Collaboration PD

PD for the Sommerville COL teachers with Chris Bradbeer:

Last term we were lucky enough to be able to organise some PD with Chris Bedbeer, who has lived and breathed collaboration through the design of MLEs

He has shared with us his understanding of collaboration and the benefits and challenges it creates. Through his extensive research he has learnt to define collaboration as “A process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible”(Gray, 1989, p. 5). This aligns with how TKI is also defining collaboration, “Collaboration is the process of working together to achieve a common goal. In teaching, the common goal is always improved learner outcomes.” (TKI).

To be able to use collaboration in the classroom effectively people must know the difference between collegiality, cooperative learning and collaboration. Chris explains that these can be looked at as a scale of intensity of how people communicate and work together. See graphic below:

Collegiality “Collegiality refers to opportunities for faculty members to feel that they belong to a mutually respected community of scholars who value each faculty member’s contributions to the institution and feel concern for their colleagues’ well-being.” (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007, p. 305).

Cooperation - This is when a person supports someone else in their work or goal.

Collaboration-   When we work together to achieve a common goal.

Chris shared with us the co teaching strategies and how these look in the classroom. There are 6 different approaches. We discussed that these can be used interchangeably throughout the day or week to suit what is needed for student success. Please see table below for the approaches.

Key Benefits of collaboration:

• Teach to your strengths
• Support one another
• Opportunities to learn from and with each other
• Improved student outcomes 
• Opportunity for social learning 

Key Challenges of collaboration:

• Hierarchy challenges
• Time and workload
• Personality types

We will know that collaboration is successful and that working together is synthetic when learner engagement is positively impacted. This session with Chris reflects back to our hypothesis as it begins to inform our practice to see how we can be on the same page of what collaboration means and how it looks in the classroom. If student achievement and engagement is the destination think of teacher collaboration as the journey. Collaboration is dynamic and is an ongoing process, enhanced by different peoples ideas and strengths and accommodations.

Inquiry into our collaborative practice - Reflection

Towards the end of term 2 Sharon and I started our inquiry into our own teaching practice looking at our hypothesis on what does effective collaboration look like? The strategies we have used for this was a peer observation where we had a colleague come and spend a morning observing the collaboration happening across the learning space and give us feedback and take pictures to show us objectively what the room looked like during learning time. We also looked at our planning time together. Sharon and I work in a modern learning environment with two classes, we do our long and short term planning together. During Term 2 holidays we started our planning for term 3 we took photos and used the strategy of stop-think-reflect to consider how we were collaborating and if we thought the planning session was successful.

Devs came to observe one of our lessons together which was fantastic as she is also looking at collaboration for her inquiry. During the time she was with us she gave us some great feedback on our strengths making comments about how we used the space effectively and worked well with our teacher aids who knew the programme well and could successfully take small groups with the lesson knowledge and confidence to work as the lead on small groups. She took the below photo as she could see that there were 3 teachers working in a close space with their own groups on different and appropriate activities. From our reading on co teaching we know this is station teaching. We also used alternative teaching where 1 staff member worked with a large group and other staff members worked with small groups. The lead teacher in this session was also a teacher aid who takes the class for music.

An area for development that Devs pointed out was how we use our voices when we are all running station groups. We need to be mindful of how loud we are and the pitch in our voices as it could cause distraction for others learning close by. We will also look at ensuring our teacher aids move around into different learning spaces so that they are not always teaching at the same station. This is something we are going to adapt in our planning and will have another observation later into the term to see if there is progress in these areas.

During the holidays Sharon and I had this photo taken of us working together on our long term planning. We were very mindful that session on how we collaborated and how we shared responsibility when it came to planning. We would start a session, stop, think and reflect on how we were working together. Sharon and I have started working our long term planning into more detail so that there is a weekly plan and learning intention for each session so our weekly planning is simplified and takes less time. When collaborating you need to find ways of working smarter as you have to fit into each other's schedule.

Through this planning session  our apparent strengths were: 

• Brainstorm together to make links across the curriculum and key competencies 
• Link to each others students so that we can benefit all learners
• Set targets of what we want to achieve by a certain time to keep us motivated and on track
• Delegate well, finding and making resources, each work on a different curriculum area and then share together.
• Both enjoy working with other staff members to share ideas, planning and learn from others. 

Ares for development:

• Both are very excitable and can distract each other with new ideas and end up going down resource rabbit holes. 
• Are we overloading our timetable? Both of us are keen on extending our own knowledge and will often come to planning meetings with new concepts and interventions to try which may result in us removing other successful aspects of the timetable from previous terms.   
• Have more opportunity for more student input and reflection so student voice is visible in our planning. 

We now have areas to improve our practice on effective collaboration. This will be our focus for term 3.

TA reflections and feedback: How has that impacted on our collaboration within our hub?

After surveying the teachers at school, we then surveyed the therapists and the teacher aides as these people are an integral part of our team. Each class has at least 2 teacher aides and a team of therapists, they are asked to collaborate and provide experiences that best suit and help individuals needs.

After receiving the feedback from 27 TAs and reading the responses Tash and myself reflected on the way we collaborate with our TAs. We know that we have a great team, the TAs are fantastic and we use some of their strengths. We think that we collaborate with them quite well…. But the survey made us reflect and question how can we make it better still. This relates back to our hypothesis:

Specifically:

What does effective collaboration look like?

If we are to be a synergetic team then how do we all get on the same page about collaboration?

Previous to reflecting:

Our TAs co teach with each other when we learn through rotations, we have weekly meetings where we discuss how the week has gone and reflecting on the term. We have one TA who take our music as this is a strength of hers.We also have quick catch ups after learning during morning tea and lunch and at the end of the day to see how things have gone and ask specifically about individual learners and think about the next steps.

Is this enough….

When looking at the responses:

I feel that we could involve our TAs more with regards to the planning, especially by giving ourselves more time to reflect and talk about specific child’s needs.

I feel we do this quite well, we respect our TAs and encourage them to take the lead. We tend to set the activities, but again could they perhaps have more say in the type of activities set out.

Everyone who responded felt that collaboration is important. 

Hypothesis:

If we are to be a synergetic team then how do we all get on the same page about collaboration?

Next Steps: We love being a creative hub and feel that art and craft plays a significant role in children’s learning. We have a TA who has a passion for this area. With this in mind we have given her more control with regards to how and what learning in this area looks like. We discuss with her what outcomes we would like and share ideas about what we would like the children to experience, she in turn would share her knowledge and ideas. We have 1 TA who we can reflect with at the end of the day, but not the others as they leave the same time as the children, how can we get past this? In term 3 Tash and myself have worked out some time on Monday and Tuesday when we can touch base with our TAs to discuss the week ahead, the children’s IEPs and activities. We will also be able to use this time to record evidence around children’s IEP goals. As Tash is not in on Mondays we have also worked a time on Friday where she can go through learning for the following Monday. The teacher who covers for Tash plans with us about what happens on Mondays. We can use our weekly meetings with our TAs, more effectively. Term 3 will be a time for reflections on how we best collaborate with our TAs. During and at the end of the term, we will do a couple of posts to reflect on this, how it is going and get our TAs responses and thoughts.