The Essential Guide to Professional Learning: Collaboration!
Working together on all aspects of teaching, like planning, making decisions, and solving problems, means we all share responsibility for how things turn out. Instead of just focusing on our goals, we work to help each other and improve our school. When we collaborate, we get to learn from each other and come up with lots of different solutions to problems. This helps not only our own classrooms but the whole school to get better. And when we learn and grow together, it helps all students do better too (TALIS, 2013).
However, sometimes there are things that get in the way of this collaboration, the barriers:Not everyone understands why collaboration is important; thus, no collaborative culture is fostered.
Some teachers are nervous about sharing their ideas and getting feedback.
Sometimes, we do not have clear goals for what we’re trying to achieve together, so our collaboration does not lead to changes in our teaching.
Some teachers are not excited about collaborating, they may feel like their practices are being attacked or they do not feel supported.
It can be hard to find the time to meet and learn together.
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