The Challenges of Promoting Teacher Collaboration: A Taiwanese Context

Abstract

Contextualisation
The significance of culture for the outcome of any reform can hardly be overemphasized. As
many commentators have pointed out, earlier studies tended to neglect the cultural aspect of
change in education (Fullan, 2001; Hargreaves, 1994; Stoll and Fink, 1996). This paper is
intended to redress the balance; it introduces part of my research, which aims to answer how
teacher cultures have affected, and have been affected by, a radical reform in the Taiwanese
national curriculum - the Grade 1-9 Curriculum. Although the definition of ‘culture’ varies from
discipline to discipline, and author to author, the concept used here is similar to that of
‘organisational culture’. Its essence is ‘…that set of basic assumptions which has worked well
enough to be consider valid’ (Schein, 1989), or ‘…the way we do things around here…’ (Deal
and Kennedy, 1983, p 14). This paper specifically focuses on one important aspect of
teacher culture, ie, collaboration.


Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which apparently collaborative activity,
resulting from a new policy initiative in the Taiwanese education system – the introduction
of the Grade 1-9 Curriculum, has increased teachers’ collaboration. An ethnographical
approach was used to examine a variety of apparently collaborative practices in two
schools, one an elementary school, the other, a junior high school, over the first three
years of the new policies’ implementation. Categories of collaborative activity are
identified as a result of a range of data gathering activities. It is argued that although
there was some evidence that a collaborative culture was occurring, this was superficial
or ‘shallow’ in nature. The reasons for this interpretation are discussed and prospects for
future developments explored.