Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/walking-the-talk-of-collaboration/5015072/
Collaboration is not a passive phenomenon; it requires risk taking with some passion about it. Collaboration that leads to meaningful learning often begins with someone's (or something's) act of provocation and the willingness of another to become engaged.Elizabeth Jones and John Nimmo (1999)
Collaboration has now become one of those buzz words in our field, referring to a variety of efforts to bring people together for shared goals, projects, or tasks. Funders and policy makers favor collaborative efforts among organizations with proposals to improve quality and academic outcomes. The growing voices of those influenced by the Reggio approach emphasize the importance of collaboration among parents and teachers, teachers and teachers, teachers and children. But in a country like the United States, founded with a mandate to preserve the rights of individuals, how does collaboration take hold and what does it look like, especially in the everyday life of an early childhood program?
True collaboration requires a set of dispositions, beliefs, commitments, and skills. Even then, it isn't easy to collaborate, especially across significant differences in cultural perspectives, experiences, personal, or organizational histories. Above all, collaboration takes time, something rather scarce in most of our child care programs. Are there models we can look ...