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Showing posts from August, 2016

The Half-Truths of Collaboration in Education

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In a healthy collaborative situation, I know I can create better work and deliver a higher quality product to teachers and students. This might be the reason that my favorite part of the writing process is going through edits, feedback, and revision. If a person I trust can read through a piece with fresh eyes and perspectives, I am eager to consider their ideas, concerns, and even the most minor wordsmithing. Notice, however, that I prefaced that last statement with the caveat that it must be a person a trust. Taking the time to build a relationship of trust must occur before healthy honest collaboration that challenges all individuals and improves the collective results. Without building that trust, we are left with "half-truths" about collaboration. In Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work , Dufour, Dufour, and Eaker explore these half-truths. 1. "First, educators often substitute congeniality for collaboration (Barth, 2006; Segiovanni, 2005)