We talk a lot about collaboration when it
comes to teaching in modern learning environments. It’s used in terms of the
way teachers work with each other, the way teachers work with students, and students
work with students. But are we talking about the same thing?
Collaboration, when it comes down to it is
one of those words that has perhaps become slightly difficult to define.
Dillenbourg as far back as 1999 suggested that the term had become fashionable
and had resulted in overuse and overgeneralization; something that he suspected
made it difficult to articulate the various contributions that authors were
making on the subject.
So when a group of teachers we spoke with
recently talked about their team situation, a number of scenarios arose. For
example at times the group talked about working alongside each other on a
particular task, or to solve a particular problem. They’d work together, all
contributing to the discussion, until a decision had been reached, or the task
completed. Picture it in Lego, it’s everyone, hands on, building the same
model. Is this collaboration?
Or how about the example of the same group
of teachers taking a task, breaking it up into parts, and then, individually,
going off to complete the different sections of it. Later they return, between
them putting the pieces together, and using this approach, complete the task. Is
this collaboration?
Thirdly, the example of something needing
doing, an event needing organising, and one person taking it on, coming back to
explain to the group what is going to happen. Would this be collaboration?
Arguably, and coming back to Dillenbourg
(1999) in a collaborative approach work is done together whereas in a more
cooperative approach a task is split and then ‘reassembled’. He refers to this
as the ‘division of labour’ and adds that many consider collaboration to be
synonymous with collaboration. The third example above might better be
considered as ‘coordination’ with one party taking the lead role, and simply
reporting back.
A number of authors have written on the
different stages of collaboration as it shifts from coordination, to
cooperation, to collaboration (Peterson, 1991). Possibly though in a teaching
team sense, there’s not such a neat and tidy movement through the stages.
Instead depending on the task, the purpose, and the level of input required
from everyone, maybe teams shift between collaboration, cooperation and
coordination.
Perhaps therefore, when approaching a
particular task, teaching teams need to be mindful of the approach that is most
appropriate, at that particular time, for that particular job, before deciding
if they will collaborate, cooperate, or coordinate.
Or maybe, just maybe, this just a case of
semantics, and to what extent does it matter how we define ‘collaboration’
anyway? Perhaps, we just need to get on with it!
References
Dillenbourg, P. (1999). What do you mean by
collaborative learning? In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative-learning:
Cognitive and computational approaches. (pp. 1-19). Oxford: Elsevier.
Peterson, N. L. (1991). Interagency
Collaboration Under Part H The Key to Comprehensive, Multidisciplinary,
Coordinated Infant/Toddler Intervention Services. Journal of Early
Intervention, 15(1), 89.
