Collaboration – My Perspective on the topic and what a couple of the experts are saying.

There are big questions dominating the education forums at present. Some of these questions have global, system, philosophical, local or individual origins. Collaboration touches all of these domains and more. In a world where communication has reached new and lofty heights – it should be easier to collaborate. While I have not discussed the technological possibilities for collaboration (if that’s your specialty jump on board), I just wanted to acknowledge it plays a high strake in collaborative possibilities in our now global educational context.

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To ask how we collaborate within the education system, perhaps first we should ask what it is to collaborate and why we should use this evidence-based practice in order to support the learning of the students we teach and use it as a global and systemic tool towards creating a worldwide dialogue which continues to challenge current educational thinking and practices as seen in professional teaching standards by The Australian Institite for Teaching and School Leadership (2017) – see standard 7.3.

See the link below with John Hattie and Ashley McLellan, (2016) who discuss collaboration as an overused buzz word.

Keeping Hattie’s opinions in mind I am led to consider collaboration in the 21st Century and wonder whether or not we are using it in its highest form. In a world where technological and digital means should allow us to collaborate with ease, have we lost sight of the best practices and personal element to collaboration – the why and how ?

While I will not discuss technology in this article – I will note that it provides a wealth of opportunities for collaboration in a global, national, local and individual context.

So what is REAL collaboration, the kind that Hattie and McLellan talk about as benefiting students and teachers in the educational processes and how do we do it ?

I am writing this note from an apartment in Hanoi, Vietnam, next door to a school, where the days are long for the students and the bells are replaced by the beating of large drums and never has it been more apparent to me that dealing with learning within a particular context is EVERYTHING.

Within each student’s context there are conditions that either enhance or disable a student’s chances of learning in a more ideal way for them. We know this. Collaboration provides an opportunity to provide A1 conditions and the highest possible outcome for students. With out it – there’s a lot of guess work and fumble – and that causes student’s stress and teachers too, for that matter. See the Wellbeing framework from the NSW Department of Education and read about Positive Partnerships.

In my experience, collaboration is present in the conversations held between teachers and leaders, parents, therapists, other relevant community members and students that improve the outcomes of the students, thus taking out the guess work in the planning and implementation of world class pedagogy that supports all individual learners. Data sharing may be part of that, so I’m not going to get into a debate about data, that’s another conversation, but what I will say is that – collaboration should – no MUST – include conversation about the student as whole person – including family circumstances, health (both mental and physical), likes, dislikes, quirks and special interests. Deep inside THAT KEY conversation lies the real knowing and the genuine portal into individual student’s motivations for learning. We think we know, even when we have known students for a long time – we don’t know it all and collaboration provides essential dialogue and often new – shared information – we are well aware of the benefits to students – we just need to embrace its benefits more readily, with more fluidity and in a highly organised fashion.

Shared goals, shared information, shared understanding and shared details that bring truth to the student’s learning. By truth, I mean genuine knowledge encapsulating the student’s skills and challenges, thus allowing educators and their partners to collaborate to bring greater success to the student – to the student – not the other way around. If a student is not making tangible progress measured primarily against their own abilities and skills , it is unlikely that they will be motivated to achieve this on their own. Motivation aside – it is also unlikely that such students will possess the skills to access the curriculum along with their peers, assuming the peers are learning at peak levels. It is highly unlikely that any students are learning at optimal levels all the time and there are a diverse set of reasons for this being the case. That said, students with learning challenges and particular needs are the most likely to need our support.

Collaboration should have one primary responsibility to take a student from where they are…. just think about that for a moment …. from where they ARE – not the one size fits all version of education (or assessment) but allows a group within a shared space and context to all care – to all work – for the good of the students taught in our schools. Every one of them.

Sharing the specific and sometimes very personal details of a student’s narrative, (health, learning needs, family story, financial needs) and sharing the tools, ideas and common goals that colleagues share, can make all the difference to a student’s life.

Their purpose. Their motivation for being and or achieving their best self.

It’s changes the way students feel about learning because when they feel that they are REALLY cared for in a personal way in an environment – a community – ‘they know they matter’.

This ‘community support’ brings amazing results to individual students. I have seen it turn troubled children into happy children. I have seen children excited to work on personalised projects, who had previously battled everyone – including themselves. That’s real collaboration. It values the voice of all persons involved but has the child’s needs at the heart or all planning and decisions. Data and other evidence based practices may be used to inform pedagogy and practices but the needs of the student will always be in the forefront of any decisions in a well functioning collaborative environment.

Collaboration is a dynamic process, because students lives change, sometimes daily. Collaboration is dictated by the needs of the student and the value that all professions can bring to their lives.

Collaboration can be as small as a passing chat that lets a teacher know that a child has had a bad morning, a team meeting at school that’s shares all common knowledge on a student’s needs or an all stakeholders meeting that draws on knowledge from parents and experts like psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists and medical practitioners ( to name a few). The main thing to consider is to keep the student’s strengths in the forefront of all decision making, because we all learn best when we use our strengths to power us through the challenges.

Of course collaboration is a far greater alliance beyond the needs of individual students, it encompasses school, system and global leadership and is wrapped in political, economic and social agenda – in its many and varied forms. I have intentionally started this conversation at the individual student centred level – they should always remain at the pinnacle of all educational decision making, no matter where the context takes one. No matter what the political, economic, social and environmental factors that combine to create a surface on which to build, rebuild or reshape our pedagogy, curriculum and teacher training or ongoing development (CPD). Collaboration infiltrates all professional learning communities (PLC’s) and provides the key to synergy within the system at its many and varied levels.

Teacher training, both pre-service and continual progressive teacher development remains another key part of the educative collaborative narrative and is another topic for discussion. Teacher preparation and training will remain significant because as Hattie discusses, teachers remain; “the major source of controllable variance in our system” (Hattie,2012).

There are several parts to the story of collaboration within the education domain, each element of which cannot be separated. For maximum benefit for all individual students within the world in their many and varied contexts, many factors come into play within the principles of collaboration; global political, economic social and environmental, factors all create agendas and initiatives for systems, leadership, and school based decisions and practices that in the end will either enhance or hamper learning outcomes for the students.

I am reminded of a quote by Aristotle that will no doubt be familiar to all, that; “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” How apt this is in considering the many elements that are present in a perfectly aligned view of collaboration within education in the 21st Century.

What are your thoughts ?

Karen Cleary

References.

Hattie, J,. 2012. Visible Learning for Teachers; Maximizing Impact on Learning. Routledge, New York.

The links I refer to:

https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

Click to access 16531_Wellbeing-Framework-for-schools_Acessible.pdf

http://thelearningexchange.ca/collaboration-for-impact/