Commitment and Compliance: Curious Bedfellows in Teacher Collaboration

Abstract

Teacher collegiality has been used rhetorically to support a wide range of sometimes contradictory initiatives, from teacher development to school effectiveness, from a panacea for an aging teaching force to a well spring of innovation. There is also considerable scepticism about the ways in which collegiality can be used on co-opt teachers or control their work. Hargreaves (1994) has written extensively about a culture he describes as collegiality. His notion that contrived collegiality exists as a state in opposition to a culture of collaboration is thought provoking. However, this paper argues that it is not as simple as that in reality. Intensive case study research suggests that it is possible to have components of both these states working side by side in one school. The case study that underpins the paper finds that the definitions of collegial cultures are too narrow to adequately describe the practicalities of collegial staff relationships. The data reveal that in a regular, middle-sized primary school, characteristics of both contrived collegiality and collaborative culture coexist. Much of the collaborative work is spontaneous and voluntary, development oriented, and pervades both time and space. However, there are other parts of collaborative work which are more regulated or contrived by principals. There is an element of collaboration built into the work of all teachers. The school’s leaders are comfortable with the knowledge that all teachers do not collaborate to the same extent, and feel that staff morale and student learning do not suffer because of this. Collegial consonance is not destroyed by a degree of either isolation or compulsory collaboration. Healthy staff relationships may be the glue of the collegial bond.