Getting the Most out of Your Collaborative Teams

Co-Authored by Pam VanHorn, Ph.D. and Greg VanHorn, Ph.D.

Another school year brings energy and excitement along with expectations and the pressure to perform, in order to accomplish greater student growth. Each year administrators and teachers strive to prepare themselves to hit the ground running for increased academic achievement. One of the ways to prepare is through self and collaborative team reflection. Engaging in self-reflection and reflection of collaborative team progress is a yearlong commitment. Here are some of the basics you and your teams may wish to double check and reflect on this year:

Are your teams formed and ready to collaborate? There is no right or wrong answer in how to organize your teacher-based teams. Teams can be organized by grade level, multi-grade level, and/or subject area either horizontally or vertically. The ideal size of a team is more than two and less than seven. An important component of a teacher-based team is that it uses a collaborative-inquiry process and studies teaching strategies and the impact on student learning.

Are meeting times, locations and expectations set for staff? Is communication clear for all staff? Meeting times and locations should be set for the year. Minimally, 50 minutes a week is necessary for teacher-based teams to work at top efficiency. Meeting two or more times a week is better only if the improvement process is adhered to in the meetings. Expectations for all team members should include being on time, present and engaged in the meeting process and a contributing team member in discussions. Furthermore, there should be expectations of coming prepared with student work samples, the results of student formative assessments, and a readiness to discuss student data.

Do teams have written protocols, norms, and non-negotiables set for effective collaboration? Written protocols, meeting norms, and educator non-negotiables are the foundations of effective collaborative inquiry teams. These conventions will focus the work of teams leading to the study, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of impact on agreed upon instructional strategies. Agreed-upon norms will guide the engagement of the team members during the meeting and the district/school non-negotiables insure that the work of the team is supporting core beliefs and values of the adults concerning their students. The district, school and/or teacher-based teams develop their own protocols, norms, and non-negotiables guiding the collaborative inquiry process. Consistency among district, school, and teacher-based teams can help all teams operate more effectively with one another.

Do teams need additional training? The number one responsibility of the building leadership team (BLT) is the progress of the school. The most important job of the BLT is to support the teacher-based teams (TBT) in the building to become highly effective. Doug Reeves (2008) “Myth of Linearity” states that 80% of TBT’s need to be effective to move a school’s progress forward as a building. If the TBT’s need additional training on any aspect of the collaborative inquiry process, the BLT needs to provide it for the TBT’s. Regular monitoring of the workof the TBT’s by the BLT will determine if the training is making a difference. If not, the BLT needs to go back to the data and determine appropriate support needed for teams in the building.

Are teacher and building teams making instructional decisions based on current student data? There are two types of data that BLT’s and TBT’s need to learn how to use; cause data and effect data. Cause data is generally data generated by the adults in the building. Effect data is generally data generated from student performance on formative or summative assessments. It is important to consider both cause and effect data when making instructional decisions by teams. There are many sources of data provided to schools. Knowing which data to use to make instructional decisions is key to improving student achievement. If teams are not seeing results from their work to improve student achievement, the place to start looking to improve results is around the understanding and use of cause data.

What formative assessments will your teams use to determine if their teaching is resulting in student learning? Is there a “tool box” they can draw upon? Effective use of formative assessments will inform a teacher or a team of their students’ progress on an instructional outcome on a daily or, minimally, a weekly basis. There are many formative assessments available for daily use in classrooms to monitor student progress. Teams need to develop a “tool box” of choice for different formative assessments and use these regularly in their classrooms. BLT’s can help develop this “tool box” for their teacher teams by providing resources and professional development.

Are teams engaged in research-based instructional strategies and how will your teams communicate with one another to share effective practice? There are literally hundreds of research-based instructional strategies. Effect sizes for each are available to study and consider. The biggest effect size is not necessarily the measuring stick for selection of a practice. Do not be sidetracked by effect size. Teachers studying a strategy, identifying the steps needed to implement the strategy, having a team member model the strategy, and then monitoring the strategy (as it is used in classrooms) are key steps that cannot be skipped. If evidence-based strategies are implemented deeply, students will learn. Evaluating the cause data as well as the effect data of an agreed-upon strategy determines adjustments by the adults to increase the effectiveness for student learning. The highest effect size of an instructional strategy to date is a 1.57 for Collective Efficacy (Hattie, 2017). As teams see student success and progress as a result of team decisions, collective efficacy grows. Trust then grows in the collaborative inquiry process and accountability becomes genuinely internalized by teams.

Do your teams have a solid grasp of the grade level standards they are responsible to teach? Those that have “unpacked new standards” for the last several years, may respond with weariness about having already done that. Another way to look at unpacking standards may be to make it a continuing part of the collaborative process. Learning together as a team about standards and objectives can be a helpful tool in making instructional decisions based on current student data.

Do teachers bring student work to meetings for analysis? A good way to start analyzing student work as a team is to evaluate a formative assessment together during a team meeting. The discussion of what team members are seeing from the trends in student responses and possible patterns of errors can help determine next steps for re-teaching the standard. These data driven decisions can increase the number of students who master the standard and convince teachers to modify their strategies the next time in order bring about higher student mastery rate after future Tier 1 instruction.

Are team members able to effectively work together and build trust with their colleagues and are they strengthening the collective efficacy of their teams? Teams working together, building trust with colleagues, and strengthening collective efficacy are not team characteristics that occur in a linear fashion. All three characteristics develop simultaneously. When teams work effectively to improve student outcomes, trust among team members strengthens and collective efficacy increases. Effective teams are the key!

Is there an established learning agenda for teams and are colleagues learning instructional strategies as a team? One of the biggest myths around teacher-based teams is that the focus is on student learning! The outcome of an effective team is student learning. The focus of a teacher-based team is teacher learning! The lack of a teachers’ learning agenda is usually the missing piece in less effective teaming.

IF TEACHER TEAMS ARE NOT SEEING INCREASES IN STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT, LOOK AT WHAT THE ADULTS ARE DOING FIRST!

References Hattie, J. (2017).Visible Learning plus. Corwin, Thousand Oaks CA Reeves, D.B (2008) Reframing Teacher Leadership to Improve Your School, Alexandria, VA: ASCD We