The role of collaboration in school transformation: Two approaches

Abstract

W HEN SEYMOUR SARASON entertained possibility that schools should exist coequally for the development of students and educational (1990, p. 145), he was representing a growing sentiment among educators and reformers about transforming schools into learning organizations. Ideally, such a school is continually expanding its capacity to create its future (Senge, 1990, p. 14), and guided by the principle that all children can think, reason, assess, and evaluate. Our work in support of primary and middle schools that are transforming' has introduced us to schools that are developing along these lines. These schools' capacity for change is related to their efforts to make collaboration their prime vehicle for learning, instruction, and change. Collaboration generates for them routine ways for all educational personnel to explore, investigate, and affect instruction, making it a productive strategy for developing an organizational culture that makes self-correction a norm not a war (Sarason, 1990, p. 129). The educational personnel of these schools place a high value on collaboration. More than sharing technical activities and certainly more than the contrived togetherness that sometimes passes for collaboration (Hargreaves, 1993), collaborating staff of these schools seem to relish opportunities to share