Collaborative Professionalism: When Teaching Together Means Learning for All

by Andrew Hargreaves, Michael T. O′Connor

Ensure Conversations About Collaboration Get Results.

Ask any educational professional about collaboration and chances are they’ll tell you it’s one of their core values. But this familiar sentiment doesn’t always translate into meaningful professional experiences that help educators or their students grow.

Addressing this critical gap head-on, this book lays out the theory and practice of Collaborative Professionalism. Through five international case studies, the authors distinguish Collaborative Professionalism from professional collaboration by highlighting intentional collaborative designs and providing concrete examples for how to be more purposeful with collaboration. Additionally, the book makes Collaborative Professionalism accessible to all educators through clear take-aways Collaboration can be one of your most powerful educational tools when used correctly, and turned into action. This book shows you how.

Genres: Education, Leadership

176 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2018

Reviews

[Stuart Macalpine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a practical call to action for meaningful collaboration to build capacity in classrooms, schools, systems and networks. It has all the hallmarks of pragmatic idealism, and has many useful tips and examples. The main conceptual structures to support collaborative professionalism (rather than surface level professional collaboration) are:

Collective Autonomy
Collective Efficacy
Collaborative Inquiry
Collective Responsibility
Collective Initiative
Mutual Dialogue
Joint work
Common Meaning and purpose
Collaborating with Students
Big Picture Thinking for all.

These are all explored conceptually and through case studies. A key point is that context matters and like "ripe fruit" innovations do not travel well. So understanding for a given context what came Before, Beside, Beyond and Betwixt, is a very helpful framework for understanding what might work and what might not work and why.

The interesting "non example" is the data driven dialogue that has been very popular, which although it has many aspects of collaborative professionalism, can often be narrow and short term in focus, be driven by external agendas, and actually more about accountability to others, than a wise and thoughtful engagement with our community of learning and our own professionalism.

Overall I thought this was a great book - nuanced, thoughtful, practical and aspirational. Many of the observations on networks align very well with our work on Playful Schools at the LEGO Foundation and I am looking forward to talking with Andy this week.

[Kathryn Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Hargreaves and O'Connor identify collaborative professionalism as "one of the next big-step changes we can and should now make in the global movement for educational innovation and improvement" (p.139). Through five case studies from around the world, they bring to life 10 tenets of collaborative professionalism: collective autonomy, collective efficacy, collaborative inquiry, collective responsibility, collective initiative, mutual dialogue, joint work, common meaning and purpose, collaborating with students, and big-picture thinking for all.
Hargreaves and O'Connor also present a model to help us understand and activate cultures supporting collaborative professionalism. According to this model, by exploring the history of the collaboration (before), the efforts occurring alongside the collaboration (betwixt), the systems surrounding the collaboration (beside), and connections outside of the collaboration (beyond) we can create cultures in which collaborative professionalism can flourish.

[Diana Lebeaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really excellent encapsulation of an ideal framework to which to aspire for Professional Learning Communities. I love the definition and framework surrounding "collaborative professionalism" and its distinction from other kinds of collaboration. As someone who devotes a lot of my work to coaching schools and educators around PLCs for transformative change, I can envision turning to this book for inspiration, framing, and supportive thinking in the years ahead.

[Dave Moyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good synopsis about effective strategies for collaboration in schools with practical leadership tips to support the system.

[Carrie Froese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an analysis of case studies. 10 tenets of collaborative professionalism are teased out and explored. Must read for educators.