DIRECTIONS: Watch the Keynote Lecture by Professor Andy Hargreaves "From Professional Collaboration to Collaborative Professionalism," and discuss in your instructor´s blog the following questions:
1) Whereas
professional collaboration is a descriptive
term referring to how teachers collaborate
together, in one way or another, here or
there, collaborative professionalism is
prescriptive. It is about how to collaborate
more deeply, in ways that achieve greater
impact. How do you think the transition between professional collaboration to collaborative profesionalism can be promoted in our educational context?
2) Collaborative professionalism is organized in an evidence-informed, but not data-driven, way through rigorous planning, deep and sometimes demanding dialogue, candid but constructive feedback, and continuous collaborative inquiry. To what extent can students profit from their teachers´ practic eof collaborative professionalism?
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ReplyDeleteHello dear classmates and Professor, here are my answers regarding this point.
ReplyDelete1) I believe that within my particular context, Professional Collaboration is hardly evidenced. It is a context that although it presents general comfort when working, there is a lack of commitment in the work of the teaching community. In this way, to reach Collaborative Professionalism in my own context, we need to achieve the first step in this process.
Once we know the initial movement towards the target purpose, I consider that it is important to consolidate FL teaching and learning processes with the participation of student community, administratives and teachers as a whole.Therefore, the meaningful improvement may be more realistic if these are immersed in university policies or regulations that support along the the program curriculum the educational goals not only for teachers but for students to achieve greater impact in the undergraduate program.
2) As stated before, it is important to include within this process the students. The benefits for the students may outnumber their expectations, but basically, is a movement that engages the learner to build individual knowledge from the opportunity to share experiences among the academic community, contributes to the solution of possible problems within the learning process and teaching practices, as well as the consolidation of teaching strategies that enrich their learner's professional profile. The influence of a model that can guide the student in his training is essential to perpetuate positive behaviours for the construction of teaching practices with greater impact within the social context they are found.
I would like to answer these questions in this way:
ReplyDelete1. I think that the shift from professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism can be achieved by making of this latter a more formal and institutional practice. In our context we see that teachers are given time for planning their classes and for doing the tasks that the profession demands; however, in my experience, I have seen that teachers rarely conform communities of learning for improving their teaching practice. Likewise, another situation is that many teachers do not have the habit of sharing their teaching insights, so, they work on isolation from their peers. Therefore, if there would be an initiative by not only teachers and the institution, but also by students and parents ideally, we could conform communities of learning having the support of the entities that play a major role in education. As a result, we could have more insights on the necessities and goals that need to be addressed, and work as a community towards the same direction.
2. As has been argued by many scholars, teachers are the most influential factor in students’ learning. Thus, if teachers practice collaborative professionalism, the benefits will be not only for them. As I was proposing before, if the communities of learning created towards collaborative professionalism also included students and parents, the insights of these different education agents would enrich the transformation of their own educative situation.
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteFrom my point of view, moving from professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism in our context implies a policy shift regarding the evaluative processes attained to teachers’ performance. New policies need to detach teachers from the fear of being judged so that we can raise our voices and co-construct ways of impacting students’ lives. In Colombia, most of the teachers working in public secondary and primary schools are demanded to collect evidence of their work during the school year. After that, the principal of the institution carries out a summative assessment in which the teacher is given a number to define the teaching practice. The results of this assessment process directly affect teachers when it comes to promotions. Then, there is little opportunity for teachers to collaborate more deeply, share experiences and create teaching communities. To illustrate my point, scholars such as Comber and Kamler (2003) express their concern about the alienation of teachers in regards to the educative reforms. In sum, while teachers’ initiatives are still discarded in the sphere of professional collaboration; collaborative professionalism is hardly doable in a context where we have been taught to keep our ideas sacredly.
Concerning the second question, I consider that students will benefit from teachers’ collaborative professionalism practice once rigorous processes such as inquiring, dialogue and feedback led to in deep reflection and efficient problem-solving. Then, teachers promoting efforts to achieve this kind of collaboration in light of students’ sake, ensure that teachers make inform decisions able to illuminate students’ learning.
