Recently, "Team School" (School as a Team) has been proposed as a new image of schools in Japanese educational reform. Team School is an organizational model where teachers and non-teaching professionals (e.g., school counselors and school social workers) collaborate in order to respond to the increasingly complex and diverse issues the…

Background: Funding bodies in Australia and the United Kingdom require research on issues that affect the lives of people with intellectual disability to be inclusive. Debate continues about the nature and benefits of inclusive research, which has become an umbrella term encompassing a broad spectrum of approaches. Method: This study proposes one…

Professional Development Standards in one state require professional learning for teachers in collaborative teams and requires schools to offer teachers opportunities for collaborative and collegial learning activities. The purpose of this study was to discover how elementary schools are consistently implementing this standards-based professional…

Throughout the day, students interact with and receive a myriad of services from librarians, school secretaries, custodians, school nurses and security personnel. Everyone inside and outside the building has a role to play in ensuring that students are safe and ready to learn. In many schools, paraprofessionals assist teachers and students in the…

There is a disconnect between what principals are being asked to manage and accomplish and the level of support they receive to meet expectations. At a time when rhetoric on the principalship is focused on collaboration, most principals find themselves working in an isolated position within hierarchical organizations. And while principals are…

Despite the norms of privacy that pervade teacher culture and the assumptions of behind-closed-doors independence, teachers actually "need" their colleagues, whether they like it--and them--or not. Teachers are inherently dependent on one another since no one of them alone constitutes their students' education. Students move from teacher to…

This paper describes a three-year research partnership between Roehampton University in London and VT Four S Ltd, providers of school support services in Surrey, a county in the south east of England. The project, named "New Partnerships for Learning" (NPfL), was centred on the delivery of a professional development programme to equip…

This report describes how lesson study is being implemented in one Northern California school district, drawing on research conducted in the district over 3 years via interviews with project leaders and participants; videotapes/audiotapes of the lesson study work (e.g., planning, research lessons, and lesson colloquia); workshops designed to build…

This book presents a modern fable for middle school teachers. It is a fanciful account of finding and sharing the "Jamal papers," the minutes of that first committee thousands of years ago in which a camel was created by reconstituting a horse. The tale provides a way to bring front and center such concerns as team isolation, personality…

Research Findings: Collaborative work and supportive relationships are highly valued by teachers and school administrators. Collaboration, however, necessitates constructive conflict resolution (P. M. Senge, 1990); yet conflict is often experienced as interpersonally threatening and undermining supportive working conditions. This contradiction is…

This paper discusses an experiment-in-progress that focused on an investigation of novel school collaboration procedures. Two schools participated in the experiment. The principals of these schools were asked for their definition of "collaboration" and a metaphoric description of their schools. Following a collaborative skills workshop,…

"Data Trends" reports present summaries of research on mental health services for children and adolescents and their families. The article summarized in this "Data Trends" discusses the results of a study designed to examine team composition, team planning, and team members' satisfaction in 26 different wraparound teams serving children with…

This paper presents an overview of several studies on teacher collaboration, then describes the process of developing recommendations for school leaders interested in encouraging collaboration. The five studies focused on: (1) collaboration and student learning outcomes; (2) the effect of selected factors on collaboration; (3) collaboration from…

This article, presents a discussion about Connecticut Superintendents' Network. Established and facilitated by the Connecticut Center for School Change, a school reform organization, the Network is grounded in a theory of action concerning professional development for administrators. The Network's goals are: (1) to develop superintendents'…

The long-term success of school improvement depends on the ability of participants to function productively together. This book explores a variety of forms for collaboration in schools and presents a framework for understanding how to build stronger working relationships among colleagues. Following the introduction, chapter 1 establishes the…