Anatomy of a Collaboration

Study of a College of Education/Public School Partnership

Judith J. Slater

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780815316442
• eBook ISBN: 9781135571412
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a case study of a partnership between a college of education and a large urban school system in a joint project to build and sustain a collaboration for an elementary school to be built on the university campus. It provides insights into the perceptions of each party and describes the basic problems of the collaborative process. The analysis critically examines the conditions that determine success or failure of reform: the personal and public elements that promote and deter collaboration and the paradigms and metaphors from organizational theory, change, and leadership applicable to public schools and colleges of education. After a careful analysis of basic paradigms in organizational development, the book provides a unique constructivist interpretation. Finally, an illuminating set of discussions are presented with critical analytic commentary on the nature of organizational collaboration.

---

Chapter One

The Ready-to-Wear School

---

Schools are built beautifully today. I live and work in an area where new construction abounds, where new schools are visions of the possible—clean, architecturally pleasing, a mirage of art deco colors, glass, and open spaces that complement the weather and lifestyle. Older schools have been renovated, and they too are technologically savvy places, filled with the environmental trappings of modern, if not postmodern, education. But, upon closer examination, there is a striking similarity to them. This is a familiarity that transcends the design and equipment. This is the commonplace of schools that makes them more similar than they are different, that gives the viewer the perception that the same things are going on inside and propels the vision of quality as being the common milieu. They come in different sizes and different shapes with different students inside, but the mode of operation, the presentation, and the range of variety from one to the other is hauntingly familiar. This sameness is not accidental. It serves a purpose as old as schools. It helps replicate the cultural understandings and beliefs that are the very fabric of our society. It transmits the cultural heritage and reproduces those elements that are deemed most valuable by those who make policy and are in positions of decision-making power. It, in effect, dissuades huge variation and redirection of purpose, even when experimentation is supported and change is in the air.

Schools today are structurally like the clothing industry's ready-to-wear collection, which mimics the designer's one of a kind. The majority of us who can't afford to purchase the designer clothes go to the mall, to a chain store, or to a discount outlet (the modern form of getting a deal!). Each store carries the same merchandise, different sizes, all off the rack, and we have convinced ourselves that we are not only getting the exact same product as the designer model, but also that this is desirable that everyone make their choices from this limited version and menu. We are at the mercy of the copier of the designer goods. The copier takes what is apparent on the outside and duplicates the product to look like the original, but the stitching, the details, the uniqueness, and the quality of the finished product are different from the original. The copy, because it isn't made as well as the original, doesn't wear as well. The advertisement tells us they are the same, but advertisers shape public opinion and don't support critical awareness. Advertisers make us think we are getting an exact duplicate of the “best” when what we are getting is only a poor imitation.

Schools that duplicate successes from other places look the same as the copied designer clothes. Worse, they often look like last year's clothes, as the last bastion of replication of something successful is perpetuated long after it has outlived its usefulness and appropriateness. We see ourselves walking down the street and confirm that what we wear is appropriate, new, and current. We have it all! Except it is not current and not appropriate. It was created for another population, another setting, by those who are not familiar with our unique needs. And, what if our needs are changing all the time, as is the case in Miami and other areas where the population changes daily and dramatically? How do we remain current, fashionable, and responsive to a future that is not so clearly described? Who speaks for us, the teachers and researchers, about best practice and shared commitment to research and innovation, when our standards are created by those outside the profession? Have we lost our voice, lost our opinion, and allowed the popular to form our taste?

I have this vision of the creation of a school that looks less like the others, that meets the individualistic needs of the student population it serves, that is not hampered by someone else's vision of what is appropriate, but instead is allowed to be created by a process that frees itself from the restrictions and assumptions that what works for one is good for all. This place allows all stakeholders to participate fully. It allows anyone concerned with the welfare and good of the school and the community it serves and the students who attend to have the opportunity to create something specific, good, and just for the people who live and work there. It allows for the collective vision and voice of participants, and it creates a positive outlook and tenor for the possible. It is a community of those concerned with the quality and care of the students who attend. This community is free of the political constraints and bureaucratic entanglements that restrict the possible from becoming a reality. It is a positive environment in which excuses for why you “can't” do something are turned into synergistic dialogue to promote the “can.”

