Collaboration is a term commonly used across education and public services. At the moment, however, it is very often misunderstood and taken lightly. There are many interpretations of collaboration - whether discussing leadership, learning, practice or teaching - so how do we develop a shared understanding of this concept to enable truly collaborative practice?
There has been a developing understanding of collaboration as a cornerstone of effective professional learning for teachers over a number of years. Exploring collaborative leadership and the difference it can make has been at the heart of much of the work of SCEL (Scottish College for Educational Leadership).
On the face of it, collaborative learning seems a straightforward concept: people learning together to enhance their knowledge, understanding or skills. However, it is much more nuanced than this.
Cooperative learning, based on the work of Johnson and Johnson, and others, is an example of developing collaborative learning in the classroom that has been adopted fairly widely across the school system in Scotland, but is still ultimately led by the teacher. This is one strategy, but we would suggest that even deeper collaborative practice and learning is possible if learners organise their own learning. Collaborative learning offers opportunities to explore open-ended complex tasks and create new knowledge - ideal for supporting the principles underpinning Curriculum for Excellence.
So how is this enabled? You need a culture that values every voice, has high trust and believes that everyone can learn from each other. These were some of the core principles and ideas explored by educators from Scotland and overseas at SCEL’s recent conference in Perth, Leading Collaborative Learning at Every Level: From System to Classroom. Teachers, middle leaders, leaders of early learning, headteachers, system leaders and academics engaged in collaborative learning throughout the day. This threw up five important principles for leading collaborative learning in schools and other establishments.
1. Everyone has a role in leading collaborative learning.
This is at the heart of SCEL’s mission to provide opportunities for every teacher to develop their leadership capacity. Educators lead within and between their classrooms. By taking an enquiring stance into their practice and empowering learners to be partners in their learning, educators continuously hone and improve their own practice and the practice of others.
Department and school leaders create the conditions and climate for collaborative learning. Recurring messages throughout the conference included that leaders must ensure the benefits of collaborative learning are understood and shared; that creative approaches to time for collaborative learning are employed and encouraged; and that there are agreed and established norms or typical behaviours.
2. True collaboration means that learners are always involved
Effective collaborative learning between educators and learners enhances outcomes for young people. At the heart of this are some of the principles that underpin Assessment is for Learning (AfL), which ensures that feedback on performance is undertaken with learners and that they are involved at all stages of the learning and assessment process as active partners.
This means intelligent use of a variety of forms of data to steer pedagogy as well as professional learning - one idea which rang out throughout the day was not to forget that the looks on pupils’ faces during a class are one form of immediate data.
3. Children are powerful influencers of what they learn and how they are taught
Lyn Sharratt and Beate Planche (authors of Leading Collaborative Learning: Empowering Excellence) shared research behind their latest work which indicates that when students are genuine partners in the learning process, they are more successful. By enhancing the quality of feedback and involving pupils in aspects of the teaching and learning process, such as planning and assessment, we can ensure that they are more actively involved in their own learning. Yet we must also ask to what degree we involve students in the teaching process and as agents in our professional learning.
4. Relationships are built through collaborative learning
Relationships are at the heart of collaborative learning - in fact they are at the heart of leadership. A key message from the conference was that we shouldn’t wait for relationships to be perfect before establishing collaborative approaches (either between learners or educators), and that relationships are built and developed through the process of collaborative learning. This is an important point as it can both speed up the process of establishing, and hence benefitting from, collaborative learning. When effectively and sensitively led, collaboration can be an effective vehicle for deepening professional relationships.
5. There is a continuum of collaborative learning
When embarking upon collaborative learning to enhance schools, classrooms and outcomes for children, it is important to start from where you are. Many begin by working closely with those they feel most comfortable with such as those they share a friendship with, or begin with less challenging projects or concepts. Very often, however, from difference or discomfort comes growth. It is vital, therefore, to keep moving along, so that we are not merely sharing practice but creating an embedded culture of collaborative learning.
Collaborative learning is not only about changing practice and responding to need, it is about creating social cohesion within classrooms and across schools and systems. It must be enabled and valued with creative use of resources if it is to flourish. Above all, it needs strong leadership from everybody: students, educators and school and system leaders.
Lesley Whelan is director of programmes and depute chief executive, and Jay Helbert is a lead specialist, both at the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) which tweets @TeamSCEL
