Why is collaboration important in teaching

A key part of the process is deciding together on the systems, approaches, and measures that will help the team collaborate successfully. Dr Julia Aitken discusses the importance of having a shared vision for the purpose of education. Teachers at Shirley Primary School developed a team charter to guide the way they collaborated. They asked:. Several useful resources are linked to from this case study. Professional conversations are conversations that focus on improving learner outcomes.

Examples include:. Dr Helen Timperley, Professor of Education at the University of Auckland, discusses key findings from her literature review examining the research on professional conversations at schools.

She describes enablers for effective professional conversations. Developing the communication skills required to manage conflict is essential for successful collaboration.

A key challenge for all teachers is knowing how to have difficult conversations with colleagues conversations that you might prefer to avoid. How tidy, how timely, of how your hub colleagues do a wall display has the potential to cause dissonance, or what we have simply come to term rub amongst team members.

Learning how to address points of difference with a colleague includes understanding the conversation that needs to be had, when it needs to happen, and the right person to have it with. Kirsten Harris-Tatana from South Hornby School discusses the steps teachers employed to establish trust and build relationships that support collaboration. Using Joan Dalton's Learning Talk series, the team identified keys to building successful relationships, including:.

Conversations had in wrong setting with wrong people that has the potential to undermine or diminish trust of another.

When dissonance rub is experienced "growth mindset" sense-making conversations follow with the source right person in the right context, right time to move things forward. Sense-making is inculturated as "how we do things in our team".

Relationships deepen as a result of how the sense-making conversations are carried out. In innovative learning environments ILEs , teachers often work directly with another teacher or teachers to meet the learning needs of a large group of learners. Benefits of this approach include:. Dr Julia Aitken discusses the benefits of working in a collaborative learning environment. Teachers are able to provide targeted support to small groups of students. Collaborative learning environments provide opportunities for teachers to learn from each other through observation and feedback.

Dr Aitken provides examples of ways secondary school teachers collaborate across disciplines. Educators from secondary schools around Canterbury share their cross-curricular approach to collaborative teaching and learning. Participants of the Canterbury Delving Deeper Conference share how a change to more collaborative practice has worked for teachers and learners. ILEs provide opportunities for teachers to structure the way they work with students in different ways, depending on the learning needs of the students.

Planning and assessing collaboratively helps teachers to better meet the needs of diverse learners. Collaborative planning provides opportunities for teachers to work to their strengths. At secondary schools, collaborative planning can help to make cross-disciplinary connections evident, with students exploring key concepts in different contexts. Anita Head, year 5—6 team leader at Halswell School, discusses the enablers of student success within their innovative learning environment. Shared planning via Google Docs has been important to ensure that each staff member understands what's happening for each of their students.

Anita explains, "The key things that have enabled successful learning for our students have been that the staff are all working collaboratively together.

Because most assessment occurs naturally through everyday classroom interactions, collaborative assessment can require some creativity. For example, some schools track information on behaviour and learning using SMS. The SMS has been set up to produce a monitoring grid once data has been submitted via text, so teachers only have to enter the data once.

While larger classes may mean it takes more time to get to know students and their learning needs, having more teachers means that while one teacher works with a group, another can gather data from individual students. This data can then enable teachers to group and regroup learners for activities according to the skill being taught or practised. Share data gathered through online tools that work best within your team, for example your SMS, Google spreadsheets or docs. Supporting students to use online tools to demonstrate their learning provides teachers with easy access to their learning processes, enabling virtual feedback and feedforward.

Lisa Dovey, year 7—8 team leader at Halswell School, discusses the benefits of collaborative teaching. Her team uses Google Docs and Google Hangouts to support collaborative planning, teaching, and assessment. Peer-to-peer collaboration can turn a small idea into the seeds for something fabulous. The process of becoming a National Board certified teacher was the most important of my career.

The experience —particularly working with other professionals — made me turn inside-out and think about things from a new perspective. Learning and working with others made me dig deeper and explore who I was as a learner and a teacher. Equally important, it made me explore who my kids could be as learners. In our educational culture today, it's extremely important to join professional learning communities and pursue professional learning opportunities to ensure ongoing growth for our students and for ourselves.

Plan activities that give students the opportunity to work and collaborate together to learn and grow from each other. Collaborative learning has been shown to not only develop higher-level thinking skills in students, but boost their confidence and self-esteem as well. Group projects can maximize educational experience by demonstrating the material, while improving social and interpersonal skills. Students learn how to work with various types of learners and develop their leadership skills.

Teachers collaborate in a multitude of ways when they interact with their colleagues to exchange ideas and resources, discuss student learning, team up for joint activities and knowledge creation.

It is in these ways that teachers can co-create and enhance their learning with a shared aim to provide quality learning experiences to their students. In addition to supporting the instructional role of teachers, collaboration plays a key role in building relationships among teachers so that they feel part of a professional community and derive personal fulfilment from their work.

Among lower secondary teachers, the most common ways in which they collaborate are simple exchanges and co-ordination between colleagues aimed directly at immediate student learning and support. The less common collaborative activities across the OECD include those which require a deeper level of co-ordination among teachers such as teaching jointly in teams, and observing teachers and providing feedback.

However, in some cases, some of these collaborative activities may be used more often or remain limited for teachers working in challenging schools such as those that have a high share of students from disadvantaged homes. Collaboration is a valuable tool in education, whether between students or between teachers. When teachers are given the opportunity to collaborate effectively, we can see a great impact on classroom learning and student achievement.

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