How Middle Grades Teachers Experience a Collaborative Culture: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

Collaboration is a powerful tool for professional development that creates opportunities for teachers to reflect on their practice. However, school districts continue to have difficulty both implementing and sustaining collaboration. The purpose of this research was to investigate the experiences the teachers in a creative, instructional collaboration. This study yielded several observations. The first was that teachers can experience successful, high-level collaboration in which they perceive a sense of satisfaction, mutuality, trust, and growth. For five middle grades teachers in a private, faith-based school, their satisfactory experience with collaboration was teacher-initiated. When participating teachers believed that they had power over their collaboration, they perceived the collaborative experience as productive to the extent that they were able to engage in collegial learning. The teachers in this study found that teacher-initiated collaboration offered them trust and they were more comfortable, transparent, and open with their partners. They were more willing to question their existing approaches and try new ones. The results also supported the claim that teacher collaboration can facilitate school reform. Participating teachers felt less isolation and developed more teacher knowledge.