A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of Teacher Collaboration for School Improvement and Student Achievement in Public Elementary Schools

by Yvonne L. Goddard, Roger D. Goddard & Megan Tschannen-Moran — 2007

When teachers collaborate, they share experiences and knowledge that can promote learning for instructional improvement. From the perspective of organizational theory, collaboration is a form of lateral coordination that can improve organizational performance by fostering “creativity and integration around specific problems” (Bolman & Deal, 2003, p. 55). Such learning can help teachers solve educational problems, which in turn has the potential to benefit students academically. “Of the many resources required by schools, the most vital are the contributions—of effort, commitment, and involvement—from teachers” (Rosenholtz, 1989b, p. 421). It is important to note that the results of this study indicate that teacher collaboration is associated with increased levels of student achievement. After controlling for the effects of student characteristics (race, gender, SES, and prior achievement) and school context, we found that teacher collaboration for school improvement was positively related to differences among schools in both mathematics and reading achievement. These results are important given that most prior research on teacher collaboration has considered results for the teachers involved, rather than student-level outcomes. This study thus offers original evidence of a statistically significant relationship between teacher collaboration and student achievement. Please click here to read the full article from TCRecord.