Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/collaborating-with-children-a-conversation-with-bethica-quinn-and-margie-carter/5024919/
Collaboration involves more than a coming together. It requires more from the participants than simply sharing their perspectives. At best, it requires that the participants reach a new level of understanding—a perspective that was not apparent before. This is the real power of collaboration.
Elizabeth Jones and John Nimmo
Collaboration promises disagreements, negotiation, and compromise, as well as new understandings, warm intimacy, and shared pride.
Ann Pelo
Collaboration is a profound concept, a word more frequently used than actually understood or practiced as deeply as the quotes above suggest. Usually, collaboration is described as the teamwork approach teachers strive for in their work. But as Jones and Nimmo say, the real power of collaboration is in thinking together to reach new perspectives. Pelo reminds us that true collaboration often involves negotiating a conflict of perspectives, and when that happens well, relationships deepen. The hard work of collaboration can generate respect, pride and a new sense of possibilities.
Sometimes the relationships between teachers and families are referred to as collaborations, surely a more respectful notion than teachers conducting “parent education,” but often an oversimplified meaning of collaboration, such as coming together to create an event or accomplish a ...