PROFESSIONAL SCHOOL CULTURES: COPING WITH THE CHAOS OF TEACHER COLLABORATION by JOHN WALLACE (Curtin University of Technology)

Calls for increased teacher collaboration have come at a time when jurisdictions around the world have been shifting responsibilities from central authorities to schools and from principals to teachers and school communities. In Australia, 1980s and 1990s have seen massive restructuring of state education from highly centralised education system to one in which schools were to have increasing control over their goals as well as the resources and strategies for achieving them. School based management was to replace a traditional reliance on the centre so that schools would become more flexible to cope with change, more responsive to meet local needs and more accountable in the effective and efficient use of their resources. Conflicting reports about whether devolution has been accompanied by increased teacher collaboration empowerment in Australian schools. Victoria and other states have noted that restructuring has caused increased workloads, greater accountability and reduced support for professional development thus working against the capacity of teachers to work collaboratively. While devolution forms a backdrop for the study, it is not a study of restructuring per se. Rather it is a study of collaboration using teachers own account to describe the nature and history of their experiences with colleagues. It explores the characteristics of collaboration, the constraints on teacher collegiality and the prospects of fostering collaboration in a reform environment. METHODS Teachers were asked to recall times in their careers when they experienced rich collaborative relationships with peers and to describe how those relationships developed, thrived and abated. Study gave insights into an insiders view of the nature of sound collaborative relationships. Sample: 25 teachers in 18 government schools within Western Australia. 10 males 15 females range of teaching experience 2 to 27 years. 15 primary schools 10 secondary schools. 8 country area 17 metro area. PROFESSIONAL COLLABORATIVE ENVIRONMENTS STRENTHS COLLABORATION 1. Collegiailty - working in clusters. 2. Opportunity for reflection - what works and doesnt work? 3. Rich discussion opportunity to question value of pedagogy. 4. Informal assessment - lack of giving account to higher authority. 5. Acknowledgement that one size doesnt fit all what works in school. 6. Valued - concept of trial and error. 7. Experimenting with new ideas. 8. Spontaneous not prescriptive. 9. Recognition from leadership team. WEAKNESSES OF COLLABORATION 1. Difficult to sustain over long periods of time. 2. Tendency for burnout. 3. Transient staff - people moving on. 4. New schools - geographic changes illustrate the elusive nature of collaborative cultures. 5. Organisation of new schools and the relationships which militated against cultures of collaboration. CONSTRAINTS OF COLLABORATION y Need for balance between collaboration and working in isolation. y Recognise that teachers work harder because they wish to maintain what they value in education rather than because of a commitment to policy initiatives. y Restructuring takes teachers away from classroom. y Collaboration is influenced by the stability and size of the group. y Building relationships is an informal process. Difficulties for Admin team. The lesson for administrators and others with an interest in school reform is to find ways of fostering professional collaborative environments that build on a respect for teachers and their capacity and need to focus on the academic tasks of teaching and learning. QUESTIONS How do we empower and engage teachers to work together to reform the teaching/learning process? What is the connection between collaboration and restructuring? How can schools create the kind of professional and collaborative environments imagined by Lieberman and others?