As the many examples in these pages make clear, there is no one model of the collaborative school. Collaboration describes a range of practices that can involve a handful of teachers or an entire faculty. Collaboration depends inherently on the voluntary effort of professional educators to improve their schools and their own skills through teamwork. Because the collaborative school is a composite of beliefs and practices, it is easier to describe than to define. Teachers engage in frequent, continuous, and increasingly concrete and precise talk about teaching practice.
Teachers plan, design, research, evaluate, and prepare teaching materials together.
Teachers teach each other the practices of teaching. Collaboration, then, is intended to facilitate instructional effectiveness. Toward this end, the collaborative relationships have both vertical and horizontal dimensions. That is, administrators cooperate with teachers and teachers cooperate with one another. The collaborative school provides a climate and structure that encourage teachers as professionals to work together and with the principal and other administrators toward school improvement and professional growth.