A 2007 study by Jade Landry-Cuerrier and Tamara Lemerise conducted in approximately 40 elementary schools in the Montreal area provides several interesting insights into teachers' desires and needs for collaboration and offers an interesting strategic basis in the development of collaborative activities among teachers, at all levels.
Between desires and actual collaborations, we will be more likely to start successful collaborations from the actual needs of faculty. According to the study:
Common collaborative actions
These are associated with the daily task and practice of teaching:
- sharing information,
- discussion and decision making,
- selection and exchange of materials,
- planning,
- problem solving,
- mutual support.
The least frequent collaborative actions are associated with innovation and risk taking:
- observe each other,
- share and exchange responsibilities,
- lead together.
However, several respondents expressed a willingness to try some of these innovative practices.
Preferred topics for collaboration
As a general rule, we opt for themes that are rather practical and that respond to spontaneous teacher needs.
- activities for students,
- student cases,
- school subjects,
- etc.
More theoretical or administrative topics such as school operations, pedagogy in general, reform, budget, etc. are little discussed and reported by many as imposed and unpopular.
Teachers report a willingness to retain topics such as decompartmentalized workshops, student activities, specific intervention strategies, or, student-to-student mentoring more often.
Many benefits are associated with collaboration:
Benefits of collaboration
- breaking their isolation;
- improving their reflective practice;
- improving their professional development and relationships with specific colleagues or the team;
- supporting the success of their students;
- etc.
In addition, teachers have mixed views about the time investment and workload involved in collaboration:
- for some, it takes a lot of time or increases work;
- for others, it saves time or lightens the work;
All agree that collaboration has no clear negative effect and is not a waste of time.
Strategy
Armed with this data, it becomes easier to propose a technical framework for online collaboration to support faculty:
- The technical solution must enable the performance of common collaborative actions;
- The facilitation must consider the privileged themes and
- The department must overall pursue and value the benefits of collaboration.
In choosing the technical solution, one can obviously suggest the use of a wiki (see Wiki matrix for a choice of solutions) and/or a blog (Solution directory )/open forum (Solutions Directory), but the choice of technical tools used concretely by the teachers (the school's platform, their current software) takes precedence over any other suggestion, even if it means diverting them from their usual use. An additional parallel system will also require additional efforts from them. Consultation with future users as to which solution to choose is the best way to achieve popular acceptance.
Finally, successful virtual collaboration initiatives require initial facilitation that includes individual training of participants, feeding in content, valuing participation, offering activities, and doing so over a period of time while participants develop comfort and discover a usefulness to collaboration on this system that is worth the investment of time and effort. One cannot rely on the efforts of participants alone to facilitate and sustain a collaborative initiative.
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