Search results

This chapter examines collaboration among highly autonomous, powerful, professional peers to explain why the benefits of teamwork that scholars typically find in traditional teams may not apply. The chapter analyzes the perspectives of individual professionals to show that, in this setting, collaboration is often seen as more costly than rewarding for the individuals involved. It presents a conceptual framework exploring this paradox and suggests directions for future research to elaborate an underlying theory.

The chapter draws on extensive qualitative data from surveys and interviews in three professional service firms, including a top 100 global law firm, a boutique executive search firm, and a large, US-based commercial advisory firm. Findings are married integrated with organizational theory to develop testable propositions for future research.

Because senior professionals collaborate with peers who have the autonomy to choose to work collectively or independently, power and authority are not means to create a team or make it effective. Findings show how professionals interpret the relative costs and benefits of collaboration, and suggest that in most cases, senior professionals will not attempt it or give it up before collaborations can reap important benefits. Thus, short-term costs prevent opportunities to experience longer term benefits for many professionals. Yet, some professionals have figured out how to use “instrumental collaboration” to shift the balance in their favor. The chapter’s conceptual framework uses a longitudinal perspective to resolve this seeming paradox.

The chapter presents a nascent theory of instrumental collaboration, including five testable hypotheses, an emergent conceptual framework, and suggestions for specific future research directions.

Purpose – To provide an overview of the development of an integrated classroom curriculum linking literacy, literature, science, and digital technologies designed to develop online literacies with struggling readers from disadvantaged communities.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter opens with a consideration of the theoretical perspectives underpinning the study presented in the chapter. Following this, the methodological and contextual frameworks underpinning the study design are described. Finally, findings from the study are discussed.Findings – The chapter discusses key findings and lessons learned related to the design of an integrated curriculum linking literacy, the content areas, and technology; the development of high levels of online reading comprehension skills with struggling readers; and the crucial role of peer-to-peer collaboration to develop the affective, cognitive, and social aspects of learning online.Research limitations/implications – Findings from the small-scale study indicate the potential of the Internet and other digital technologies to actively engage, motivate, and challenge struggling readers to develop high levels of literacy skills in challenging inquiry-based activities.Practical implications – The chapter provides teachers with practical examples of classroom pedagogies to develop the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully exploit the potential of the Internet and other digital technologies as sites for deep learning.Originality/value of chapter – Teachers are struggling to successfully integrate digital technologies into the classroom curriculum. The chapter provides an insight into the development of an integrated curriculum and the learning environments necessary to develop online skills and strategies in authentic classroom environments.

This chapter describes the Chilean market-oriented educational system, which has a marked individualist culture while simultaneously introducing policies and strategies to encourage collaboration among teachers to use research evidence to improve their practices. Using Hood's (1998) cohesion/regulation matrix, we argue that two system approaches are in place in Chile. First, a fatalist way where cooperation among peers is mandated solely to meet rule-bound approaches to regulate schools' and teachers' practice. Second, an egalitarian way promoted by a political discourse that has highlighted the importance and value of collaboration and support among peers to promote effective teaching practice. In this chapter, we inquire how teachers navigate this complex scenario to use evidence to inform their practice by conducting a systematic literature review of studies about Chilean teachers' use of evidence for their teaching practice. The systematic review addressed the following research questions: What is the nature of the literature on the use of evidence for teaching practice among Chilean teachers? What type of evidence is used by Chilean teachers to support their teaching practice? And, to what extent do Chilean teachers engage with peers while using evidence for their teaching practice? Findings show that research on the use of evidence for teaching practice in Chile is still scarce and quite recent, and that teachers face significant challenges to collaborate in a context that systemically rewards competition.

Teachers have recently started to introduce wikis into their courses. However, comparatively few studies have looked at the actual experiences of students who are engaged in building a wiki community for a particular course. To address this limitation, this exploratory self-report study examined student experiences with using a wiki in an upper-level undergraduate course on media effects, their reflections on functioning as a member of this wiki community, and their overall satisfaction with taking this kind of a “hybrid” or “blended” course. Results show that students enjoyed learning about media effects by collaboratively building their wiki community, but were critical about the structure of the hybrid course.

