The Study
This study by Cheryl L. Rosaen, associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, examined ways in which teachers and researchers renegotiated the typical boundaries that exist between universities and schools to foster joint learning. It identified and analyzed critical practices that cut across traditional boundaries, required new collegial relationships and contributed to professional learning of both groups. Finally, it explored the nature of the professional learning communities that supported the learning of the teachers and researchers.

The Findings
The study identified seven critical practices that can form the basis for collaborative work and cut across traditional boundaries between universities and schools to support new collegial relationships: talking about teaching, shared planning and teaching, classroom observations, developing pedagogical skills, study, research and communicating with a wider audience. Just as teachers, in a rich learning community, learn alongside their students, researchers and teachers can share in a collaboration that is reciprocal and interdependent and work toward mutually defined goals that could not be accomplished separately. In this model of professional development, teachers' learning can be grounded in the practical work that they do, and research is no longer viewed as being divorced from the realities of classroom life. Developing and maintaining personal and professional relations between teachers and researchers is not easy and seldom without stress and conflict, but the willingness to focus on the ultimate goal, teaching for understanding in classrooms, can lead to a win-win growth opportunity for both groups.

What It Means to You
If educators in your school are challenging their current assumptions about subject matter, curriculum, students as learners, and pedagogy, and are seeking alternatives to current thinking and practice, you may want to explore opportunities for them to collaborate with university researchers. Teachers and researchers can learn a great deal from collaborative arrangements, and significant changes in classroom practices can be accomplished because teachers are more likely to act on new ideas and insights generated through research that they can connect to their own experience. Working in collaboratively adds complexity to a teacher's world and suggests that there may be a need for schools to provide incentives for teachers to take on this time consuming work as an integral part of their professional growth.

More Information
Consult Rosaen, C.L, (1995), "Collaboration in a Professional Culture: Renegotiating Barriers to Improve Practice," Advances in Teaching, JAI Press, Inc., Volume 5, pp.355-385.

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