Collaboration

What is collaboration?

Collaboration is how we connect with others to exchange ideas, experiences and practices that facilitate improved learning. Collaboration requires working with specific intent, an agreement to a common purpose or goal, and to a common way of achieving that.

The beauty of planned and purposeful collaboration is that it leads to a genuine sense of shared responsibility for the development of all our learners.

Due to the technological developments of recent years and the need in recent months, it is now possible for teams to collaborate globally, in real time, on a project or task. This time has revolutionised the scope and scale of collaborative work.

The key principles of collaboration

Collaboration provides opportunities for professional learning and should be actively promoted within school, with the wider school community and beyond
The school team works together to embrace change, share resources and support each other whilst building a curriculum that meets all learners’ needs and is authentic to the local, national and international context
Effective collaboration enables the school to take a multi-disciplinary approach to learning. Departments and disciplines collaborate to establish deep connections in the learning
Collaboration is one of the key pedagogical principles set out in Curriculum for Wales which enables all involved to understand and value difference and diversity
Involving learners in decision making about their learning ensures that a school's curriculum is learner-focussed. This takes a wide variety of forms and involves learners taking greater responsibility as they move along the learning continuum and as they transition from year to year and from school to school
Working with other settings, schools and further education institutions provides important opportunities to share learning and develop joined-up experiences for learners.

Response and Reflection

Individually, in groups or virtually, discuss the key considerations in the ERW 'Transforming your Curriculum' document.

🌐 Transforming Your Curriculum

Why do we need to collaborate?

Collaboration is an important educational outcome and the ability to work effectively with others is a key employability skill. Collaboration is fundamental to learning and is at the heart of the self-improving school system. Effective collaboration nurtures trust and confidence between all stakeholders in a school. It generates new ideas and new ways of thinking by drawing upon the knowledge, insight and lived experiences of school life. It can uncover and create opportunities for joint working that help to stretch and focus time and limited resources in the direction of our learners.

"Ar ein pennau ein hunain gallwn wneud cyn lleied, gyda'n gilydd gallwn wneud cymaint."

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

Helen Keller

Collaboration between schools and teachers, through Professional Learning Communities, networks and teams, allows practitioners and leaders to develop a vision for areas of learning and for a school as a whole. It is only through effective collaboration that a genuine sense of shared responsibility for the development of a unique school based curriculum can be cultivated.

It is unsurprising that when developing the new curriculum for settings and schools in Wales, it was done through a collaborative process between Welsh Government, regional consortia and school based practitioners because “…by learning together we can build a better Wales” – Kirsty Williams .

A collaborative curriculum

In Curriculum for Wales, the principles of co-construction are central to developing a school or setting's methodology of curriculum design. The curriculum is a framework written by teachers, and acknowledges that nobody knows more about learning than the teaching profession itself. It follows therefore that schools develop their own unique curriculum for their unique school circumstances.

It is important to remember that this is a Curriculum for Wales and its holistic nature creates an exciting and purposeful opportunity for collaboration between learners, parents, carers and the local community to contribute to curriculum development. The guidance also suggests that schools should engage with a wide range of experts and stakeholders who can contribute and advise. This opportunity to connect with others to exchange ideas, experiences and practices, if managed constructively, will contribute to a richer curriculum and improved learning for all.

The first step in this collaboration should focus on engaging with the overarching principles of curriculum design and development that frame transformation. This should be at whole-school level at the very least.

An OECD report published in 2017 stated that ‘in the future Wales will need a different type of teaching professional; one who has significantly more responsibility and understands the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ as well as the ‘what’.

🌐 The Welsh Education Reform Journey

Reimagining our schools

The Schools as learning organisations (SLO) framework has been designed as a set of processes to support schools to adapt to the demands of the new Curriculum for Wales. SLO provides schools with structures for thinking about the way in which they may plan for progress. It is clear that teachers play a crucial role in making this change, since self-improving schools need self-improving leaders and teachers within them.

“A school must be populated by learners at all levels. All need to have inquiring minds, must be encouraged, rewarded and share critical curiosity.” – Professor Mick Waters SLO Conference Cardiff 2018

The Schools as Learning Organisations guidance promotes effective team learning and collaboration among all staff as:

Collaborative working and collective learning, either face to face or using digital technology, focused on enhancing learning experiences, learner outcomes and/or staff practice
Practitioners reflecting together on how to make their own learning more powerful
Practitioners learning how to work together as an effective team
Practitioners feeling comfortable seeking advice from each other.
Identifying trust and mutual respect as core values
Encouraging schools to allocate time and other resources to collaborative working and collective learning

🌐 Schools as Learning Organisations

The Professional Standards in Wales describe the skills, knowledge and behaviours that characterise excellent practice and support professional growth. There are five professional standards for teaching and leadership which outline the five essential elements of every teacher’s work. One of these five elements is collaboration, which enables effective pedagogy to spread.

