The Power of Accountable Collaboration
Accountable collaboration allows colleagues to work together productively in order to reach a common goal. Often, colleagues work in collaborative teams without accountability. In return, the team is limited in the results it can achieve together. By adding an accountability element to the collaboration, colleagues have clarity in how their efforts contribute to the achievement of the common goal. This increases each member’s investment in the process.
This post will explore how to add accountability measures to colleague collaborations.
Accountability as a Power Dynamic
Teams often get into a bad habit of coming together to plan instruction and may even delegate aspects of planning. But this leads them to working alone. Although sharing the workload is a big piece of a collaboration, it lacks input from the expertise of others. Educators can add accountability measures to what they are already doing together in collaboration by including:
- Voice – Allow everyone to share ideas before, during and after collaboration
- Iterations– Make revisions a natural part of the collaboration process, understanding the first copy is not the final one
- Task Matching – Leverage the strengths of each colleague by assigning a task to their area of genius
- Shared Ownership– Pass the baton to various colleagues during the goal achievement process so everyone gets a chance to lead and feel connected
- Established Norms– Get clear on what is expected before, during and after collaborative meetings so that everyone can meet the requirements consistently
- Naming What’s At Stake– Understanding the realities of what happens when goals or agreements within the collaboration aren’t met creates natural consequences for each participating colleague
Setting Up Accountable Collaborations
If you are need to reboot collaborations or are starting from scratch, the following 8 steps will ensure a layer of accountability is mixed into the successful partnership.
- Discuss the power of accountable collaboration – Share the reasoning behind the intentional partnership as well as expectations for how to hold others and themselves accountable in the work
- Review student and teacher performance data – This information (informal/formal common assessment scores and teacher evaluation rubric score), reveals areas for improvement
- Brain dump potential goals– All members of the collaboration should place ideas for potential goals based on data findings on a shared white board or chart paper
- Outline partnership pathway– Take the ideas for potential goals and prioritize them into a long-term work plan and ensure each team member agrees to the end goal and goal milestones
- Flush out partnership pathway– Create a robust document outlining the details of the pathway (ie. due dates, task leaders, materials required, etc.)
- Meet monthly to review the partnership pathway– Review the last month’s milestone goal and action items, make adjustments as necessary, and review the upcoming month’s task details
- Seek feedback– regularly seek feedback from collaborative partners in regards to task completion, quality of work produced, attitude, and ability to work well with others (this could be built into the monthly review meeting)
- Celebrate milestones– Acknowledge progress towards goals, even if plans diverged from the original pathway
Examples of Accountable Collaboration
If you are wondering what this might look like in action, below are three examples:
- A third grade team sits down during back-to-school planning to design an end of unit project for their first Social Studies unit. Each team member knew this was the focus of their meeting and brought in ideas they found in magazines, on social media and from former colleagues. This is accountability in showing up prepared with ideas to contribute to the team.
- This same team together determined their end of unit goal for students to be able to know and produce. They then backwards planned the sequence of lessons leading up to the final project. One team member was in charge of reviewing last year’s plans to decide what to replicate, change or omit and presented the findings to the team. Another team member reviewed all unit one assessments (formal and informal) and shared a suggested list of focus questions and ideal answers for each teacher to implement in their lessons. And another team member researched latest best practices in regards to differentiation, presenting options to their peers that can be implemented into lessons for students that needed it. (This is accountability in division of tasks.)
- Finally, this team decided next meeting they would come in with a rough outline for the first week of Social Studies lessons. Together, they would check for alignment between objective, assessment and activities. They’d also review questioning techniques and ideal student answers. One team member wants to talk through student pairings for discussion, leaning on the expertise of their peers. As a result, each member of the team agrees to review standards, draft objectives, review curriculum, and arrive ready to design an effective lesson. (This is accountability in planning, identifying teacher needs, and having a clear plan of action for each meeting.)
As you can see, teachers are collaborating in effective ways and utilizing accountability to produce stronger results for instruction.
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GO BE GREAT!
How have you added accountability into your colleague collaborations?
About the author, Gretchen
I am a teacher trainer and coach. Working elbow to elbow with teachers and teacher leaders to ensure instructional proficiency and student achievement soar lights me up. We have a real need in our nation for strong educators to remain in the field. My blog, book, podcast, courses and instructional materials are geared towards empowering teachers (and those that lead them) to receive the support needed to grow and thrive today, tomorrow and always.