Schools often get caught up in the ‘next big thing’. Collaboration, it seems, remains hot on the 2019 agenda. And, like most big-ticket items, it will be misunderstood, misrepresented, and poorly implemented, if at all.
Collaboration is a model that allows two or more people to work together towards their shared goals. Collaboration is about teams, and having clear purposes and processes. But here’s the sticking point. Collaboration is not easy.
And why not?
First, collaboration relies on a range of human behaviours and capabilities that must work in sync to achieve an agreed set of what are usually small objectives – steps on the way towards one larger goal.
Second, understanding of collaboration is often fundamentally flawed. Many confuse it with co-operation. It leans towards maintaining the status quo. It reduces individual accountability, and ultimately ends up with students playing a game of ‘follow the leader’. For these reasons, it makes perfect sense that educators who strongly advocate collaboration often express an ‘anti-competition’ stance.
In just a few months, NAPLAN testing will begin. A few months after that, results will be made public on the MYSCHOOL website. NAPLAN and MYSCHOOL are essential features of a philosophy that accommodates competition. Competition encourages students, teachers and schools to challenge themselves, to take care of themselves, to strive to thrive. It’s something collaboration doesn’t easily offer.
The educators who advocate against NAPLAN and MYSCHOOL might think that Julia Gillard was responsible for introducing them. Perhaps they need a little reminder.
In 2004, the Former Prime Minister John Howard and his then Education Minister, Dr. Brendan Nelson, made a plan. It provided for: a national curriculum and testing; better reporting to parents, including communication in plain-language; and meaningful comparative information on school quality and overall student outcomes. These goals were rejected at the time by unions and the Labor party.
It could be argued that the competition encouraged by Howard and Nelson was, in fact, hijacked by the Rudd-Gillard government.
Little wonder the ‘next big thing’ in education and across Australian schools is often misunderstood, misrepresented and poorly implemented. Our politicians spend too little time in collaboration to achieve worthwhile Australian goals and far too much time in unproductive competition.
Copyright © Cheryl Lacey 2019
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Cheryl Lacey is an educationist and advocate of agitating change in Australian education to face global challenges facing Australia and Australians.
If you would like to learn more about the outcomes achieved by educational leaders and teams who have worked with me, contact me at cheryl@cheryllacey.com or visit www.cheryllacey.com
