Experience, Competence or Popularity? What Teachers expect from Cooperating Colleagues

Author(s):

Harry Kullmann

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 08 B, Learning, Development, Organisation

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

08:30-10:00

Room:

NIG, HS II

Chair:

Ene-Silvia Sarv

Contribution

Cooperation among teachers is widely seen as one of most powerful factors for school development and for the improvement of the teaching profession at individual schools (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman & Yoon 2001, Stoll & Harris 2006). Yet intense teacher cooperation endangers the individual teachers’ autonomy on instructional decisions (Little 1990) and factors limiting a teachers’ instruction-related autonomy are known to reduce their cooperative efforts (Gräsel, Fußangel & Pröbstel 2006). As mandated forms of collaboration have been designated as ‘contrived collegiality’ and shown to be inefficient (Hargreaves 1994), it is of interest to know what consideration in terms of cooperating partners can be expected from teachers. When it comes to autonomously choosing a colleague to cooperate with, how do teachers value the alleged competence of their partner in comparison with other characteristics such as popularity or experience of teaching? The explorative study presented here is targeting this yet open question with regard to the secondary school system. It is also analysed how personal traits of the surveyed teachers such as school affiliation, gender, teaching experience and teaching subject interrelate with their partner-related preferences.

Method

The data on teachers’ preferences were collected with a standardised questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered in the context of a larger project aiming at elucidating the role of several school culture aspects as factors influencing the learning of the natural sciences in Germany (c.f. Ackeren, I. van; Block, R.; Klemm, K.; Kullmann, H. & Sprütten, F. 2008). In this context, 436 teachers with various teaching subjects from sixteen secondary schools of the upper type (Gymnasien) rated several items on the importance of the following characteristics expected from colleagues they want to cooperate with: popularity among students or departmental colleagues, instruction-related competence as regarded by the respondent or according to the reputation among departmental colleagues, experience in teaching openness towards student- or action-oriented forms of teaching. The characteristics were uniformly rated by means of a quadripartite Likert-Scale ranging from ‘not important at all’ to ‘very important’.

Expected Outcomes

The secondary teachers display a defined ranking with regard to the characteristics of colleagues they want to cooperate with. Most importantly, the respective colleagues need to be open towards student- as well as action-oriented teaching. This trait is regarded as being ‘rather important’ and the respective ratings exceed those of the other characteristics significantly and by large effect sizes. The characteristic with the second highest rating is the instruction-related competence of a cooperating teacher. Least important is the popularity as well as the teaching experience of partners for teacher cooperation. While affiliation to a certain school does not appear to influence the ratings, differences are found for some characteristics with regard to the gender, the teaching experience as well as the teaching subject of the respondents. The implications of all findings with regard to the cultures and instruction-related contents of teacher cooperation will be discussed in the full paper.

References

Ackeren van, I., Block, R., Klemm, K., Kullmann, H., & Sprütten, F. (2008): Schulkultur als Kontext naturwissenschaftlichen Lernens - Allgemeine und fachspezifische explorative Analysen [School culture as a context of scientific learning – General and subject-specific explorative analyses]. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 54, (3), 341-360 Garet, M. S., Porter, A. C., Desimone, L., Birman, B. F., & Yoon, K. S. (2001): What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. In: American Educational Research Journal, 38, (4), 915-945 Gräsel, C., Fußangel, K., & Pröbstel, C. (2006): Lehrkräfte zur Kooperation anregen - eine Aufgabe für Sisyphos? [Prompting teachers to co-operate - a Sisyphean task?] In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 52, (2), 205-219 Hargreaves, A. (1994): Changing teachers, changing times - Teachers' work and culture in the postmodern age. Trowbridge, UK: Redwood Books Little, J. W. (1990): The persistence of privacy: Autonomy and initiative in teacher's professional relations. In: Teachers College record, 91, (4), 509-536 Stoll, L., & Harris, A. (2006): Coming of Age? Recent Developments in School Improvement in England. In: J. C. Lee & M. Williams (Hrsg.): School Improvement: International Perspectives. New York: Nova Science, 297-312

Author Information

Harry Kullmann

University of Augsburg

Central Institute for Research on Learning and Instruction

Augsburg

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