The development of social and emotional competence for children and adolescents occurs in the context of relationships they have with adults and peers. For students with disabilities and those who experience significant behavioral risk, building and sustaining positive relationships with teachers is vital to the development of social competence. In this chapter, we focus on relationships between teachers and students within a developmental framework, examining characteristics of these relationships for children and youth with and without disabilities, and showing how the quality of those relationships can be assessed and improved to foster student engagement in school. The chapter is comprised of three main sections. First, we provide a developmental framework for the development of positive, sustaining relationships with teachers for youth with and without disabilities. Second, we review methods for assessing the quality of those relationships; and third, we describe effective interventions to support sustaining relationships among students with disabilities and their teachers and peers.

Teaching content courses to multicultural, multilingual students presents challenges in both helping students master content outcomes and language expectations (Leaver & Shekhtman, 2009). This chapter outlines an instructional approach that encourages multilingual literacy, intercultural discussions, and target language development through a series of cumulative tasks in which students take on the dual roles of learners and experts.

This chapter describes how the original curriculum, which was developed for intensive English and first-year composition classrooms (Eckstein, Chariton, & McCollum, 2011; McCollum, 2012), has been adapted for use in wider academic contexts. The curriculum combines techniques from English for Specific Purposes course design (Viana, Bocorny, & Sarmento, 2019) with a student-centered, collaborative classroom environment. Course developers identify field-specific oral and written genres and then support students in their development of advanced target language as they analyze case studies.

This cumulative model honors the diverse linguistic backgrounds of students in multilingual classrooms. Learners are encouraged to deepen their content-area knowledge by using online sources to select course material in any language that they feel comfortable consuming, and then they develop their target language skills by participating in group discussions and sharing digital projects with organizational and linguistic support from the instructor. The iterative nature of the approach offers multiple opportunities for students to improve both their content knowledge and language proficiency within a formulaic and familiar instructional model that also enhances their technology skills.

Inquiry-based learning is a fruitful way to create “effective, independent learners” (Baird, 1988, p. 142) and set up the pattern for lifelong learning, but inquiry skills demand significant practice to master and incorporate in both academic and personal dimensions. The Bachelor of Health Sciences Honours program at McMaster University provides a model of an undergraduate program that balances knowledge and the complex transferrable skills associated with inquiry. By devoting considerable resources to the first year experience and integrating the curriculum so that meaningful use is made of the inquiry skills developed there, the program fosters the curiosity, confidence, and capability of students. The curriculum demonstrably meets or exceeds the standards for quality set out by governing bodies within and outside of the university known as the degree level expectations. The current chapter provides an overview of the program, including lessons for anyone engaged in curriculum design that builds undergraduate research capability.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation at universities and forced a rapid transition to online education. Tecnológico de Monterrey leveraged its experience in online education to develop and scale a program of collaborative courses with international partners on the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The pilot program, based on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), and focused on the UN SDGs, aimed to provide international experiences to students who were not able to study abroad due to economic reasons (SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning). The formula involves two professors who co-design and co-teach an online subject or part of the syllabus to their joint cohort of students, highlighting the relevant elements associated with those subjects’ contents included in the UN SDGs. However, generating enough courses that reached a considerable number of students and involved an international diversity of partners and topics, added layers of difficulty. For instance, not all academics were prepared to manage an online joint group of students or to introduce concepts of the UN SDGs in their courses. To solve these problems and scale up these courses, we created ‘Global Shared Learning – Classroom’ a program that addresses the necessary elements of faculty matching, joint planning of subjects, online co-teaching, use of technological tools, and the active participation of students. Today we have involved more than 18,000 students and 500 professors from 150 universities. This chapter shows how capacity building and complementary partnerships were built. It includes the elements to design, replicate the model, and overcome technology issues for other universities asking to be part of this program.