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The Collaboration Imperative
June 3, 2007
Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. It's the mantra in the school library community. The idea is that when school librarians and classroom teachers work together, it is a "good thing." But who, exactly, is it good for? And in what ways?
The "Multiple Faces of Collaboration" was the topic of a
research symposium recently held at Kent State University and jointly sponsored by Rutgers'
CISSL and Kent State's
ILILE that dove into this question from a variety of perspectives.
The highlight of the event was a presentation by Rutgers' Ross Todd on the qualtitive study on the experience of instructional collaboration. The study excamined 170 librarian/classroom teacher partnerships, part of an IMLS-ILILE three-year program, where the teams jointly set goals, designed learning experiences, and taught and evaluated a unit.
What were the findings? Well, the primary motivation for teachers was to build collegial and collaborative relationships; for librarians it was marketing library services and increasing their status in the school.
Allison Zmuda , an educational consultant with ASCD, in her response to the study, was quick to ask where student achievement stood in relation to collaboration. Shouldn't that be the purpose of any action by educators...and not better marketing or having some nice collegial experience? It was certainly a lively presentation, and it was clear that collaboration isn't easy and the mandate "go out and collaborate" takes a good amount of support--which at least these participants had from ILILE. As soon as I can find Ross' presentation I'll link to it.
But the symposium had a lot more going on, there were a couple of dozen presentations in all, and I found a quite a few people I hope will write for us in the next year. There was an exhibit where several of the ILILE teams exhibited their projects, with examples of the student outcomes--these were terrific. As always, ILILE's Carolyn Brodie and Greg Byerly were wonderful hosts.
Posted by Brian Kenney on June 3, 2007 | Comments (1)