Table of Contents

• Introduction



• Cultural Norms and Teacher
  Collaboration



• Method



• Results



• 
  
  
  
  • School-Level Collaboration
  
  
  
  • Collaboration at the District
    Level and Beyond
  
  
  
  



• Conclusions and
  Implications



• References

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Introduction

There has never been a time when the expectation has been greater that teachers
work together in meaningful job-embedded ways. While the prevailing call for
routinized collaborative practice has been evident for the past couple of decades,
it has intensified with the more recent systemic reforms based in heightened
curricula standards and more stringent accountability mechanisms (Peterson, 2002).
The conception that educators perform better when they work together professionally
is buoyed by elements of organizational theory models which emerged earlier in the
corporate sector (e.g., Argyris, 1978; Covey, 1991; Drucker, 1985; Lawler, 1986;
Senge, 1990). Such conceptions view authentic teamwork as being an essential
characteristic of the successful organization as its members come together
regularly to share ideas and develop common understandings of goals and the means
to their attainment.

Building organizational capacity through collegial interaction in schools has
become prominent in much of the literature on education reform and school
improvement. Administrators and teachers at all levels of the education practice
are encouraged to build professional learning communities based on shared
conceptions of vision, purpose, and means (e.g., Barth, 1990; Lambert, 1998;
Leonard & Leonard, 2001a; Speck, 1999). Indeed, the thrust for educators to
collaborate has taken on wholly international dimensions. For example, the
Australian College of Education encourages teachers to "work collaboratively with
their colleagues" (Brock, 1999, p. 11) and the General Teaching Council for England
advocates that the bases for raising schooling standards lies largely in
"collaborative enquiry and open, active professional learning" (2002, Introduction,
4). In Canada, the Ontario College of Teachers asserts that teachers are
educational leaders who collaborate with their colleagues, parents, and members of
the community (1999, p. 8).

In the United States, state-mandated school reforms of the past several years -
and, more recently, the new federal school accountability initiative articulated
and legalized through the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB, 2001) -- have greatly increased expectations that educators do more to
ensure that all students better meet standards of learning performance,
particularly as measured by standardized testing procedures. Concomitant with these
governmental and agency imperatives are newly revised professional standards
adopted by prominent professional agencies and learned societies and which
compellingly endorse the collaborative initiative. For instance, the National Board
for Professional Teaching Standards (2001) includes the proposition that effective
teachers are members of learning communities and that accomplished teachers
contribute to the effectiveness of the school by working collaboratively with other
professionals on instructional policy, curriculum development and staff development
(NBPTS, 2001, 5). As well, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support
Consortium (INTASC) recommends that new teachers be prepared to "foster
relationships with school colleagues" that help "support students' learning and
well being" (INTASC Standards, 1998). The National Staff Development Council (NSDC)
and the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) also place high
emphasis on the need for schools and school districts to create and sustain
organizational cultures that are characterized by elements of professional shared
learning. The NSDC process standards recommend that teachers be "provided with
sufficient time during the work day "to learn and work together to accomplish the
school's mission and goals" and that "staff members learn and apply collaborative
skills" (NSDC Standards, 2001). ISSLC notes the need for school administrators to
promote student learning by sustaining a culture of "staff professional growth" in
"an effective learning environment" (ISSLC Standards, 1996).

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Cultural Norms and Teacher Collaboration

Notwithstanding the noted prevailing expectations that schools exemplify
recognized components of professional learning communities, historical norms have
not reflected such circumstances. Almost three decades ago, Lortie (1975) reported
that teachers worked in circumstances that placed them physically and
intellectually separate from their colleagues and that there was limited
professional sharing among them. Indications of individualistic and isolationist
orientations were also evident in Goodlad's (1984) seminal work A Place Called
School: Prospects for the Future as he reflected upon evidence that teachers
tended to interact little either within or among schools, a circumstance further
noted by Rosenholtz (1989). By the mid 1990s, Elmore determined that although there
was increasing recognition of how schools might better operate there appeared to be
little incentive for teachers "to change their practices in their daily work
routines" (1995, p. 15). The relevant literature of even more recent years has
provided limited evidence of the melding of expectations and practices (e.g.,
Leonard & Leonard, 1999; Welch, 1998). Nonetheless, there are persistent claims
to what professional collaborative cultures can and do achieve, among them, teacher
empowerment, collegial trust, and organizational change, and school improvement
(Hall & Hord, 2001; Maehr and Midgley, 1996; Stoll & Fink, 1996) all of
which are resolutely linked to the ultimate goal of enhanced student outcomes.

