Conflict amid Community: The Micropolitics of Teacher Collaboration

TLDR

Since the mid‑1980s, a reform surge has renewed interest in teacher collaboration to counter isolation, improve practice, and foster collective action, yet this idealized vision often overlooks the diversity, dissent, and conflict that arise when teachers collaborate. The article seeks to examine teacher communities through the lens of micropolitical and organizational theory. It applies micropolitical and organizational theory to analyze how teachers enact collaborative reforms in two urban middle schools. Case studies of two urban middle schools reveal that collaborative reforms labeled as community often generate conflict, and that how teachers manage these conflicts—whether by suppression or embrace—shapes community boundaries and determines the potential for organizational learning and change.

Abstract

A major reform surge that began in the mid-1980s has generated a renewed interest in fostering teacher community or collaboration as a means to counter isolation, improve teacher practice and student learning, build a common vision for schooling, and foster collective action around school reform. The term community often conjures images of a culture of consensus, shared values, and social cohesion. Yet, in practice, when teachers collaborate, they run headlong into enormous conflicts over professional beliefs and practices. In their optimism about caring and supportive communities, advocates often underplay the role of diversity, dissent, and disagreement in community life, leaving practitioners ill-prepared and conceptions of collaboration underexplored. This article draws on micropolitical and organizational theory to examine teacher communities. Building from case studies of two urban, public middle schools, this article shows that when teachers enact collaborative reforms in the name of community, what emerges is often conflict. The study challenges current thinking on community by showing that conflict is not only central to community, but how teachers manage conflicts, whether they suppress or embrace their differences, defines the community borders and ultimately the potential for organizational learning and change.