School Culture and Collaboration Sample Clauses

School Culture and Collaboration. This section provides the literature review of school culture, learning community and their relation to collaboration. The discussion above suggests that collaboration among teachers helps schools to be more effective; it has, therefore, become a driving component of school policy documents (Hargreaves, 1994). One key factor that influences collaboration among teachers and their interactions can be called school culture. Fullan and Xxxxxxxxxx (1992) defined a culture of collaboration as a working environment where educators share ideas. Because every school is a ‘living organism’ in its special 'ecosystem', which consists of specific rules, values, attitudes and routines, it implies that school cultures cannot be alike. Thus, how collaboration or colleagues working together on projects is understood and practised differs between settings. The above leads to the discussion about how collaborative school culture is formed. One key strategy would be to create learning communities at schools. Xxxxx et al. (2002) claimed that learning communities have the capacity to improve collaboration among teachers providing them with opportunities for further professional growth. Xxxx (1997) believed that shared values and missions are fundamental for the formation of professional learning communities. When working together, teachers should design a common vision of how to improve the school and then make an action plan on how to achieve common goals. Xxxxxx and Xxxxxx (2001) highlighted that educators in learning communities are akin to students in the learning process. If every participant is a learner in the collaborative learning community, then teachers may begin thinking that they can help their pupils to learn instead of thinking they can teach them (XxXxxx, 2004). It is therefore important that school staff are constantly supported by school leaders and departmental heads who do their best to create positive interactions and learning environments aiming at realising common goals as well as including all school members in the process of decision-making. Hence, the PLC can be an effective framework for teachers’ professional identity development and pupils’ learning. According to Xxxxxxxxx (2013), school culture is a version of collaboration in which teachers learn what students learn. Xxxxxx Xxxx (2010) emphasised that collaboration aims to build a culture among teachers which comprises powerful pedagogical knowledge that is then to be continuously disseminated wit...