Of course, discussion of collegial behavior must be embedded in an overriding
conceptualization of societal and organizational culture. Despite the diversity
that exists in American society and its multiple micro-societal layers,
"individualism as an ideal is extreme in the U.S. core culture" (Banks, 2003, p.9).
It is not unreasonable to expect that this macro-culture of individualism would
penetrate an organization's culture. A school's culture simply reflects what its
members collectively value and believe about the world and their place in it
(Schein, 1985). It includes critical and interactive elements such as shared
expectations of behavior, the nature of professional development, mutual respect,
and orientations toward collaboration and learning (Peterson & Deal, 1999;
Speck, 1999). Peterson (2002) identifies two forceful and opposite school cultures:
`positive' and `toxic'. Positive cultures reflect norms of common purpose,
continuous inquiry, and shared practice while toxic cultures thrive where there is
a lack of purpose, collaboration is discouraged, and there are hostile relations
among staff. Toxic cultures can defy individual efforts toward educational
improvement and, because of their entrenchment, can even stymie collective reform
efforts. Authentic teacher collaboration - that which is directed ultimately toward
student learning - is unlikely to occur within the realm of a negative school
culture. As Wagner and Masden-Copas (2002) warn, the primary goal of continuous
school improvement will not be realized "unless teams of teachers improve together"
(p.43).

In spite of the potential benefits accrued to cultural norms of collaborative
practice, problems may persist in sustaining schools as learning communities
founded in notions of professional interaction - that is, teachers meeting
regularly to exchange ideas, set goals, and make plans to address shared purposes.
Inherent in such a supposition is, of course, that teachers themselves actually
retain commonly-held beliefs about the value of collaborative activities and that
they are able to avail of organizational circumstances and conditions that
regularly generate them. Inhibitors to such collegial professional interaction have
been noted often in the literature, among them: time constraints, fragmented
visions, competitiveness, conflict avoidance, and lack of administrative support
(for examples see Dipardo, 1997; Knop, LeMaster, Norris, Raudensky & Tannehill,
1997; Kruse & Louis, 1997; Leonard, 1998).

Recent research undertaken by one of the authors (Leonard, 2002) with 238
Louisiana teachers confirmed several of those suppositions and provided additional
insights. In that study, appropriate revisions were made to an earlier survey
instrument developed by the authors (Leonard & Leonard, 2001) and which had
been based upon Schein's (1985) underlying dimensions of organizational culture.
The self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 systematic randomly
selected teachers in 88 schools in 10 public school districts or parishes in
Northern Louisiana. The instrument was comprised of 52 items, 24 of which were of
Likert-type response format with the remaining items addressing descriptive aspects
of the teachers' schools, demographic information, as well as a selection checklist
of various common forms of teacher shared work. These forms of shared activities
included team planning, peer observation, joint inservice (i.e., participating in
workshops with school colleagues), extracurricular activities, and other forms of
joint, or common, activities. From the teachers' reported perspectives, and
generally speaking, the research findings were summarized in the following five
statements:

1. Teachers do not consider their schools to sufficiently exhibit expectations
   of or support for regular, high levels of collaborative involvement.



2. Teacher work continues to be characterized by competition and individualism
   and lacks the type of trusting, caring environment that is more conducive to
   collaborative practice.



3. There needs to be greater articulation of underlying values and beliefs about
   educational practice that is tempered with respect for diverse professional
   opinions and practices.



4. Teachers are dissatisfied with scheduling and appropriations of time, which
   often serve to deter collaborative practice.



