Readings

Facilitating the Development of Collaborative Groups

By Robert Garmston
October 8, 2003

A breed of pack rats located near Sonoma, California, build stick nests with several rooms. When the nest is vacated, other rats use the house instead of building anew. They do this because the many natural predators in the environment make it dangerous to be exposed while nest building. However, within this practice lies a problem. Disease carrying mites, fleas and other vermin can inhabit the nests. Through what Animal Behaviorist Dr. Ben Hart at the University of Davis calls evolved predisposition, rat families have learned to solve this problem by liberally placing bay leaves into the nest. Laboratory tests confirmed the potency of the bay leaves in killing vermin.

Studies of adaptive behavior in humans find that we, too make ecologically rational decisions and it seems possible that some of these have become generalized predispositions about the way we function in schools. Related to the normal tendency of humans to choose behaviors that serve perceived needs, then continue with those behaviors even when the environmental demands change, leaders face several dilemmas when supporting the development of collaborative groups focused on student learning. First, because the history of teaching is one of isolated practice, the central focus for teachers has been on "my students" and professional skills acquisition has appropriately focused on this need. Also, given this history of in-school-silo-existences, no need has existed for collaborative norms, skills or structures. Another dilemma for today's leaders is the oppressive environment created by the implementation of No Child Left Behind in many settings. While NCLB goals are laudable, resources for and impact on learning environments for students and teachers often are not. Recently I worked with cream-of-the-crop teachers on special assignment to needs improvement schools. They were terrified that if test scores did not rise this year, they would lose their jobs. Such pressure defies all that we know about getting the best out of people. Further, it stimulates quick and shallow fix strategies that leave the sources of the problems intact and undisturbed.

Like the pack rats near Sonoma, California, educators have adapted to an environment suited to a factory metaphor of what schools were preparing students for, and how schools functioned. We adapted, in other words, which is to stay with a change once made. Adaptive is to continuously clarify identity (a group's identity maintains a reciprocal relationship with it's beliefs, values, assumptions, and mental models) while changing the way we work in alignment with emerging clarity about collective identity.

The mission of our work with Adaptive Schools¹ is to capacitate school systems for self-directed, self-renewing adaptivity. In large part this means a change in school culture towards conditions in which staffs have the confidence and skills to talk together about tough topics. Research findings are clear that faculty groups that collaborate, share norms and values, have a collective focus on student learning, engage in reflective dialogue and deprivatize practice, create conditions in which school wide gains in student achievement are realized.²

Fortunately, neither teachers nor administrators, are Sonoma pack rats, passively waiting for an evolving pre disposition toward collaborative culturing. As individuals and as groups, they have the cognitive capacity for vision, self-management, self-reflection and self-modification. In schools that are successfully adapting to new standards, new assessments, new student bodies, new curriculums, faculty members plan together, reflect together, examine student work together, and study and develop action plans to address performance challenges.

Skills for Collaboration

Highest on the list is the skill of listening. In the research documenting the influence of relational trust (principal-teacher, teacher-teacher, etc.) on student achievement gains in Chicago schools³, "perspective swapping" was labeled as the most significant of leadership skills. Perspective swapping means that one listens to another so completely that one could with empathy and understanding know the perspective of another. Listening is also a key skill for teachers as they examine student work together, analyze test results, organize events, plan, reflect and problem solve. The three subset skills of listening are the pause, paraphrase and probe (for specificity). Two of these create chemical changes in the blood stream that support a state of responsiveness to ideas and others.

Sending skills are essential. Some of these include naming the intention of your communication, putting ideas on the table, and advocating for your views. Other sending skills, surprisingly, are not verbal at all but are universal mechanisms for non-verbally directing energy, focusing attention, and converting negative energy to an open consideration of ideas.

Structures for Collaboration

Two different ways of talking are essential for improving schools. Discussion, in which the goal is to make decisions, is one. The other is dialogue, in which the goal is to develop understanding.⁴

Skilled discussions take place within a shape known to participants. Three elements help form this shape: 1) clarity about decision making processes and authority, 2) knowledge of the boundaries within which the group's decision making authority is appropriate, and 3) five standards for orderly decision making meetings.

Dialogue creates a relaxed alertness of cognitive and psychological safety in which ideas can be presented, and explored without judgment. Group members seek to understand each other's viewpoints. When dialogue precedes decision-making, decisions are more likely to stay made.

Both discussion and dialogue are needed for intelligent conversations leading to understanding and action on important topics. Both require meta-cognitive skills. In our work we refer to these as capabilities. Unlike capacities, which can be reached, as a glass has a capacity to hold so much water, a capability represents a dynamic interplay with events, awareness and personal decision-making. Four group member capabilities are:

To know one's intentions and choose congruent behaviors.
To set aside unproductive patterns of listening, responding, and inquiring.
To know when to self assert and when to integrate.
To know and support the group's purposes, topics, processes and development.

Leaders see groups not as they are but as what they might become. They also come to understand that it is more challenging to be an effective group member than to be a facilitator of a group. Since group success depends more on the collaborative skills of group members than it does the skill and knowledge of the facilitator, attention must be given to the development of group member knowledge, skills and capabilities. Thus, our focus in the Adaptive Schools work, in addition to developing leadership skills, is to develop the group's abilities to function effectively.

During Adaptive Schools seminars, both structures and skills in the above areas are developed. We will also address several concepts that make good schools outstanding and other schools strong. This includes an understanding of schools as dynamical, non-linear systems that require, in addition to traditional ways of thinking, non linear approaches to understanding and meeting challenges. Seminar attention also focuses on how to make meetings effective (maximum work, minimum time, maximum member satisfaction) specific ways to convert negative energy and scaffolds and protocols for back home application.

Increasingly, self-renewing schools are collaborative places where adults care about one another, share common goals and values, and have the skills and knowledge to plan together, solve problems together, and fight passionately but gracefully for ideas to improve instruction. Such schools are developed, not born.

Endnotes

¹Center for Adaptive Schools Web site.

²Louis, K.S., Marks, H.M., and Kruse, S. (1996) "Teachers Professional Community in Restructuring Schools." American Educational Research Journal, 33 (4), 757-536.

³Bryk, M., and Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New York: The Russell Sage Foundation.

⁴Garmston, R., and Wellman, B. (1999) The Adaptive School: A Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups. Norwood, MA: Christopher Gordon.