Search results

This research paper explores the value of collaborative inquiry networks of headteachers and curriculum coordinators to cope with 2020's coronavirus pandemic in Chile. Specifically, the authors describe the main challenges that networks identify in their contexts, the collaborative practices performed by different schools to address these challenges, and the influence of the networks on the innovative responses of teachers in their own schools.

This is a mixed-method study from a complementary stance using different methods and data of a project implemented with a total of 54 headteachers and curriculum coordinators. The data sources were participants' individual reports, the network teams' reports of their collaborative inquiry projects, and a short open-ended questionnaire responded by teachers that did not participate directly in the networks but benefited from their work. The data were analyzed using content analysis, categories were created to organize and describe the main findings.

Participants of the networks reported that their active participation in the collaborative inquiry allows them to share knowledge among different schools and has helped them to support innovative practices in their own schools. Specifically, they have reported that collaborating has permitted them to maintain a pedagogical focus, foster distributed leadership within the school communities, provide them with greater autonomy, and develop skills to favor the emotional containment of their teams. Inquiry teams perform diverse collective practices; they designed and applied virtual surveys, planned and implemented virtual workshops with teachers, and generated meaningful reflection about formative assessment and pedagogical practices.

This work offers insights into how the Chilean school system has responded to COVID-19 challenges and shows how despite the negative aspects of the pandemic, it has become an opportunity to recognize and enhance teachers' professional development through the collaboration among different schools. Most headteachers and curriculum coordinators reported that an active collaborative inquiry changed how they used to think about their leadership and strengthened the value of professional relationships to address extremely difficult challenges as a result of the pandemic. These lessons can be taken for the future, to rethink and rebuild educational systems.

This paper aims to present a model of collaborative inquiry play: rule-based imaginary situations that provide challenging problems and support agentic multiplayer interactions (c.f., Vygotsky, 1967; Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). Drawing on problem-based learning (PBL, Hmelo-Silver, 2004), this paper provides a design case to articulate the relationship between the design goals and the game-based learning environment.

Drawing on conjecture mapping (Sandoval, 2014), this paper presents an iterative development of the conjecture map for crystal island: ecojourneys and highlights the development of the story and tools in crystal island: ecojourneys, an immersive game based on PBL pedagogy. By articulating this development, the authors highlight the affordances and constraints of designing for collaborative inquiry play and address challenges in supporting learner agency.

The PBL inquiry process served as the foundation of collaborative inquiry play. Attending to the rules of inquiry fostered student agency, and in turn, playful engagement in the game-based learning environment. Agency however meant holding students accountable to actions undertaken, especially as it pertained to generating group-based explanations and reflecting on productive collaboration. Moreover, socially shared regulation of learning and systems thinking concepts (i.e. phenomenon, mechanisms, and components) must also be externalized in representations and interactions in the game such that students have the agency to decide on their learning paths.

This paper presents the model of collaborative inquiry play and highlights how to support player agency and design content-rich play environments which are not always completely open.

This research investigated whether structuring an inquiry-oriented professional learning network to include school-based co-teaching partners would amplify educators' success in taking up and adapting evidence-based understandings and practices as meaningful in their contexts. Our research questions were: (1) What conditions did educators identify in the PLN overall that supported their co-construction of knowledge and practice development together? and (2) How did including co-teaching partners in the PLN help participants to mobilize knowledge and/or practices in the contexts where they were working?

A qualitative case study design was used because of its potential to examine how and why questions about complex processes as situated in context (Butler, 2011; Yin, 2014). A case study methodology allowed us to collect and coordinate multiple forms of evidence (i.e. interviews, teacher reflective writing, classroom artifacts, field notes) to examine both how conditions created within the PLN supported learning and how co-teaching partners were mobilizing what they were learning in their school contexts. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and data was analyzed abductively through an iterative and recursive process (Braun et al., 2018).

Conditions within the PLN overall that participants identified as supportive to their knowledge mobilization and practice development included: having a shared focus, feeling accountability to the group, collaborative enactment of practices within the PLN, large group sharing and debriefing, sustained cycles of collaborative inquiry, affective support, valuing diversity and drawing from expert others as resources. Participants also identified the benefits that accrued specifically from working with co-teaching partners. In addition, findings showed how the degree to which partners engaged in rich forms of collaborative inquiry could be related to their learning and situated practice development.

Findings show the generative potential of inviting co-teaching partners into a PLN to engage in collaborative inquiry with others. PLNs offer the benefit of engaging with educators from outside of one's practice context, which enables pushing their thinking in new directions. Our findings add to the literature by revealing how in situ knowledge mobilization can be amplified when educators participating within a PLN are also working through cycles of inquiry with a co-teaching partner. Overall, this study offers a PLN model where teachers have built-in support for knowledge co-creation and mobilization both within and outside of their school contexts.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first, it is to reflect on the development of professional capital in a three-year collaborative school improvement initiative that used collaborative inquiry within, between and beyond schools in an attempt to close the gap in outcomes for students from less well-off backgrounds and their wealthier counter parts. Second, this paper will reflect more broadly on the initiative as a whole.