First of all, the transition from professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism in the field of language teaching implies a shift in the policies of the educational system in Colombia. Since collaborative professionalism aims to foster teachers’ motivation and their willingness to collaborative work towards success and innovation, the implementation of programs that allow this interaction is a must. On the other hand, from our own experience as teachers we have witnessed the difficulties when trying to find the opportunities to share our experiences and inquire in our teaching practice. Although, some of us are aware of the main aspects that need to be taken into consideration to improve and consolidate our profession, in most of the cases we are not given the chance to explore those issues. To my mind, communities of learning and more contextualized teaching practicum for pre- service and in-service teachers are required to help us design and implement better strategies in a professional and interactive environment from our schools or any other learning space.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to the second question, I think that collaborative professionalism practices guarantee learning achievement as well. The implementation of new strategies and the ongoing feedback allow teachers to engage in a reflective process in which the learning goals are first taken into consideration. Thus, collaboration among colleagues can effectively contribute to students’ academic success.
I believe that the transition towards collaborative professionalism can be promoted in our context by starting with a well-grounded plan. In other words, I understand my colleagues point of view that argues the need to change our current educational policies to implement it. However, I think it is just a small step to start. First to make it mandatory. But, this change will not guaranty that it would get the importance we want to achieve. Hence, it is necessary to show teachers the importance and usefulness of that shift. I wonder, How can we as teachers make aware of other teachers (e.g., rural, primary, secondary, university teachers) about the importance of collaborative professionalism. And the answer I thought about is by developing learning communities. After that, It is necessary to document the outcomes of those learning communities to enrich the literature about that and encourage teachers to implement it.
ReplyDelete2) it seems to me that students are the first ones in profit from teachers` practice of collaborative professionalism. They will have the opportunity to know, practice, discover, discuss and asses new and varied teaching practices. That according to professor Andy Hargreaves can be: good for there, good for here, better or worst tanking into account the context you are in. Hence, it will offer students and teachers, the possibility to experience different ways and negotiate which ones are the best for their own context.
Moving from professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism, as stated in the lecture by the Professor Andy Hargreaves in the Re-imagining teaching education symposium, is a challenge in today’s most educative systems around the world, especially in America. I think this transition could occur easily when teachers see themselves as collaborative agents of change who realize that cannot make a considerable impact in society by simply doing good things in their classrooms, but by going beyond the confines of their classrooms. Then, teachers need to see their profession with love, so they can mix the vast knowledge about teaching, learning and research with simple but sometimes ignored “constructs” such as trust, support, caring, honesty, respect and humble peer feedback. In this same vein, Kumaravadivelu (2016) sees teachers as a subaltern community with great intellectual abilities, which lacks unity. He claims that “only a collective, concerted, and coordinated set of actions carries the potential to shake the foundation of the hegemonic power structure and move the subaltern community forward” (p.66). For this matter, we teachers need to start recognizing other teachers as transformative intellectuals as well.
ReplyDeleteI think that if teachers move from the professional collaboration paradigm to the collaborative professionalism one, it will spark the same kind of collaborative atmosphere among students and teachers. Taking again Kumaravadivelu’s ideas on the post method pedagogy, particularly on the characteristics of the post method students, regarding their social and liberatory autonomy, the students are seen as researchers, as well as intellectual agents of change. They have the “ability and willingness to function effectively as cooperative members of a classroom community” (p. 546), acknowledging their sociopolitical role which goes beyond a four-wall classroom. In this way, students and teachers can produce context-sensitive and context-bound knowledge by means of meaningful interaction in and outside the classroom towards social transformation.
Hello
ReplyDeleteI consider that the transition between professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism is a challenging process that requires not only time but also changes in the institutional policies where we work. I have realized that it is quite hard trying to influence teachers ways of teaching and try to work in the community even when teachers know that it is for the good of the students. I remember when I worked in a private school and from time to time, we had to visit other teacher classes, not to criticize them, but to collaborate in a more profound way in the their performance; from that experience, I could evidence how difficult and how uncomfortable it was for the teachers who where observed. Now, working in public schools is even harder because the teachers who have been teaching for plenty of years are not easily engaged in collaborative professionalism; first, because the schools do not offer spaces for creating teaching communities and secondly because most of the teachers think they are performing in the right way. Considering the precious ideas, I think a way to promote collaborative professionalism in my context could be achieved by a change in the schools’ policies and also in the culture, which could take a lot of time.
