Professional Collaboration and Collaborative Professionalism

Andy Hargreaves and Michael O’Connor's Collaborative Professionalism can be approached from several perspectives. First, the authors explore five teacher collaboration designs in different parts of the world. These five educational collaborations are selected as examples that focus on one or more of the five areas of school improvement: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and feedback, school development, and societal orientation. The five cases are: (1) an open class/lesson study in a Hong Kong secondary school, (2) a collaborative curriculum-planning network in rural schools in the US Pacific Northwest, (3) cooperative learning and working in a Norwegian elementary school, (4) collaborative pedagogical transformation in the Escuela Nueva network within and beyond rural Colombia, and (5) teacher-led professional learning communities (PLCs) in Ontario, Canada (Hargreaves & O'Connor, 2018, pp. 46–47). For some of these cases, Hargreaves and O’Connor did not just stay as investigators but joined in and witnessed how educators collaborated in these schools. For example, Hargreaves has been engaged in collaborative research with Ontario school districts for over a decade. This book features one of these districts. Through these portraits of collaboration, the readers may wonder: Why should people collaborate? How can people collaborate? What types of collaborations are more effective?

Another way to explore this book is to focus on what kinds of collaborations can be identified as collaborative professionalism. Professional collaboration has been a prominent topic on examining how teachers collaborate in teacher research and practice for over 30 years (Hargreaves, 2019). The origins of collaborative professionalism, however, as the authors mentioned, can be traced to the bargaining process for new working relationships among teachers, administrators, and the Ministry of Education in Ontario, Canada (Hargreaves & O' Connor, 2018). Differing from the professional collaboration, collaborative professionalism explores how teachers can collaborate deeply and impactfully. It refers to how professional members work together, exercise good judgment, and remain committed to improvement, sharing, and deepening expertise rather than merely talking, sharing, and reflecting collectively. After portraying cases from five different parts of the world, this book highlights ten design tenets for collaborative professionalism (Hargreaves & O'Connor, 2018, p. 154). The underpinnings and theoretical foundations of different ways of professional collaboration and collaborative professionalism emerge through narratives and discussions. The book explores the generative characteristics of collaborative professionalism while carefully considering the contextual and cultural factors influencing collaborative designs worldwide. The authors emphasize that collaboration is a culturally embedded social reality, and local conditions should be considered when implementing it in various school systems.

The third way to read this book is to ask the following: What lessons can we learn from cases of collaborative professionalism? Why is it important for educational leaders to support professional collaboration as well as more profound and demanding collaborative professionalism? This book shows the successful building of professional networks in rural school contexts, such as in the resource-scarce environment of rural Colombia, in a rural school in the United States—where one teacher takes charge of one subject with no time and colleagues for collaboration, in the rural primary schools in Norway, and in the suburban Hong Kong where many students come from low-income families and face financial challenges. Rural educators, especially in these cases, face high rates of child poverty and geographic isolation, which may negatively impact their students’ learning outcomes, including low educational aspirations, achievements, and attainments (Budge, 2006; Hargreaves et al., 2015). However, this book demonstrates that designing and launching networks and facilitating geographically remote learning communities and networks using digital technology are effective strategies to overcome rural problems. Moreover, deep collaborative relationships help develop and circulate the professional capital of rural educators that contributes to the sustainable improvement of all teachers and their students. From this perspective, one of the important lessons from this book is to carefully consider how to advance the quality and equity of education by strategically deepening professional networking practices for teaching together and learning for all.

For Chinese readers, the endeavor of collaborative professionalism is noteworthy. Collaborative school-based teacher learning is not new in China. In-service teacher learning in China has been embedded in subject-based Teaching Research Groups (TRGs) (jiaoyanzu). This school-based TRG is a contrived collegiality or contrived learning community (Wang & Paine, 2003; Zhang & Wong, 2018), which differs from the informal collaboration or ideal collaboration—such as PLC—emphasizes spontaneous, voluntary, and development-oriented working relationships among teachers (Hargreaves, 1994; Harris & Jones, 2010; Stoll et al., 2006). Nevertheless, this book suggests that contrived collegiality and informal collaboration both have drawbacks in practice. While contrived collegiality fails to maintain motivation or anything more than superficial compliance, spontaneous collaboration is challenging to maintain because people cannot always motivate themselves. They need designs to motivate them.

Instead, collaborative professionalism is professional collaboration in which teachers have strong relationships, trust each other, and feel free to take risks. It also includes tools, structures, and protocols for meetings, coaching, feedback, planning, and reviews that strategically or institutionally support collaborative actions. Thus, collaborative professionalism is the optimal form of professional collaboration. The authors of this book argue that such collaborative design can overcome the pitfalls of contrived collegiality and informal collaboration and develop more profound collaboration to achieve greater impact in practice.

Readers who wish to apply a comparative perspective to explore teachers’ professional collaborations worldwide can expect fruitful insights from this book. It contains invaluable wisdom for studying and leading collaborative professionalism, which will inspire educational leaders, researchers, and practitioners to take collective action to make changes in their own school systems. I hope this book will soon be translated into Chinese because Chinese educators will surely enjoy it.