5. Teachers need professional development directed at improving their
   collaborative skills.

As noted earlier, the follow-up Louisiana research, which is described below,
served to further probe the nature and extent of collaborative practice in schools.
Such inquiry is needed in order to learn more about how cultures can be fostered to
"systematically address school improvement and student learning" (Hipp &
Huffman, 2002, p. 39).

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Method

As noted above, the research reported here primarily addresses data received in
a follow-up survey addressing aspects of professional collaboration in North
Louisiana schools. The questionnaire addressed teachers' beliefs about
collaborative practice compared to what they perceived as actual
collaborative conditions and circumstances in their schools (see Leonard, 2002). Of
the 238 teachers who completed the initial questionnaire, 101 indicated that they
would be willing to participate in the follow-up survey which would delve more
deeply into the nature of teacher shared work in schools. The second questionnaire
was distributed in the spring of 2002 with 56 (55.5%) teachers from 45 schools in 8
districts returning completed instruments. Twenty-five of the respondents taught at
the primary/elementary level, 16 in the junior high/middle school grades area, and
the remaining 15 in high schools. School enrollment size ranged from a low of 168
to a maximum of approximately 2000 students. Teacher experience ranged from 3 years
to 34 years.

In open-ended question format, the follow-up survey asked teachers to reflect
upon specific aspects of collaborative practices at their schools as well as at the
district level and beyond. Teachers were also asked to assess administrator and
organizational expectations and support for professional collaboration as well as
evident impediments to such practices. Inasmuch as common language is essential to
effective communication -- and in an attempt to avoid possible misconceptions about
what constitutes professional collaboration -- the survey document contained the
following guiding definition: "For the purpose of clarity in this discussion,
`professional collaboration' is considered to occur when teachers work together
regularly, share their knowledge, contribute ideas, and develop plans for achieving
educational goals - that is, principally in terms of improved student learning. (We
are not, in this instance, including such things as hall or lunch
supervision or extra-curricular activities.)"

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Results

The data analysis of the written responses to the open-ended survey questions
employed a basic qualitative enquiry technique by initially structuring the data
along question topics and then allowing additional themes and sub-themes to emerge.
Large portions of the data were coded independently by the researchers and, later,
categories and themes were re-examined collectively to determine agreement. The
method allowed for high inter-rater reliability and reasonable confidence that the
written opinions of the respondents were being perceived correctly. The coding
process resulted in the emergence of two principal themes: 1. The nature and extent
of professional collaboration in schools, and 2. The nature and extent of
professional collaboration at the school district level and beyond. Each category
is discussed in turn and then considered together in overall terms.

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School-Level Collaboration

The most frequent forms of collaborative practices cited by the 56 responding
teachers included faculty meetings, departmental meetings, grade-level or subject
area meetings, and special education meetings. They also noted curriculum meetings,
team teaching, lesson planning, and faculty workshops. A number of the teachers
provided explication of the forms collaborative practices took at their schools.
For instance, this high school English teacher related how she and her colleagues
meet to discuss student progress:

We discuss what the students didn't seem to get before moving on to a new level
in hopes of the lower level teacher focusing more on those skills with the next
group. We do this because we have found that there are some skills entire groups
are not acquiring.

An elementary teacher noted that teachers in her school are "paired together" to
"plan their units" while another recounted how the workload is shared as each
teacher is required to "get materials and tests ready for all teachers". As did a
few other participants, this middle school teacher described how departments
regularly come together:

Several times in the course of the year, all departments meet to discuss how to
meet state benchmarks and provide curriculum for each subject area. Reading and
English work closely in collaborating writing creatively with assigned stories
read in class.

A few others referred to various forms of "informal gatherings" or "when we are
passing each other" as opportunities for sharing ideas "by word of mouth".
Occasional reference was also given to addressing student discipline problems by
consulting with each other. Table 1 contains a summary listing of the various ways
the teachers reported collaborating with colleagues.

Table 1: Various forms of professional collaboration reported by
teachers.