The teacher takes opportunities to work productively with all partners in learning in order to extend professional effectiveness.

Actively seeking advice and support when meeting a new challenge
Working with in-school colleagues
Supporting and developing others
Enabling improvement to ensure sustained, highly effective practice

🌐 Professional Standards

What does successful collaboration look like?

Successful collaboration relies on the nature of relationships within the school or setting. In order to establish an ethos where collaboration is effective, leaders must invest time in creating a culture of purposeful collaboration in which everyone has an opportunity to contribute and there is mutual trust and respect. Contributors should feel that they are genuinely heard. Collaboration within the school or setting is learner-centred, with a commitment to working together towards the specific goal of supporting learner success. They create a professional learning community that is passionate about learning and continuously seeks to improve as a learning organisation.

An effective collaborative culture:

Has a whole-school shared vision that focuses on learner needs
Encourages and supports sharing, coaching and mentoring within the school and across networks
Elicits talk about pedagogy and continuous learning
Works towards a shared purpose and involves teachers and learners in decision-making
Values professional development for all and builds trust into the system

Conversely, an ineffective collaborative culture may:

lead to isolation
create negativity and inconsistency
negate autonomy
lack direction and purpose
react to outside influences rather than learner needs

“Mae fy mhrofiadau wedi dangos imi, po fwyaf o bobl sy'n dod i ddeall disgyblaethau ei gilydd, y mwyaf ffrwythlon a chynhyrchiol y mae'r sgwrs yn tueddu i fod."

“My experiences have shown me that, in education, the more people get to understand each other’s disciplines, the more fertile and productive the conversation tends to become."

Ken Robinson

Who do we need to collaborate with?

Response and Reflection

Create a list of those you collaborate with currently in your school setting.
In the process of designing the new curriculum for your school, who could you add to this list that would strengthen your vision? What would each person or organisation add to the learner experience?

Collaborating with learners

A learner-focused curriculum is not a learner-led curriculum. However, Curriculum for Wales’ transformation is about the co-construction of a local school curriculum, fit for its learners and their voice in design is fundamental to its success in schools.

Leaders and teachers are best placed to plan experiences that stretch their learners and set them off on a learning journey until they are better placed to understand what they don’t yet know. Additionally, as they make progress, learners will need the advice and guidance as well as the learning experiences prepared by experts in subject disciplines.

Learners, though, should be fully involved in the process of their learning – the why and the how, posing questions, suggesting contexts and finding innovative ways to get to the heart of the learning. Giving them opportunities to share their learning leads to depth of understanding and places value on them as learners.

Involving learners in co-constructing their learning experiences also boosts confidence, enhances problem-solving skills, supports decision-making and encourages creativity.

The principles and purposes underpinning Curriculum for Wales include a shift away from transmission of knowledge towards pedagogy that focuses on the process of learning, which, in turn provides them with the skills and thought processes, they need to become increasingly involved.

Listening carefully to what learners say about their schools, about what works and what doesn’t in respect of how they learn can only improve outcomes and contribute to addressing underachievement.

ERW Pioneer Case Study - Dwr y Felin Teaching and Learning - English.docx

Case Study 1: Dŵr y Felin Comprehensive School

Developing Teaching and Learning through collaboration within school.

"Gorweddai gwir gryfder ein hystafell ddosbarth yng nghydweithio dysgwyr, nid yng ngwybodaeth un arbenigwr."

"The true strength in our classroom lies in the collaboration of learners, not in the knowledge of one expert."

Dr Seuss

How to get learners involved

There are different levels of learner participation, and enabling learners to take part in curriculum design can take place in different forms and at different times. Learners can be informed, consulted or make their own decisions and set their own areas and questions for consideration in curriculum design.

Involving learners directly in the designing of their curriculum could include the following steps:

Enabling learners to make choices about what and how they learn.
Collecting qualitative feedback after learning experiences, which informs ongoing curriculum design.
Considering learners’ perspectives on a daily basis in the classroom through participatory pedagogy.
Ensuring that feedback on the outcomes of learner voice contributions are given to learners and staff and that this is factored into the timescales for curriculum design.

🌐 Curriculum for Wales

Response and Reflection

What does collaboration look like in your school or setting?
What are the strengths of the collaborative practices that exist currently in your school or setting?
What areas for collaborative development can you identify in your school or setting? How would growing collaboration in these areas impact upon your learners?