Why is this unusual? Why is this not the norm? Is this not in the realm of the work of the professional in schools? I have worn many hats and played many roles in my career. I have been a teacher for multiple grade levels; I have explored the possibility and stretch of creative imagination as a teacher of gifted students for many years. I have been a parent advocate, department chair, head of the faculty, and union representative, sometimes for protection of myself and others who saw things differently and were not content with the status quo. Sometimes seeing things in different ways is dangerous, even if the end result is good for students and community. Sometimes you have to protect yourself and others in order to vision the future. The past, and past practices, are much easier to rely on and perpetuate. The past has a map.

Some fundamental questions must be addressed in any effort to make change within schools: What are our goals for educating the youth? What are our desires for them? We have to be very clear because much of what is current may, in fact, be incompatible when implemented simultaneously. Current reforms have a tendency to negate each other. The scramble for experimentation—duplication of successes from one site to another or from one community to another—assumes that structural changes result in similar outcomes. This perpetuates the belief that scientific proof can be generalized, even if that science is pseudoscientific and applied uniformly across the board without regard for individual uniqueness of location. What is the criteria for selection of reform? It may be something inherent in what we believe is good and just and right for all children. It could be more specific; if so, if the stakeholders are in agreement, we should be able to forge ahead to accomplish the goals. This doesn't happen often in practice since each of the stakeholders belongs to a larger organization that is bound by a culture that operates both formally and informally. Each of these organizations has implicit and explicit understandings and beliefs that guide their operation and create the uniformity of behaviors and position viewed by outsiders as the norm.

Let us suppose that the diversity present within and between organizations can be understood and work can go forward with this knowledge. If goals then can be collectively determined and articulated, the reality is that each organization involved understands them still through their own lens of meaning. That which is collectively determined may from beginning to end be understood and implemented individualistically by those who make up the community. This is a philosophically based orientation that must be understood. Goals and decisions for implementation may be geared to perpetuate the culture and status quo of the group that is dominant or the one that has within its possession the power, control, and structure to direct decision making toward their own purposes. If so, the future may look more like the past than the reform efforts set out to accomplish.

The reverse scenario is one in which the organizations involved can come to agreement about making change, and power and control are shared in an idealistic forum characterized by a genuine exchange of ideas and opportunities. What then are the responsibilities and who takes the initiative for each part of the process of implementation? Do some people and their parent organizations have to give anything up for success to occur? Are their losses tangible and real or internal and harder to abandon? How are these people seen by their colleagues? Do they think they have abandoned the mission and goals of their own organization, or worse, are they now exhibiting behaviors that look more like those of the enemy? How do individuals protect themselves from these accusations while empowered to create changes that may benefit all in the long run?

We have to make decisions about our very beliefs as a collective and as individuals within the collective as to what is good and just and fair. We have lost sight of the purpose of schooling. Reforms are at the mercy of business, technology, national priorities, and domination of interest groups rather than being focused on helping children and families. Many parents give up their child to the school and believe that the school will do the best for them. They do not question the authority of the school; they do not know to become involved, ask questions, and understand the process of schooling so that their child can benefit from the experience. If their child is not successful, they blame the child because they believe in the authority of the school and would not dare to question the school's intent.

This paradox of sorts has led to the reliance on technological solutions to help create responses to school problems. This has not proved fruitful either. We cannot use or rely on the belief, popular in modern culture, that we can have a technological solution to humanistic problems. Technology provides the opportunity for alternatives. It has not been and will not be the solution to a changing field of demands placed on education. It has provided a theory about teaching and learning, of teacher preparation, and the standardization of process, but the raw materials respond more uniquely than technology is able to predict. The technology itself has become subservient to the mechanization it creates. The mechanical aspects take on a life of their own as they become the ends of the process and success is determined by how well the mechanization works. Is it efficient, of quality, well implemented, documentable? This doesn't work in schools because of people—people who are teachers, who come with their own beliefs, experiences, and backgrounds, and people who are students who come from a diversity of environments and cultures—and governmental restrictions. The technology has detoured schools from the humanistic mission they were created to serve.

