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This chapter aims to shed light on some aspects of instructional collaboration with the purpose of providing further understanding of how teachers collaborate and what hinders their collaboration in Saudi inclusive and mainstream schools. Instructional collaboration among teachers in Saudi educational settings has not been thoroughly reviewed, nor has it been adequately considered as an essential component in assuring the implementation of inclusive education. The voice of two special education teachers and two college professors are presented and discussed in order to explain and clarify aspects of instructional collaboration. The last part of the chapter delineates proposed changes that may motivate teachers and aid them in developing a clear understanding of how to practice instructional collaboration in inclusive and mainstream settings, namely, provision of professional development for special and general education teachers, endorsement of legislation and regulations to promote instructional collaboration, and development of teacher education programs.

Over the past decade the policy debate over improving U.S. public education has focused on market solutions (charter schools, privatization, and vouchers) and teacher evaluation through high stakes standardized testing of students. In this debate, teachers and their unions are often characterized as the problem. Our research offers an alternate path in the debate, a perspective that looks at schools as systems – the way schools are organized and the way decisions are made. We focus on examples of collaboration through the creation of long-term labor-management partnerships among teachers’ unions and school administrators that improve and restructure public schools from the inside to enhance planning, decision-making, problem solving, and the ways teachers interact and schools are organized. We analyzed how these efforts were created and sustained in six public school districts over the past two decades, and what they can teach us about the impact of significant involvement of faculty and their local union leadership, working closely with district administration. We argue that collaboration between teachers, their unions, and administrators is both possible and necessary for any meaningful and lasting public school reform.

This chapter argues we should not regard school-to-school collaboration as simply a mechanism for outcome-driven improvement but rather consider the establishment of teacher relationships as the necessary priority when building highly effective collaborative networks. By revisiting the research of Sandra Kruse, Amanda Datnow and Andy Hargreaves, we develop an additional tool to Hood’s matrix of regulation and cohesion in an effort to position collaborative networks in the context of international private fee-paying schools. The tool visualizes the collaborative network development as a relationship continuum in which time is the necessary driver of a network’s success. The 12 Asian private international schools in the case study were given collaborative framework guidance drawn from multiple sources. Subsequently, the enablers and hindrances reported by the collaboration leads highlight the need for trust and teacher agency development to be prioritized by leadership. Finally, on sharing some lessons learned from the case study, we close by arguing the value of collaboration lies in opening the door to allow for agenetic cultures that build reflexive practitioners.

This chapter provides an overview of approaches to collaboration in Ontario and then focuses in particular on the experiences of the Norway–Canada (NORCAN) programme involving nine schools across Alberta and Ontario (Canada) and Norway from 2014 to 2018. NORCAN was established through collaboration by the teachers’ unions in Alberta (Alberta Teachers’ Association), Norway (Utdanningsforbundet), and Ontario (Ontario Teachers’ Federation) and the Ontario Ministry of Education. A central guiding question was co-developed to inform the work of NORCAN: ‘How can an international network of schools and educators committed to mindful leadership help to identify obstacles to students’ mathematics learning and develop strategies for attaining success?’ With funding support, school teams involving school leaders, teachers, and students had opportunities to collaborate at NORCAN-facilitated events, school visits in each jurisdiction, through an online platform, and ongoing communication. The following important features of NORCAN are identified: the development of collaborative structures, processes, relationships, and trust; student voice, agency, and leadership; professional learning and agency; and sharing knowledge and de-privatizing practices. Four lessons for policy and practice are proposed: 1. school-to-school collaboration benefits from adequate resources of time, funding and a support infrastructure; 2. the intentional cultivation of mutually respectful and trusting relationships is essential; 3. bringing together educators and students as co-learners is powerful and beneficial; and 4. mobilizing knowledge and de-privatizing practices needs to be central to the purpose and operation of collaboration.

Flexible scheduling in school libraries is supported by the American Association for School Libraries (AASL) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Support is based on the constructivist theory of learning and posits increased learning, collaboration, and visitations by classes, small groups, and individuals to the availability of resources during the time of need, yet there is no direct evidence to support flexible scheduling. The quantitative study sought to examine the relationship between media center scheduling on students’ academic achievement, teacher and media specialist collaboration, and class visitation in an elementary school. The researcher utilized an experimental posttest-only control group design. The point-biserial correlation was utilized to identify any relationship between groups who utilized the media center on a fixed versus a flexible schedule and criterion-referenced test scores. No significant relationship was found between scheduling patterns, student achievement, and collaboration. However, the research supported increased number of visitations by classes on a fixed schedule.

