Excerpted from chapter 10 of Restructuring for Caring and Effective Education: Piecing the Puzzle Together, Second Edition,edited by Richard A. Villa, Ed.D., & Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2000 Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Although collaboration is not yet the norm in many North American schools, calls for collaboration have been made repeatedly for decades by numerous educational groups with diverse interests (see National Study on Inclusive Education, 1994, 1995). In the early 1970s, collaboration was advanced by legislated school improvement reforms. At the turn of the 21st century, the effectiveness of collaborative activities is supported by a strong database from both research and practice, and the emerging evidence has been documented for preschool through high school levels and adult as well as systems levels (Idol, Nevin, & Paolucci-Whitcomb, 1993, 1999; Villa, Thousand, Nevin, & Malgeri, 1996). At least two conclusions can be drawn about effective collaboration and the achievement of outcomes for children with disabilities. First, learners with special education needs can be served effectively in inclusive environments when educators, support personnel, and families collaborate. Second, effective collaborators can expect improvements in the academic and social skills of children and youth with special needs. As for the benefits to adults, positive outcomes can be experienced in at least three domains: school restructuring, teacher empowerment, and basic need satisfaction.

Collaboration and School Restructuring

Within the school restructuring movement, collaborative teams and teaming processes have come to be viewed as vehicles for inventing the solutions that traditional bureaucratic school structures have failed to conceptualize. Various collaborative structures — site-based decision-making teams (Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 1998), ad hoc problem-solving teams (Patterson et al., 1986; Skrtic, 1987), teacher assistance teams (Chalfant, Pysh, & Moultrie, 1979), collaborative planning and teaching teams (Thousand & Villa, 1990a, 1990b) — have been recommended and described. Team structures bring together people of diverse backgrounds and interests so that they may share knowledge and skills to generate new and novel methods for individualizing learning, without the need for dual systems of general and special education (Nevin, Thousand, Paolucci-Whitcomb, & Villa, 1990; Skrtic, 1987).

Collaborative teams not only assist adults with their work but also offer students a model of the type of work structure they can expect to encounter as citizens of a highly complex and interdependent 21st-century global community. Communication and collaboration skills are among the core skills identified as essential for survival in the 21st-century work world. Educational futurists (Benjamin, 1989; Wiggins, 1989) therefore recommend that schools structure multiple opportunities for students to see these skills modeled and valued by their teachers as they operate in collaborative teams. They also recommend that students be invited to join adults as active members of the various instruction and decision-making teams of the school (Villa & Thousand, 1996).

Collaboration and Teacher Empowerment

The initiative to empower teachers offers another rationale for collaborative teaming within schools. Schlechty argued that teacher empowerment, through participatory decision making,

Promises to yield better decisions and results. That such a promise is not hollow is attested to by the fact that some of the greatest recoveries in American business (Xerox and Ford, for example) have been based in large part on restructuring aimed at empowering and developing all employees — from the lowest in the hierarchy to the highest. (1990, p. 52)

Evidence is mounting to suggest that teacher empowerment through collaborative decision making will result in desired outcomes of school restructuring — shared ownership of problem definitions and solutions (Duke, Showers, & Imber, 1980; Fullan & Pomfret, 1977); the exchange of skills (Thousand et al., 1986); the use of higher-level thinking processes and the generation of more novel solutions (Thousand, Villa, Paolucci-Whitcomb, & Nevin, 1992); and attendance and participation at meetings, persistence in working on difficult tasks, and attainment of the group’s goal (Johnson & Johnson, 1997; Rosenholtz, Bassler, & Hoover-Dempsey, 1985).

Collaboration and Basic Need Satisfaction

Glasser’s (1985, 1986) control theory offers a final compelling rationale for collaboration and teaming among school personnel. Control theory proposes that people choose to do what they do because it satisfies one or more of five basic human needs: survival, power or control in one’s life, freedom or choice, a sense of belonging, and fun. Based on interviews of members of 30 teams that regularly collaborate to plan for, evaluate, and teach heterogeneous groups of students, we concluded that collaborative team arrangements do help educators to meet these five basic needs (Thousand & Villa, 1990a). Specifically, collaborative teams enhance teachers’ potential for survival and power in educating a diverse student body by creating opportunities for 1) the regular exchange of needed resources, expertise, and technical assistance and 2) professional growth through reciprocal peer coaching. In collaborative teams, members experience a sense of belonging and freedom from isolation by having others with whom to share the responsibility for accomplishing difficult tasks. Finally, it is fun to problem solve creatively and to engage in stimulating adult dialogue and social interactions.