Notwithstanding the extensive record of ways that the teachers engage in
collaborative practices, there were also those teachers who reported little such
activity was to be witnessed in their schools and some indicated that collaborative
activity was virtually non-existent. One high school teacher said quite succinctly
that the amount of collaborative work was simply "none" while another estimated
that "very little collaboration of any kind is done at our school"; a third person
stated flatly that "teachers really do not collaborate." Of those who did recount
various forms of shared work, most (73.1%) lamented that efforts were still largely
inadequate. One elementary respondent put it this way:

Although we do collaborate on various things, we do not meet often enough. Most
of the time we see each other in the hall and have quick conversation. It is
usually short.

The research literature on professional collaboration has consistently cited a
number of prevailing barriers to meaningful interactions [see for examples Dipardo,
1997; Knop, LeMaster, Norris, Raudensky & Tannehill, 1997; Kruse & Louis,
1997, Leonard, 1999]. Most of these impediments to shared work activity were cited
by the participant teachers. Not unexpectedly, the ubiquitous issue of time was
prominent among them. Frequently, respondents bemoaned that lack of time is a major
problem in their schools and one high school teacher attributed it to there being
"so many programs, activities, etc. that we are involved in planning and conducting
until no time is left for professional collaboration". This sentiment was echoed by
another secondary teacher who stated: "We have a lot of responsibilities and not a
lot of free time." Increasing amounts of "paper work" was cited by a number of
others. This elementary teacher explained circumstances this way:

It's hard to find extra time to devote to collaboration. Extra time is spent on
developing lesson plans, helping children who were absent with make-up work,
running papers, gathering materials for lessons and school committee work. I
teach 4th grade and average about forty conferences a year. This takes a lot of
out time also.

A few of the teachers pointed out that they did not think it appropriate that
teachers should be expected to utilize after-school time for collaborative
activities, especially, as one elementary teacher noted there is little opportunity
to meet after classes since teachers "usually have children of their own or errands
to run after school". Other comments incorporated notions of being "too busy", "too
tired", and "overwhelmed" by other professional and personal responsibilities. A
couple of teachers also noted that some teachers have other employment and,
consequently, are often "in a hurry to leave and get to their other job". This high
school teacher summarized the prevailing time-constraining situation in this
manner:

We have twenty minutes for lunch, and 10 minutes for recess. Otherwise we have
only our planning period, which does not coincide with other teachers' periods.
Most do not want to stay after school.

The teachers noted a number of other obstacles to teacher collaborative
practice. Prominent among them was the apparent attitude and lack of commitment by
teachers as well as the lack of compensation. They talked of "lazy people" who
wished to avoid additional work and others who prefer "to work alone" and stay in
their "comfort zone". References were also made to "resistance to change",
"competition" among teachers for high test scores, and a genuine "lack of interest"
in doing things differently. One middle school teacher was particularly dismayed
with the attitudes of some of more experienced teachers toward newer faculty
members:

[They are] reluctant to accept ideas of new teachers; sometimes they don't want
new ideas; sometimes I think they feel threatened by the presence of the new
teachers who are up to date with current technology and who are excited about
teaching methods.

The respondents were also critical of a lack of appropriate compensation for
additional work. They noted that "collaboration takes effort and organization" and,
without monetary reward, "no one is willing to do it." One teacher with more than
20 years experience put it this way:

I have noticed over the years I've been teaching that there seems to be a lack of
commitment on the parts of teachers to give time, especially after school or
during the summer, without monetary compensation. But, without pay, who can blame
them?

Other noted barriers to collaborative opportunities included "tight scheduling"
-- especially in smaller schools -- teacher personality conflicts, and lack of
administrative support.

There were marked contrasts among some respondents in terms of how they viewed
the extent of administrative concern for collaborative practices among teachers.
While some respondents were highly complimentary in their perceptions of principal
support others were considerably less enamored. The former spoke of how their
principals had arranged for regular subject and grade-level meetings, accommodated
schedules to model a collaborative orientation, and provided additional
opportunities for teachers to come together during workshops and special teamwork
sessions. This junior high school teacher was clearly pleased with the efforts of
her chief school administrator:

Our principal is very supportive! Each faculty meeting we share ideas and plan
schoolwide activities. Next year we have a schoolwide theme planned for
6^th, 7^th, and 8^th. Activities are being planned
now for next year. We also have a summer retreat when we plan as a faculty the
activities and policies we plan to implement.

