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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.

This study examined the impact of school leadership on teacher professional collaboration, with collective teacher innovativeness and teacher self-efficacy (TSE) playing the mediating role. Two most commonly used leadership styles, instructional leadership (IL) and distributed leadership (DL), were analyzed using a multilevel design, i.e. teachers are nested within schools.

The proposed model was validated using data of Taiwan TALIS 2018 collected from both teachers and principals and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

Results showed that IL and DL influence teacher professional collaboration through different paths. IL had a significant direct impact on teacher professional collaboration alone, while DL had a significant direct impact on both teachers' collective innovativeness and their professional collaboration. While TSE had a direct effect on collective teacher innovativeness, TSE and collective teacher innovativeness had a direct effect on teacher professional collaboration.

This study highlights the significant impact of principal leadership as both principals and teachers work in the same environment and culture co-shaped through the interaction and collaboration. Research evidence regarding the effects of IL and DL on teacher professional collaboration is limited; this is even less evidential when the indirect effects of variables mediating between school leadership and teacher outcomes, including teacher collective innovativeness and TSE, are added to the total effects. The present findings provide useful references for principals and teachers when promoting professional collaboration to achieve desired outcomes in school and student improvement.

This paper aims to explore the effect of teacher–student collaboration on academic innovation in universities in different stages of collaboration.

Based on collaboration life cycle, this paper divided teacher–student collaboration into initial, growth and mature stages to explore how teacher–student collaboration affects academic innovation.

Collecting data from National Science Foundation of China, the empirical analysis found that collaboration increases the publication of local (Chinese) papers at all stages. However, teacher–student collaboration did not significantly improve the publication of international (English) papers in the initial stage. In the growth stage, teacher–student collaboration has a U-shaped effect on publishing English papers, while its relationship is positive in the mature stage.

The results offer suggestions for teachers and students to choose suitable partners and also provide some implications for improving academic innovation.

This paper constructed a model in which the effect of teacher–student collaboration on academic innovation in universities was established.

While the benefits of teacher collaboration are well documented, less is known about how emotions intersect with teachers’ collective work. Educational change is an emotional process, as reform efforts often involve shifts in teachers’ daily routines and professional identities. To better understand these complexities, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the emotional dimensions of teachers’ collaborative efforts to improve instruction.

Drawing on qualitative data, this longitudinal case study of one teacher team explores how teacher collaboration for instructional improvement intersects with emotional geographies. Data analyzed include three years of meeting observations and annual interviews with teachers and school leaders.

An analysis of data reveals how emotions both shaped and were shaped by teachers’ collaboration experiences. Varying beliefs about practice, expectations about collective work and identity (in this case, gender) impacted collaboration and subsequently opportunities for instructional improvement.

This study demonstrates how attending to the emotional aspects of teacher collaboration could serve as an effective strategy for bolstering capacity-building efforts. Findings highlight the interplay between emotional geographies, suggesting that common ground across one geography could potentially be built upon to close gaps across others.

This study provides a unique longitudinal exploration of the emotional dimensions of teachers’ collective work. The study also contributes to new knowledge about the ways in which teachers’ emotions and collaborative experiences intersect, including the interplay between emotional geographies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what school leadership practices are associated with a school’s level of instructional collaboration among school professionals and also investigates what school characteristics are linked to the level of instructional collaboration in a school.

This study drew data from the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey. CALL is a multi-source measure of distributed leadership, comprised of five domains of school leadership practices. Responses from 3,767 teachers and 167 administrators working at 129 schools were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression analysis.

The findings show that there are significant relationships between school leadership practices and the extent of instructional collaboration taking place within schools, both in terms of quantity and quality. In particular, school leadership practices that are closely related to facilitating instruction and allocating resources are associated with a school’s instructional collaboration, whereas a leadership practice related to environmental factors tends not to be significantly correlated with a school’s collaborative culture. This study also found that leadership perspectives on instructional collaboration are an important predictor of both quantity and quality of collaboration among school professionals.

This study clarifies the importance of school leadership in a collaborative culture and also provides empirical evidence of what specific practices of school leadership predict the frequencies of professional collaborative activities in school as well as their quality. In addition, this study demonstrates how schools’ contextual factors are related to the level of instructional collaboration among professionals.

