Mapping teacher collaboration for school success

ABSTRACT

Collaborative support between teachers is crucial to school success. Communication, openness, and participation are key for creating a climate of trust. Professional relationships based on trust contribute to the development of a common vision for the school. However, building a collaborative atmosphere is challenging. A systematic review was performed to identify strategies for promoting staff collaboration with a view towards school improvement. Based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement guidelines for systematic reviews, we selected 18 articles focused on different approaches to building collaborative environments in schools. The main finding was that the most widely used collaborative modalities were related to instructional processes and improving student academic performance. Factors that hinder the establishment of a collaborative school culture were related to teacher reluctance to sharing and exchange of practices, lack of engagement, and teacher training. Educational leaders were also seen to play a key role in the development of cooperative environments and effective leadership delegation.

KEYWORDS:

• Social environment
• social capital
• teacher collaboration
• networks
• educational improvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Inmaculada García-Martínez

Inmaculada García-Martínez is an assistant lecturer at the University of Granada (Spain). She has a PhD in Education. She is currently working on professional identity and psychosocial factors related with teachers and professional development. She has published several scientific articles on pedagogical leadership, school organization, educational technology, and emotional intelligence. She is a member of the Ibero-American Network for the Development of Professional Teaching Identity. She has participated in several research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Marta Montenegro-Rueda

Marta Montenegro-Rueda is a researcher in the department of Didactics and School Organization at the University of Seville (Spain). She is a collaborator on an Excellence project funded by the Ministry of Education and Science called “Diagnosis and Training of Teachers for the Incorporation of ICT in Students with Functional Diversity (EDU2016-75232-P)”.

Elvira Molina-Fernández

Elvira Molina-Fernández, PhD, is an assistant lecturer at the University of Granada (Spain) in the department of Pedagogy. She holds a master’s degree in “Democratic Management and Educational Innovation”, and is an expert on the “Scheduling, Development, and Evaluation of University-level Open and Online Learning through New Technologies”. She received the following prizes for this project: “National Prize for Teaching Activities” (2010); “European Prize for Innovative Projects in Language Teaching and Learning” (2011) granted by the Autonomous Organization for European Educational Programs (OAPEE); “Vicente Ferrer, National Prize of Education for Development (2013)”, and; “National Prize for Best Practices” (2014) from the S.M. Foundation.

José María Fernández-Batanero

José María Fernández-Batanero, PhD, is a lecturer at the department of Didactics and School Organization at the University of Seville (Spain). He is director of the Department of Teaching and Educational Organization. He is a principal investigator on the Excellence project funded by the Ministry of Education and Science called “Diagnosis and Training of Teachers for the Incorporation of ICT in Students with Functional Diversity (EDU2016-75232-P)”. He is an expert on ICT teacher training for people with disabilities. He is an evaluator for the National Agency of Evaluation and Prospectives (NAEP) overseen by the Spanish Ministry of Education.