Another junior high school teacher related how his principal regularly visited
meetings, encouraged teachers, and provided them with necessary information.

Not everyone was as satisfied with the efforts of their school administrators.
Some noted that collaboration was largely left "to each grade level to take care
of" or was "only ostensibly encouraged" in the realistic recognition that "we can't
do it". Others were pithy in their appraisals that administrator support for
collaborative practice was "very little" or "does not exist". Recommendations for
improved administrative support for collaboration included suggestions of:
scheduling that would better facilitate teacher interaction during the day,
arranging for team teaching, providing substitute teachers to free up teachers to
work together, organizing classroom allocations more effectively, providing
directives and incentives for after school work, and setting stronger expectations
that teachers actually collaborate in meaningful ways.

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Collaboration at the District Level and Beyond

The variation that characterized collaborative practice and support for
collaboration at the school level seemed largely to be reflected in circumstances
at the district or parish level, as well. Some teachers spoke of their districts
providing multiple and varied opportunities for teachers to engage in professional
interaction with counterparts at other schools. Other respondents spoke of
beginning-of-year initiation gatherings, of occasional district grade-level
meetings during which teachers addressed state curriculum benchmarks, of district
supervisors meeting with subject area teachers to "share collaboratively", of
grant-writing workshops, and of the notification of regional meetings of interest
to teachers. A number of teachers felt these efforts were quite effective in
meeting teacher professional development needs. This junior high school faculty
member put it this way:

Our parish is constantly trying to offer programs to help teachers in their
classrooms. If there is something we need and if our parish doesn't offer the
workshop they will find another place that does. If there is enough interest,
they will bring one to us.

As with some school-level administration, some teachers perceived a lack of
direction for collaborative engagement at the district level. Their descriptors
ranged from "none" to "very little". One primary teacher went so far as to suggest
that she did not think the superintendent "really cares" while this high school
faculty member reported a perceived pattern of indifference at the district
level:

Unfortunately our parish administration doesn't promote or encourage
collaboration in schools or among schools. This has been the case for my entire
23 years.

The Louisiana teachers offered a number of ways for improving the promotion of
collaboration at the district level and beyond. Suggestions included mandating
intensive collaboration training at all schools, providing more opportunities for
teachers to collaborate with other schools and at the district level, coordinating
the dissemination of the latest teaching techniques, providing sufficient numbers
of teachers at the school level, and promoting newer ideas by recruiting teachers
from outside the district and state. There was also strong support for the notion
of paying teachers extra for collaboration time beyond the normal school day and
for the supply of more substitutes so teachers could work together more frequently
during the school day. Some also spoke of the need to better utilize web-based
teacher networks, to work with colleges and universities in designing more
practice-based courses, and to allocate more funding for attendance at professional
conferences outside the state. There were also admonitions that district
administrators should not perceive non-teaching time as "time off" and that they
more routinely and effectively consult teachers prior to making decisions that
impact directly upon them and their students. Table 2 summarizes teacher
suggestions for better promoting professional collaboration at the school and
district levels.

Table 2: Teacher suggestions for promoting collaborative practices in schools
and school districts.

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Conclusions and Implications

The teacher perspectives about the nature and extent of collaborative practices
in 45 North Louisiana schools contain insights that are meaningful, yet, in and of
themselves, are not exceptional. Forms of teacher shared work have been commonly
noted in the research literature - as have been identified barriers to its
manifestation (for examples see Dipardo, 1997; Knop, LeMaster, Norris, Raudensky
& Tannehill, 1997; Kruse & Louis, 1997). What is particularly noteworthy,
however, is that the realization and maintenance of schools as so-called
`professional learning communities' seems to remain, in many instances, little more
than an elusive aspiration. While the data presented here indicate that there are
indeed multiple forms of teacher collaborative practices occurring in many of the
schools of the survey respondents, others remain mired in traditional norms of
teacher individuality and organizational isolationism. Even in those instances
where teachers reported relatively high levels of regular professional involvement
among colleagues, dissatisfaction with at least some aspects of prevailing
circumstances persisted.

