Negotiating a Team Identity through Collaborative Self-Study

Abstract

This study presents our emerging understanding of the meaning of collaborative self-study as one of the mechanisms that facilitates effective, productive collaboration. Stemming from our experience of collaborative professional life over eight years, we explore the crisis we confronted as a professional learning community, the tensions underlying the crisis, paths to resolving our crisis, and our decision to look more closely at how collaborative communities of practice impact both group and individual identities. The study follows a change in our identity as a team from a culture of “doing” our practice into a culture of studying our practice – a culture of collaborative self-study.

Keywords:

• collaboration
• community
• crisis
• identity