We used to create schools that were part of communities. Children rode their bikes to school, neighbors watched them, and the community was responsible for each other. Now, we have disintegrated neighborhoods, and we have replaced the normative environment with a technology of school that, in theory, would serve that function, but, in practice, is devoid of the essence of the people that inhabit and support it. Technology is prescriptive also. If a child comes to school hungry, the way to solve the problem is to diagnose and prescribe. The source of the problem is not part of the solution finding. As problems change, schools respond with technological methods of finding solutions. Modernization is technologically driven, but practice has not kept up with the changing nature of the cultural mix. The blueprints for solutions are for problems that are long gone.

Collaboration as Ideal

This project sought to create something new and collaborative between a public school system and a university. It attempted to provide for an operating structure that was detached from the political, social life of the parent institutions, thus creating a freer working atmosphere. Free, however, means to be loosened from that which you find restrictive or self-perpetuating at the expense of or limitation of the new. Not everyone who participated in this project was on a quest for the humanistic freedom to participate fully. Some were, instead, interested in seeing everyone buy in to the existing structures and patterns of operation because they truly believed that the present methods are the best. To actively be free from the restrictions, you must first be aware of what they are. The fight has always been between that habitual mode of operating and living within a culture that maintains and perpetuates itself and the waves of reform that seek to make change. The maintenance is accomplished through the very political and social aspects of a culture that perpetuates processes that dominate and characterize its functions. To collectively work toward a reachable future, we must have the desire to change first, and then, secondly, we must have an understanding of what we want to change from.

In the case of this project, what was seen as an opportunity to change was the interaction between two organizational cultures. This culture is operationalized over time through the established behaviors supported by very distinct belief systems that nourish the abilities of each respective staff member to be successful. Collectively this creates the identity of each organization as understood by the people who work within each culture. As this project unfolded, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish what elements of operation were liberating and what elements were perpetuating and resistant to change. Often what seemed to be liberating, in practice, was too loosely coupled to create the conditions for true, lasting change.

Part of the problem is that culture is tied so intimately with our technological growth and competitiveness that we cannot hope to change it without undermining the very structure that supports its perpetuation. This is clearly evident in school. Any time teachers are asked to make a change, they react with a great deal of resistance. Why? Are they resisting the innovation or are they protecting the last vestige of their own personal freedom, which reflects beliefs perhaps not consistent with the change? What do we require of them? That they be modern, that they align with progress, that they act in ways that are clearly inconsistent with the beliefs they hold about their identity within the organization. All of this is forced in the name of progress, as we demand that people act in ways that they cannot believe in.

Transitions must be established to create bridges to something different (Dewey, 1939). We must find new ways of operation, new understandings, and new reactions to build successfully an environment that is being created anew. Otherwise, there is resistance to what appears to be totalitarian control, and, as Dewey stated (10), that control is not just over actions, but includes feelings, emotions, desires, and opinions as people are told what to think, how to act, and how they will be measured and rated in concordance with these measures of success. There really is no objective test, however, for whether people believe in what they are asked to do or why they persist in not complying without discord. The dominant form of behavior is an affect of the culture of the organization, and this creates the boundaries of what is possible, the ideas people have about their individuality, their worldview, and their conscious rationalizations.

A delicate relationship exists between the organization and its culture and the society and political democracy within which the organization operates. Some motivations from without the organization are significant influences through the economic, political, aesthetic, scientific, or some other self-interest wielding of power that impacts on whether the organization is adaptable to become freer in the way it conducts its business (Dewey, 1939, 17). “Individuals can find the security and protection that are prerequisites for freedom only in association with others—and then the organization these associations take on, as a measure of securing their efficiency, limits the freedom of those who have entered into them” (Dewey, 1939, 166). Dewey used the term organization as synonymous with association and society! Individuality demands that the association develop, sustain itself, and arrange and coordinate its elements; otherwise, it is formless and void of power. When power limits the opportunity to create, however, it limits the very freedom it was designed to enhance.