Earlier research reported by the authors demonstrated that teachers themselves
value attributes of collegial enterprise that are based upon strong customs of
routine professional interaction (Leonard, 2002; Leonard & Leonard, 2001a/b;
Leonard & Leonard, 2002). Through recent revisions to their professional
standards and guidelines, various education-based associations and agencies
strongly advocate continuous collective reflections and shared work among teachers
(e.g. NCATE, INTASC, NBPTS, ISLLC, NCTM, etc.). Furthermore, policymakers and
administrators at all levels of the public education hierarchy regularly espouse
the need for teachers to devise new ways to work together to address professional
needs and, by extension, to effect improved student learning. The NCLB Act (2001)
as well as various related federal and state education department directives,
position papers, and professional development funding allocations reflect the
recognition that teacher collective learning is a crucial factor in achieving
successful education reforms.

Enigmatic to this apparent universal recognition of the inherent value in
maintaining routines of professional collaboration and in the ostensible thrust to
create cultures of collegial engagement is that, for many schools, this idealism
may not match the reality. The impediments to sustaining norms of professional
collaborative practice seem as troublesome today as they did decades ago (see
Lortie, 1975; Goodlad, 1984). As this study signifies, many teachers continue to
depict severe limitations in the capacity to work meaningfully with colleagues in
ways that allow them to address the common goal of enhanced student achievement.
The obstacles to collaborative practice today are hauntingly similar to those
reported years ago. Teachers still complain that the scarcity of opportunities to
collaborate is promulgated by increasing work demands and decreasing time
availability. They also continue to lament persisting negative mindsets about the
actual desirability of shared work and the resistance to moving beyond the
traditional models of teacher relationships. While some schools seem to be headed
by administrators who value and promote elements of the `learning community',
others clearly are not. The distinction is important and it may be time for
district level administrators and policymakers to unequivocally communicate
expectations of the former to current and potential school-level administrators.
School principals who continue to personify traditional leader traits in the
currently emerging educational environment not only minimize professional growth,
they may also optimize student mediocrity.

Attempts at school improvement cannot be individual and fragmented but rather
must be embedded in collaborative practices that address the day-to-day needs of
students (Louis & Marks, 1996). To that point -- and perhaps most debilitating
of the concerns that teachers continue to espouse about efforts to establish
learning communities founded on principles of professional collaboration -- is the
lack of consistent resolve at the district and state levels. While many schools
have creatively juggled schedules and identified additional resources that are used
to occasionally free up teachers for shared work, many others have not. If habitual
teacher collaborative practice is truly valued, it should not be left to the
vagaries of particular schools and personnel who demonstrate the will and the means
to endorse and enact it. Rather, it should be a certain expectation that is clearly
espoused at the highest policy and administrative levels and supported in actual
measures. Making provisions for teachers to work together during and outside school
hours may indeed require reallocation of resources or securing additional funding.
If such is the circumstance, then the strong political will of leaders buoyed by a
supportive constituency may be the best chance for addressing the ongoing
collaborative challenge.

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Authors

Dr. Lawrence Leonard is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum,
Instruction, and Leadership at Louisiana Tech University. He is a former
schoolteacher and administrator with primary research interests in educational
leadership, organizational change, and collaborative practices. He can be reached
by e-mail at lleonard@latech.edu.

Dr. Pauline Leonard is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Curriculum, Instruction, and Leadership at Louisiana Tech University. She is a
former schoolteacher whose primary research areas include educational values,
equity and diversity issues, and teacher leadership and collaboration. She can be
reached by e-mail at href="mailto:pleonard@latech.edu">pleonard@latech.edu.

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