More Than Just a Group: Teacher Collaboration and Learning in the Workplace

By Alisa Hindin (Seton Hall University), Catherine Cobb Morocco, Emily Arwen Mott, and Cynthia Mata Aguilar

From Teachers and Teaching August 2007, Volume 13 Issue 4. Teaching is often characterized as an isolated activity, yet opportunities for teachers to work and learn together in schools are increasing. Underlying this shift is the view that as teachers work on new practices and teaching challenges together, they will express varied perspectives, reveal different teaching styles and experiences, and stimulate reflection and professional growth. Despite strong research interest in teacher learning groups, few studies have looked at the relationship between teachers' conversations and collaboration outside the classroom and their actual classroom teaching. Drawing on data from a larger study of literacy instruction with middle-school teachers, this article describes how three teachers participated in an ongoing literacy program with a research group. Two were seventh- and eighth-grade language-arts teachers, the third was a special-education teacher who taught a substantially separate class of cognitively delayed and learning-disabled students. Case studies of each teacher draw on meeting observations, classroom observations and interviews to describe how each participated in afterschool meetings, how they used the work of the group in the classroom, and how they brought teaching successes and challenges back to the group.

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(28 pp.) Print