An increasing number of schools and districts across the US are requiring teachers to collaborate for the purpose of data‐driven decision making. Research suggests that both data use and teacher collaboration are important ingredients in the school improvement process. Existing studies also reveal the complexities of teacher collaboration and the importance of context in shaping teachers’ collaborative work, especially with data. Yet, the intersection of teacher collaboration and data use has been understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the affordances and constraints that exist in the context of established teacher collaboration time for the purposes of data‐driven decision making.

The paper draws upon qualitative case study data gathered in six schools that structured teacher time for collaboration on data use.

An analysis of the data revealed that a variety of leadership activities and organizational conditions shaped teachers’ collaborative work with data. These included leadership focused on thoughtful use of data and the framing of data‐driven decision making in terms of collective responsibility; the establishment of norms for teacher collaboration; the implementation of data discussion protocols; and teacher groupings and subject matter subcultures.

Knowing how and when a leadership activity or organizational condition becomes either an affordance or a constraint to teacher collaboration around data use has important implications for leadership and educational change. The findings of this study also help to lay the groundwork for future research regarding teacher collaboration around data use.

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.

Teacher collaboration is regarded as a central feature of school quality that promotes students’ learning processes, teachers’ professional development, and school improvement. Although the phenomenon is complex, studies often use global constructs and measures. To meet the research demands, the purpose of this paper is to take a differentiated perspective on teacher collaboration, its particular school conditions and effects on instructional development.

Data were collected through a survey of 1,105 teachers at 36 secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Using multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling, the occurrence of three different forms of teacher collaboration and their relations to activities of instructional development, structural and cultural working conditions, represented by appropriate scales and indexes, are analyzed.

The results show that teachers use less resource-intensive forms of collaboration more often and practice more demanding forms of collaboration less frequently. More demanding forms of collaboration not only depend on the working climate but also on individual self-efficacy, institutionalized teams, collaborative and instructional principal leadership and in turn promote the development of interdisciplinary curricula and concepts for individual support.

This study provides evidence for the importance of distinguishing different forms of teacher collaboration. Furthermore, by relating different collaborative activities of teachers to certain school conditions and instructional development, this study makes a contribution to research by emphasizing the relativity of teacher collaboration regarding its desired outcomes as well as its necessary requirements.

This Commentary is a review and critique of arguments that oppose the desirability and impact of professional collaboration in education. The purpose of this paper is to analyze two recent high-profile reviews of professional development and collaboration. The analysis is informed by a historical typology of five phases of professional collaboration in theory and practice.

The Commentary reviews and summarizes selected key texts that represent different phases in the development of advocacy for and research concerning the emergence of professional collaboration. It then critiques the methodology, findings, and recommendations of two key critiques of professional collaboration and development that have been widely disseminated for educators and policymakers.

Contrary to the views of its opponents, professional collaboration as a whole has a record of indirect, long term, yet clear and positive effects on teachers and students. Particular kinds of professional collaboration can vary a great deal in quality and impact, however. Short-term collaborative interventions, such as data teams, are often dependent for their success on the prior existence of deeper cultures and processes. These processes and cultures characterize high-performing systems globally. Advocacy for competitive alternatives is based on insufficient evidence.

Although advocacy for more competition in public school systems is common, high-profile critiques of professional collaboration are relatively new. This paper engages with these critiques from a broader historical perspective, and finds they have serious flaws of reasoning and methodology. Thus far, the critiques provide insufficient warrant for moves toward more competitive systems of schooling and teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of prosociality, which is defined in terms of helping and benefitting others, between teacher collaboration and their turnover intentions. Prosociality was measured as prosocial impact and prosocial motivation.

This study was conducted through a cross-sectional survey of 260 elementary and junior high school teachers in Japan. A structural equational model was employed to examine the mediating roles of prosocial impact and prosocial motivation in the relationships between teacher collaboration and their turnover intention.

The results, first, supported the hypotheses: the high perception of teacher collaboration in school predicted high perceived prosocial impact; high perceived prosocial impact predicted high perceived prosocial motivation; and high perceived prosocial motivation predicted decreased turnover intention. Second, results supported partial mediating roles of prosocial impact and prosocial motivation between teacher collaboration and turnover intention.

Limitations of this study include cross-sectional data that may limit the potential for causal inferences, and self-report data. Future studies should incorporate alternative designs.

Results indicate that teacher collaboration contributes to less teacher turnover intention via prosociality. Thus, to enhance teachers’ prosocial impact, more opportunities to realise their collaboration should be considered.

This is the first study to explore the relationships between teacher collaboration and turnover intention in educational organisations with prosociality, which resides as core goals and objectives of teachers.