This research and development initiative involved the research team working in a nested setting as second-order action researchers, consultants and critical friends with a range of actors across the system. The findings are based on mixed methods data collected from eight case study school partnerships. The partnerships involved over 50 schools across 14 school districts in Scotland. Social network analysis was also used in one of the school districts to map and quantify professional relationships across schools.

Over time, relationships within the partnerships developed and deepened. This occurred within individual schools, across schools within the partnerships and beyond the school partnerships. At the same time as these networks expanded, participants reported increases in human, social and decisional capital, not only among teachers, but also among other stakeholders. In addition, through their collaborative inquiries schools reported increased evidence of impact on positive outcomes for disadvantaged students.

The professional capital of individuals and organisations across and beyond schools is demonstrated as an important consideration in the pursuit of both quality and equity in education.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into and understand the authentic lived experience of the processes of collaborative inquiry in teamwork from the perspective of teachers.

Data comprises stimulated recall interviews and semi-structured interviews. Seventeen teachers from four different teams in four schools form the empirical basis.

The analysis reveals that a shared focus on students’ learning in teachers’ processes of collaborative inquiry results in awareness and increased knowledge of what constitutes students’ learning. Thus, teachers are potentially becoming better equipped to facilitate students’ learning by offering them a richer set of learning opportunities. Findings confirm the key role of critical reflection through bringing teachers’ assumptions about teaching and learning to the surface, available for common exploration. When exploring problems of practice and sharing ideas and suggestions for possible solutions, teacher teams operate in a collective zone of proximal development.

This analysis of teachers’ reflections on the processes of collaborative inquiry supports school leaders and facilitators of school development by revealing fundamental and often hidden characteristics of teamwork collaboration.

Findings about teachers’ professional learning through collaborative inquiry in teamwork enhance knowledge about how teachers learn in authentic settings, and unpack the capabilities of teachers to author their own pedagogical changes. This study thus challenges linear models of professional development and the idea of professional development as mainly delivery-based.

This chapter describes the change efforts and action research projects at a Dutch multinational which, over a period of 25 years, produced in one of its businesses a zigzag path toward collaborative leadership dynamics at the horizontal and vertical interfaces. The chapter also identifies the learning mechanisms that helped achieve this transformation. Changing the patterns at the vertical interfaces proved to be a most tricky, complex, and confusing operation. The data show that organizations need hierarchical interfaces between levels, but are hindered by the hierarchical leadership dynamics at these interfaces. The data furthermore show that competitive performance requires more than redesigning horizontal interfaces. A business can only respond with speed and flexibility to threats and opportunities in the external environment when the leadership dynamics at agility-critical vertical interfaces are also changed.

Sensemaking is an integral element of human cognition. It is the activity whereby we find answers to questions that arise from experience. It is at the core of collaborative management research as researchers and practitioners work together to build a shared understanding of organizational phenomena and take action based on that understanding, thereby generating actionable knowledge. However, mutual understanding is a complex process which requires a great deal of effort by both researchers and practitioners. While research has described in great detail the consequences of collaborative research endeavors, the challenge of creating a shared sensemaking conducive to these results has been left partially explored. The chapter examines the nature of sensemaking in collaborative management research. A comprehensive framework is proposed and then utilized to examine a collaborative management research effort carried out with an Italian social cooperative.

A scholarly collaborative partnership is a capability that develops over time. Its quality is an outcome of the collaborative context, the alignment of purpose, development of work and learning processes, development of shared language and success stories. In this chapter, the authors engage in a metalogue where their shared reflection on the formation and development of their collaborative scholarship in the field of organization development and change is itself an instance of a process of shared scholarship. By adopting the format of a metalogue, they provide the voices of their individual thinking and their reflective conversation so as to offer an expression of the process of theorizing to scholars who wish to embark upon or study shared scholarship.

The research described in this article seeks to address the question of the extent to which a role‐based perspective can provide insight into the distributed and networked form of leadership.

A model provides insight into the distributed and networked form of leadership, and the roles that executives can adopt in formal, informal or temporary groups within the organisation's overall senior management team. The methodology adopted is qualitative, focusing on inquiry‐based learning which enabled the authors to gather data on those aspects of the social structure within which they were embedded that related specifically to the leadership roles available to executives and the networks they formed.

Generically applicable links between leadership roles are identified that provides structure to the task accomplishment networks within groups executives form when discharging their leadership responsibilities. Characterising leadership in terms of role, and the task networks that executives form, is found to facilitate improvement in the speed with which groups gain productive contributions from their members.

A case study of three demographically similar multinational engineering companies engaged in the design, development and manufacture of rotating turbo‐machinery provides the platform for the research. The concepts advanced will require validating in other organisations of different demographic profiles.

The concepts advanced, and implications discussed, provide an insight into the distributed and networked form of leadership. The practical steps individual executives can take to contribute to the speed with which groups gain productive contributions from their members are highlighted.

This article attempts to assist executives within a senior management team to better adapt and coordinate their behaviour with other executives. In so doing, it is suggested that executives contribute more positively to the development of groups and the speed with which the groups of which they are a part gain productive contributions from their members.