Working Collaboratively

“Collaborative professionalism is about how teachers and other educators transform teaching and learning together to work with all students to develop fulfilling lives of meaning, purpose, and success.” (Hargreaves, 2018)

Creating opportunities for learners to work collaboratively during this academic year is central to reducing feelings of isolation and difficulties with motivation; two of the main concerns identified by learners, parents and teachers during lockdown.

Working with others is one of the personal capabilities at the heart of the NI Curriculum. You will have 'tried and tested' strategies to support collaboration in your classroom, and it can feel impossible to replicate these at times where it is necessary for pupils to learn remotely. This module aims to support you in replicating the learning, if not the complete experience of these classroom activities.

Working in groups can be tricky enough when the members of the group are all in the same place, but the same principles from the classroom will translate into a remote learning context. In a hybrid approach, most teachers are likely to plan in a way which will maximise the opportunities of face to face teaching and the very different but equally valid and valuable opportunities offered through the use of online learning platforms and resources. Your classroom skills are still critical to the success of your learners, even if that classroom has moved online. The most important thing is to be focused on what it is that you most want the pupils to take away from the experience of working in groups.

In the module, you will be able to review how you can exploit both classroom and remote learning to help pupils develop each element of becoming an effective team member. One thing we have all learned is that being able to work with others in a remote context is a key feature of effective working in the 21st century.

The first part of this unit is designed to help you reflect on what you or the pupils have struggled with regarding collaboration in the online environment, specifically focusing on pupil needs. It will also help to familiarise your with some of the collaborative tools available through the C2K managed network. The second part focuses on building teacher collaboration and the importance of professional learning networks. Both can be worked through at your own pace or as a learning group. They are designed to get you started with online collaboration work.

Creating a collaborative classroom

Promoting Collaboration

So what is the value of working in groups? The NI Curriculum has this to say about working with others:

Each experience of group work will have elements of many of these different strands, but by selecting a particular focus for a piece of work or an activity, you can help pupils to understand that the content they are covering is important, but that while they complete the activity, they are also explicitly learning to 'take personal responsibility' for their own contribution to the work of the group, or that they are learning to see things from the viewpoint of others.

The Working with Others strand of the NI Curriculum (KS1/2) (KS3) (KS4) is of central importance in meeting the challenge set down in the Learning Objectives of the curriculum, which are to develop the learner as

• an individual

• a contributor to society

• a contributor to the economy and the environment.

Through effective group work, pupils develop the dispositions and characteristics outlined at the bottom of the Big Picture:

• personal responsibility

• concern for others

• commitment -determination- resourcefulness

• openness to new ideas

• self-confidence/self-belief

• integrity and moral courage

• tolerance

• flexibility

• community spirit

• curiosity

• (optimism and pragmatism)

Working with others is also a key component in building strong social relationships and helping children feel connected to each other and to the wider community. This can be difficult to achieve in a remote learning context, but there are ways to help learners to develop these personal attributes whether they are in the classroom or not.

Please see CCEA resources on Group work Click here for further resources