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Hargreaves and O’Connor have written an extraordinary book explaining, deepening, and teaching us how to transform teaching and learning in schools. We learn how people collaborate in five different contexts and cultures across the globe. And we finally understand the important stages of building positive, trusting, thoughtful, and lasting collaborative professionalism with all its significant details.
Collaborative Professionalism makes an impressive contribution to the development of teaching and improving schools by stressing the importance of investing in social capital in and between schools. Building on their rich experiences and vivid case studies from around the world, Andy Hargreaves and Michael O’Connor promote collaborative professionalism as the next big step in the global movement for educational improvement.
In many countries, the preferred political strategy to raise standards in education is relentless competition: between students, teachers, schools and districts. On the whole, it isn't working. There is a better way. One that works: collaboration. Human beings are intensely social creatures and much of what we can and do achieve comes from our capacity for working together.
I strongly recommend Collaborative Professionalism to education policy makers, school leaders, and teacher activists. It has helped me reflect on how to strengthen the teaching profession, at a time of unprecedented threat from technology, retention, and narrow accountability. The book combines a readable style, with tangible case studies and clear recommendations on what should be done now to foster a healthy future for the most important of professions – working in alliance, with trusted autonomy, and an agility to deal with a time of unprecedented change.
Accessible and deep in equal measure. Collaborative Professionalism gives us vivid, creative designs for engaging in lasting collaboration. This is a book that will have the ear of teachers, teachers' leaders, and policy makers all over the world.
This wonderful book starts with the proposition that our central question is not whether educators can make a significant difference in the well-being and capabilities of the children we serve and the communities in which they live, but whether we are willing to do so. Our work as educators is urgent; every minute matters for our most school-dependent children. This book is a powerful reminder that getting better is something we do together.
