboration, each individual participates with his or her share in a common endeavor whose result benefits everyone that is involved” (page 99). This makes it important to identify the knowledge and expertise that each person is able to contribute. If educators don’t believe that others have expertise from which they could benefit, they are not likely to see any benefit in working with and learning from each other.

Lima adds that, in practice, collaboration means different things to different people. This lack of clarity means that people may claim to work collaboratively while maintaining their individualistic practices and that communities may tacitly agree about the kinds of sharing that they deem safe. He argues that when cognitive conflict is carefully managed, it can inspire the individual creativity and divergent thinking that are essential for educational change. Carefully managed cognitive conflict can force people to make their knowledge public and understood by their colleagues, to confront their differences, and to negotiate their way to shared understandings. Lima concludes that the more we promote “real” collaboration and collegiality in learning communities around innovation and change, the more conflict we meet.

The more collegiality we create that is truly oriented towards innovation and change, the more conflict we will have. For promoters of school change through collegiality, the challenge is to find positive ways of dealing with this conflict and taking profit from it from a change perspective, rather than avoid or try to suppress it.

page 11

As Zeichner and Liston (1996) identify, trust is an essential component of collaborative critical reflection. Fullan and Hargreaves (1996) suggest, though, that while it is important to trust people, this is not enough because it creates too much instability when key individuals move on. Educators also need to trust in the processes that support the collective expertise of the organisations they belong to and that will improve their capacity to solve problems.

Collaboration may take many forms. Fullan and Hargreaves (1996) warn that while it is important to foster collaboration, leaders must not assume that collaboration takes one particular form and pressure teachers to adopt it. Rather, leaders should commit to the principle but empower teachers to use their judgment to select the collaborative practices that suit them.

Fullan and Hargreaves also warn that it is important not to over-commit to collaboration. While deep reflection requires opportunities to share and interact with others, educators also need personal time and solitude in which to reflect on their inner values, ideas, and goals and to locate and develop their personal voice.

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