Beyond Fidelity of Implementation: How Professional Collaboration Enables and Inhibits Institutionally Divergent Instructional Innovation

• In Event: Organizational Theory: Promise, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

Teacher collaboration encourages peer learning and professional community, which are linked to school improvement. Nevertheless, teacher collaboration typically occurs in highly institutionalized settings. So, it is not clear that collaboration can fully realize its promise for teacher agency and innovation, which is problematic since both may be important for addressing the implementation gap across school contexts despite attempted fidelity to ‘what works’. The findings from this multi-method, laboratory-based study suggest that innovation that fundamentally challenges institutionally prescribed practice is rare. Its occurrence may depend on explicit encouragement to challenge accepted practices. In turn, the relationship between innovation and challenging accepted practices may be moderated by a set of important factors related to competence, support, and energy in teachers’ collaborative workgroups.

Authors

• Ebony N. Bridwell-Mitchell, Harvard University

• Eva Flavia Martinez Orbegozo, Harvard University

• elise kaufman