What are the conditions of freedom that would create the opportunities for individuals and organizations to operate for the benefit of the community of school? How do we create the conditions necessary for the opportunity to be adaptive and responsive to a changing field? I think the clues lie in the freedom and individuality of people who live, work, and have a stake in the community rather than in group or organizational solutions. This requires cooperation, a natural component of communities that perhaps we have lost or destroyed as our mission became misdirected toward the cultural reproduction of what was artificially created at the expense of real community. Have we lost, as Dewey predicted, democracy whose “home is the neighborly community” (1939, 159)? Rules, regulations, legal restrictions, control over the body politic, all pose limitations on community. These limitations were not part of the economic reasons for the natural associations of community life Dewey saw as a forum and platform for communication of emotions, ideas, and joint collaboration (159). Even in 1939, Dewey cautioned about ready-made intellectual goods that would come with ready-made food, articles of clothing, and gadgets, all of which distance the individual from a personal share in the manufacture of the very things we learn to value (46). It is like attending an art festival, where we marvel at the people who make things by hand and look less at the quality of their products. The marvel is their ability to not produce the ready-to-wear that has become our habitus. If we are to serve the newly emerging community—ethnically diverse, politically changing, with students coming from other lands who have lived under different beliefs and conditions of existence with life habits formed that are different from those here—do we perpetuate the commonplace of our institutions? Rather, maybe those institutions need to embrace new directions and simplify (74).

Creating an Atmosphere of Community

The creation of community is like the creation of an artistic product, or as Michelangelo wrote, analogous to divine creation. The process is more important to the enduring qualities of the work than the finished creation because we can educate people to appreciate. Truly creative, original products are produced with the condition of leaving past practices and sensibilities behind. Thus, the public and the buyer need to come to appreciate them and understand them, and that is the problem with new replacing old models of taste.

This is not very different from my life working in schools for over twenty years. Many changes came and went, but they were structural changes, not qualitative changes. Recent innovations, such as year-round schools and uniforms, are sold to the public with assurances that the traditional measures of success—grades, scores, and normative comparisons—will be affected and most certainly will go up as a result. But, what is the relationship of each to the evaluation measures, and are these attempts creating systemic changes in our sensibilities and understandings of the way change evolves?

There is an intrigue with moving from the present reality to the ideal vision. This intrigue involves the personal decision making that subverts purpose as each person tries to protect his or her own organization or the position he or she occupies within that organization. The idea that working together may be more effective to meet the needs of students and families, or at least be more efficient, does not seem to be compelling enough. Doubt is always cast as to motivation and attempts at control. While working in a local school district, I took a parent and her child for a psychological evaluation. This family had many problems, and they had learned to deal with the system with anger and distrust. The effort to get this far was enormous. I had to sit, talk, and cajole both the mother and child to get them to go to and then stay for the evaluation. Did the child need to be evaluated? Yes. I truly believe so, but the system does not recognize how threatening this can be even to families that cry out with critical needs, both emotional and physical. There is a mystery to the mask of professionalization that is not only hard for parents to understand, but also is not even respectful to other professionals from supposedly supporting fields. I sat in the house while they got ready. I drove them there. I sat in the room for the intake interview, and I sat there in the waiting room as both the mother and son were evaluated. I was there as we toured the full-time school facility where he was referred for a full-time program to meet his needs. I sat there next to the parent as she was told that she would have to sign away permission to medicate as a condition of entrance into this program because this wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Critical Education Practice
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editors' Introduction
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Ready-to-Wear School
• Chapter Two Introduction to the Process
• Chapter Three Constructivist Interpretation of the Collaboration
• Chapter Four Leaving the Past Behind
• Chapter Five Negotiations: Power, Authority, and Truth
• Chapter Six Resistance, Leverage, and Learning Organizations
• Chapter Seven Organizational Systematics: A Virtual World
• Chapter Eight Community Solutions
• Chapter Nine Creating Conditions for Growth
• Bibliography
• Index