Latest MetLife Survey Confirms the Power of Teacher Collaboration

Policy pundits and journalists who weigh in on the teaching effectiveness debate should take note of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher — whose theme Collaborating for Student Success  speaks volumes to the issue of how to identify effective teachers.

While researchers continue the search for methods to isolate individual teacher effects, the MetLife survey reveals that over 90% of the nation’s teachers believe their colleagues contribute to their own teaching effectiveness. New teachers, in particular, were more likely to strongly agree that their success in the classroom hinged on the effectiveness of others.  
 
For me, this finding calls to mind the 2009 study by Jackson and Bruegmann highlighting the importance of peer learning for teachers. Using 11 years of matched teacher and student achievement data in North Carolina, these scholars (from Cornell and Harvard, respectively) were able to isolate and quantify the added value brought about by teachers’ collective expertise — finding that most value-added gains are attributable to teachers who are more experienced (and qualified) and stay together as teams.*
 
The results reported in Part 1 (Effective Teaching and Leadership) of MetLife's new survey offer additional insights. Teachers in schools that report more collaboration are more likely to point out that:

• other teachers contribute to their classroom success

• there are higher levels of trust among teachers and principals,

• there are more opportunities to watch each other teach, and

• they are more satisfied with their careers.
 
The MetLife data confirms the powerful effects of deep teacher collaboration. Policymakers who seek to improve student performance should pay attention to the international PISA research, which found that teachers in nations with high-performing schools have somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week to work with their colleagues — critiquing lessons, examining student work products, and developing and adapting curriculum. Strikingly, the MetLife survey also reveals that the average American teacher spends less than 3 hours a week working with his or her fellow teachers — and almost one in 5 teachers has less than one hour per week of “structured collaboration.”
 
Want to improve teaching effectiveness? Listen to teachers — and make it possible for teachers to spend substantive time listening to each other. Kudos to Metlife for providing important new evidence to support this much-needed reform strategy.

* Jackson, C. K. & Bruegmann, E. (2009, August).  Teaching students and teaching each other: The importance of peer learning for teachers.  NBER Working Paper 15202.  Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Comments

[Claus]

And Kudos to you for summing it up so completely. The individual teacher as hero or dullard model still prevails, and a lot of the recent media coverage reinforces it. The MetLife survey will, I hope, encourage people to include collaboration in the mix.

[Barnett Berry]

Thanks Claus. Check out TLN colleague Anthony Cody and his poignant portrait of how collaboration beats out competition at

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2010/02/competition_cant_beat_collabor.html

AC says is so well: "In my eighteen years of experience at Bret Harte Middle School in Oakland, by far the most satisfying thing we did was to build a strong collaborative community of science and math teachers there. We spent several years reflecting on our practice together, having experienced teachers coach and support novices, and working on assessment practices. We expanded this work into a district-wide curriculum project that involved dozens of teacher leaders from across the district. http://tlc.ousd.k12.ca.us/~acody/montclarion.html

"We are continuing our work in this vein through our TeamScience mentoring program, which likewise brings experienced teachers together with novices to move our instruction forward. This week our mentors spent time looking carefully at student work, preparing to do this with the new teachers they work with."

AC continues:

"We find scarce funds to pay these mentors for their time, but that is not what drives this collaboration. We are motivated by the same thing that drew us to teach in these challenging schools in the first place – a deep concern for the well-being of our students. We want to collaborate, to share, to support one another and COOPERATE."

AC asks:

"So why is it that the central metaphor for education reform has become competition?"

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Teacher collaboration is the best way of enhance our educational system, good idea.

[Jordan Jumpman]

Always be the first to congratulate an opponent who succeeds, the last to criticize a colleague who fails.

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Teacher collaboration is the best way of enhance our educational system, good idea.