The purpose of this nonexperimental research was to examine the perceptions of state-certified teachers regarding Library Media Specialists (LMS). Through collaboration and the use of social constructivist learning theories, teachers at three high schools in Georgia were interviewed regarding the roles and responsibilities of LMS. The primary research question asked how the perceptions of teachers on the practices of the role of the school LMS differ from the way the teachers perceive these roles to be important at their high schools. The secondary research questions addressed the correlations between high school teachers' demographic information and both the importance of and the practice of the roles of the high school LMS. Quantitative data were collected through a survey developed by McCracken (2000). A paired sample t-test was used to compare the theoretical and practical scales in each category of the LMS roles, and a Spearman rank-ordered correlations test was used to compare the 13 descriptive variables to theoretical and practical scales. Teacher participants reported each of the roles of the LMS to be more important than what is actually being practiced in their school settings and that similar views existed on both the practice scale and the importance scale. Implications include community and educator awareness of the role of the school LMS, an increased educator awareness of the roles of a state-certified school LMS to compliment the high school curriculum, and an increased awareness for the need of a LMS in public schools.

With the advent of democratic government in South Africa in 1994, the government has been making strides toward ensuring that education is accessible to all, including children with disabilities. The South African Constitution, under the Bill of Rights, alludes to the fact that the government has the responsibility to ensure that education is accessible and all are given the necessary support. The Department of Basic Education has developed a variety of legislation, policies, and guidelines to improve the inclusion of children with disabilities in schools. The launch of Education White Paper 6: Building an Inclusive Education and Training System: Special Needs Education, 2001, further led to the development of several policies, strategies, guidelines, and interventions in order to support the development of an inclusive education and training system. The objective of education White Paper 6 is to build an inclusive education system in the country. This requires stakeholders with various relevant expertise to work as teams in order to make education accessible and offer support to those learners with barriers to learning in classrooms. Collaboration between teachers and occupational therapists in a classroom is seen as vital.

Evidence suggests that networking can be beneficial to enhance learning in challenging contexts, when there is a shared purpose, trustful relationships, and the development of meaningful collaborative practices. In Chile, the adoption of collaborative network practices has faced some challenges due to the long history of neoliberal policies characterised by hierarchical and market governance that promotes competition over collaboration among schools. Using Hood’s (1998) cohesion/regulation matrix, the Chilean education system can be characterized as fatalist, where cooperation among peers is mandated solely to meet external requirements to regulate schools’ and practitioners’ practice. However, in recent years, collaborative projects have been implemented that are framed and supported in an egalitarian culture, highlighting the importance and value of collaboration and support among peers to develop effective teaching practice. By analysing three experiences of networking in Chile, we identify two barriers for networking, distrust and isolation, and analyze the ways in which these networks attempted to overcome them to sustain effective collaboration. The first experience describes the implementation of the collaborative inquiry networks (CIN) methodology. This programme was designed to facilitate the development of networked leadership capacities of principals and curriculum coordinators to support teachers’ practices during COVID-19 in one municipality (Pino-Yancovic & Ahumada, 2020). In the second, we report on a group of principals who developed focussed interventions in their network of urban primary public schools to enhance the exchange of knowledge and practices among network participants. The third centres on the development of a model to enhance teacher leadership and professional learning in Initial Teacher Education through collaboration in a university–school partnership. Finally, we present some lessons to be considered in similar social and policy environments to successfully introduce a collaborative networked approach.

This chapter explores the alignment of teacher leadership and student learning in a professional development school (PDS) by reporting on a successful teacher-initiated PDS project at a southeastern United States high school. De-tracking efforts using teacher collaboration and efficacy in ninth grade Algebra I College Prep courses were examined for effectiveness to improve the achievement in mathematics of students who enter high school without pre-algebra skills. The chapter critiques the lack of democracy inherent in educational tracking as a default system of student grouping because it perpetuates inequities, particularly for students most likely to experience challenges with academic achievement.