"Yr adnodd mwyaf gwerthfawr sydd gan athrawon yw ein gilydd. Heb gydweithio mae ein twf yn gyfyngedig i'n safbwyntiau ein hunain."

"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives."

Robert John Meehan

Case Study 2.docx

Whole school and departmental collaboration

At a school level, structures and systems should be developed to promote and facilitate collaboration. When designing the curriculum it will be essential to create time and space for professional collaboration at all levels within the school. Practitioners need to be able to develop strong relationships built on trust. They need to make sure that the collaborative process is mutually beneficial to each other and feel free to take risks and make mistakes, in just the same way as we would expect learners to explore and make mistakes to develop their understanding.

At a departmental/Area level there would be a similar need for these systems and structures, clear protocols, and systems for feedback, planning and reviews.

Case Study 2: Primary School

Deputy headteacher reflection on school collaboration.

School to school collaboration

In designing and constructing the curriculum, schools and settings should create opportunities for collaboration between schools in clusters and networks and across the wider region and Wales. Accessing new ideas through collaboration over a wider area will create new ideas, build increasing networks and develop exciting new professional learning opportunities.

Case Study 3: Primary School

Exemplification of collaboration across the North Gower Partnership, Swansea.

Case Study 2.docx

Learning for the future

As we have dealt with the Covid-19 lockdown, and continue to plan for blended learning experiences, practitioners have had to consider the ways in which they involve learners more closely in their learning. The opportunity to explore a new way of working may also have introduced us to new possibilities, which will remain long after Covid-19 has gone. How we organise our classrooms and plan our learning experiences will lead to increasing independence for our learners and will mean we will have to ensure regular and purposeful communication with them, both strategies that will lead to high quality learning and teaching as outlined in Curriculum for Wales, The National Mission and Schools as Learning Organisations.

Collaborating with parents, carers and the wider community

There is an old African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and in the same sense, schools need to work with their parents, carers and the wider community to nurture their schools to meet their particular community needs. Most of what is learned as children and adults happens outside the classroom through lived experiences; therefore, in developing their curriculum, schools and settings should involve learners, parents, carers, partner agencies and the local community in order to plan and provide authentic learning contexts and experiences. Positive relationships forged through effective, meaningful collaboration with parents, carers and the wider school community will enable a better understanding of how to support all learners on their learning journey.

Research and Reading

📚 Visible Learning – John Hattie (2008) ISBN: 8601404531293

🌐 https://visible-learning.org/

🌐 Leading collaborative professionalism (link to research paper)

🌐 Education Endowment Fund Toolkit

🌐 ‘9 Things Every Teacher Should Know’ Dylan Wiliam TES (2016)

📚 What Every Teacher Need to Know About Psychology – David Didau and Nick Rose (2016) ISBN-10: 1909717851 ISBN-13: 978-190971785

The links below will take you to a selection of Estyn and ERW case studies focussing on collaborating with parents and the wider community.

Penllergaer Primary School in Swansea involve parents, pupils, and teachers in creating their rich, innovative curriculum:

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/effective-practice/involving-parents-pupils-and-teachers-create-rich-innovative-curriculum

Cylch Meithrin Ynys y Plant in Ceredigion use their strongly established links with the community to provide opportunities to enrich children’s learning experiences:

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/effective-practice/local-community-visits-provide-opportunities-enrich-childrens-learning

Llanfaes Community Primary School in Powys enhances citizenship education by creating dementia awareness through community outreach:

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/effective-practice/creating-dementia-awareness-through-pupil-interaction-and-community-outreach

Coedcae School in Carmarthenshire uses external community links to support a successful inclusion strategy:

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/effective-practice/highly-effective-graduated-response-promotes-inclusion-successfully

Craigfelen Primary School in Swansea works with partners such as the Welsh Government, Gower College and University Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD), to enhance learners entrepreneurial skills and improve standards:

https://www.estyn.gov.wales/effective-practice/enhancing-pupils-entrepreneurial-skills-and-improving-standards?_ga=2.83894745.1504972134.1599465233-1469422891.1568016899

The Milford Haven Cluster of Schools in Pembrokeshire collaborates with the Darwin Centre to develop an innovative science project:

https://porth.erw-rhwyd.cymru/repository/resource/2675c2ad-e548-433e-8c92-0fb31efb3779/en

Yr Ysgol Gymraeg Aberystwyth work with UWTSD to develop approaches to learning:

https://porth.erw-rhwyd.cymru/repository/resource/413346b1-3b29-415e-8274-ca4ed52de643/en

Presteigne Primary School in Powys builds effective partnerships to improve learning outcomes and wellbeing:

https://porth.erw-rhwyd.cymru/repository/resource/5f160299-3c8c-4d8a-8347-3a3d021026b9/en

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