Collaboration

I am still trying to make sense of the two articles (listed below). They have started to make me understand (a little) as to why collaboration is so hard to achieve. I have worked in a number of schools were we were expected to collaborate (all faculty - i.e. within the year level, across the year level, with specialists), yet will admit that it just never seemed to work. I had thought that it was because we just never had enough time to do it well. However, the following two articles did shed a little bit of light on the matter for me.

Fullan's comment that collaboration is not based on like-minded consensus was enlightening. Conflict, emotion, trust, compassion and developing relationships are all part of building a collaborative environment. He also said that there in no one answer as building collaboration varies according to the environment you are in. The role the principal plays was also explained. Senge talks more about the learning organisations and how people who were part of a great team felt connected to each other and to what they were trying to achieve - working towards a common goal.

I still think about these readings and have read them a few times. I think I am slowly understanding the role the TL plays. Definitely important is to all be on board with the school's goals/aims/mission statement and then try to work out how to achieve it. I did have a slight little deviation of thought and wondered what do you do if the school's written goals/mission statement doesn't actually match what happens. I am also starting to realise that collaboration or how I thought of it extends beyond the faculty. I need to think about how to the role the wider community, parents and students plays in collaboration. These articles have really made me question what I understood collaboration to be and am still grappling with this.

Fullan, M. (1999). Chapter 3: The deep meaning of inside collaboration. In Change forces: The sequel, (pp.31-41). London, Falmer Press.

Senge, P. (2007). Chapter 1: Give me a lever long enough … and single-handed I can move the world. In The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership, 2nd ed. (pp. 3-15).

One area that I had very little understanding of is scheduling. I have always worked in schools where lessons in the library where on a fixed timetable and I had never really thought much about it. I just thought it was just the ways things were done. Reading about collaboration made me reconsider this espeically when I learnt that mixed or flexible scheduling fosters collaboration between teachers.

"Teacher-librarians in schools with flexible or mixed schedules develop significantly more units than those on fixed schedules by a ratio of 4:1” (Haycock, 2007, p. 29).

Haycock, K. (2007). Collaboration: Critical success factor for student learning. School Libraries Worldwide, 13(1), 25-35.

Lots of food for thought for me.