A Few Words About Collaboration
Head for the Edge, Library Media Connection, January 2006
Collaborate:
1 To work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor
2 To cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force
Merriam-Webster Online < www.m-w.com>
Collaboration. Ah, the Holy Grail of school librarianship. Them who does are sainted; them who don’t are damned. Information Power devotes no fewer than ten entries in its index to “collaboration,” “collaborative planning,” and “collaborative teaching.”
Skeptic that I am, I can’t help but feel that anything this widely promoted doesn’t have something wrong with it. Why, if we are falling all over ourselves to collaborate, are library positions still in jeopardy? Are we thinking hard enough about this rather vague word and its implications?
Why does this professional obsession with collaboration make me nervous?
1. Collaboration is too often viewed as a goal.
What everyone seems to forget is that collaboration is just one means (and not always the best one) of achieving a goal, not the goal itself. Too many library studies say “such and such” led to greater collaboration. Big whoop. Did it lead to more measurable student learning?
Face it - there are downsides to working with others. It takes more time to reach decisions and get work accomplished. It takes time to find the time to work together. Not everyone likes working with others. Defining specific responsibilities is too often neglected. Team players may get undeserved credit or blame for an outcome. Some people are just a real pain in the kiester with whom to work. Genius and imagination may be dimmed through group-think timidity.
If I am a principal or teacher who worries about literacy rates, I don’t worry about my teachers being collaborative – I worry if my staff is doing what needs to be done to raise kids’ reading ability and the test scores that supposedly demonstrate that ability. Collaboration may feel all warm and fuzzy, but it also has to get the job done –period.
2. Collaboration can encourage codependency rather than interdependency.
One of our media specialists has been collaboratively teaching a unit with a teacher for nearly the past ten years. The classroom teacher has students write stories; the media specialist teaches students how to create web pages that display the stories. It’s a wonderful activity by two talented professionals. The problem? Why, after ten years, is the classroom teacher not teaching her kids to do the web pages, and the media specialist teaming with a different teacher on a different project?
Too often our unconscious rationale for collaboration is not advancing common goals, but creating a codependence that might insure job security. (The teacher can’t do this without me!) I personally have never seen this ever work. Most people dislike those on whom they feel codependent. We have more strength in the long run if we teach others how to do a thing (especially with technology) than if we simply do it for them. I’ve always argued we should be people who empower others rather than being the wizards who keep dark skills to ourselves.
One of the texts I use in teaching library management classes is Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Reading it now, 16 years after publication, it may seem like a collection of tired clichés (think win-win, start with the end in mind, paradigm shift, etc.), but as far as I know, Covey invented these now widely used terms. An overarching theme of the book is for people to move from dependence to independence to interdependence. Covey states that we can’t achieve interdependence without being truly independent – which to me argues against the whole job retention through wizardry approach.
3. Collaboration doesn’t make us indispensable.
No matter how much the school budget shrinks, teachers still have to be hired - at least teachers who have a curriculum for which the public holds them responsible. Who is responsible for the teaching and assessment of information literacy and technology skills in your school? If it is the classroom teacher and you are “collaborating,” your position can be eliminated because these skills will still be taught. Not as well, certainly, but they will be taught. (See “Owning Our Curriculum” in the October 2004 issue of Library Media Connections.) Power comes with responsibility for critical tasks, and if we alone are responsible for none of them, we have no power.
Be cautious. Collaboration is fine if we have a higher purpose for working together, if we have clearly defined roles in a project, and if it the most effective means of achieving a worthwhile goal. If…