Regarding the second question, I would say that working in collaborative professionalism would benefit students in a big way. Mainly because if we as teachers do it, students will also have the chance to participate and be active learners, expressing and showing their interests, needs, and ways in which they would like to be taught. According to Kerry (2010), “community-based research involves collaboration between trained researchers and community members in the design and implementation of research projects aimed at meeting community-identified needs” (p. 7). In this sense, students, teachers, and the community play a fundamental role in the process; if that happens, students will have an advantage over the students in schools where everyone works individually.
Hi everyone!
ReplyDelete1) Whereas professional collaboration is a descriptive term referring to how teachers collaborate together, in one way or another, here or there, collaborative professionalism is prescriptive. It is about how to collaborate more deeply, in ways that achieve greater impact. How do you think the transition between professional collaboration to collaborative profesionalism can be promoted in our educational context?
-Most of Colombian teachers are so attached to their daily ways of doing things, their beliefs, their behaviors, their feelings and their own conceptions. And those same teachers sometimes have the desire to collaborate but this desire just remains in a dialogical form and it never goes into actions. With this idea on the table, I would dare to say that the transition between professional collaboration to collaborative professionalism is a challenging process that requires time, the recognition of what teachers do and why they do it, the recognition of the context, the recognition of teachers beliefs, the support from stakeholders and a community of learning which lead the change.
For now, we can start by trying to do that ourselves and try to spread a collaborative scenario with our workmates.
2) Collaborative professionalism is organized in an evidence-informed, but not data-driven, way through rigorous planning, deep and sometimes demanding dialogue, candid but constructive feedback, and continuous collaborative inquiry. To what extent can students profit from their teachers´ practic eof collaborative professionalism?
-If teachers are agents of change they could create spaces of change for their students. Thus, the culture or the beliefs that students would be interacting with daily, somehow would start to light students own way of believing. Thus, It seems that students will benefit from their teachers practice of collaborative professionalism because students will be more integrated on the building of lessons. As well, they will have the opportunity to experience inquiring, dialogic and feedback processes to discover, practice, discuss, reflect and asses new knowledges and content of learning.
Hey there...
ReplyDelete1) I believe the gist og collaborative profesionalism lays into the necesity of going beyond social barriers attached to our roots since we were born. We, as sub-developed countries, still have this culture where envy and being afraid of failing, never allows us to go beyong a reflective process. It is really weird for teachers to develop environments where all teachers provide feedback on their peers, without feeling personally attacked and criticized for your way of teaching. What is worst, sometimes we as teachers tend do believe that, if sharing our strategies of teaching, our ways in the classroom, someone else is going to steal our ideas, avoiding positive feedback, and as a consequence, collaborative profesionalism.
Since we are aware of this situation, we might say that creating groups to do so would be the solution (which might be), but I think we have the greatest power in society: To shape our students' ways of thinking.
Then I believe the short term goal go strenghten collaborative profesionalism, would be to create regular spaces (meetings) to exchange ideas, beliefs, thoughts and ways of teaching, with the aim of providing positive feedback among the participants.
But, the main goal, I believe would be the long-term one: To build a culture in which sharing ideas, providing feedback and being socially reflective, becomes into something our students can see as a strong way of improving themselves professionally. Our students' minds are the long-term goal, breaking all local paradigms about envy and individuality.
2) As I was mentioning before, raising awareness into our students will strenghten their possitive criticism, being (after some time of training) active actors in the educational process. By the times our students develope that sense of awareness, they will be the one providing feedback on the teachers' ways of teaching. And as I mentioned in answer 1, students will understand that through this reflective process, they won't be degrading their teachers, but they will be taking a strong part on they knowledge development, towards the improvement of the processes.