My final paper for EDUC 656: Instructional Leadership is titled:

Effective Instruction and Collaboration:
Partners for Student Success

Abstract
The purpose of my paper was to investigate how effective instruction can be fostered through teacher collaboration, and what is the result of this partnership. An examination of the question “Why should a school or district focus on collaboration?” was also examined. This paper recognized and defined strategies such as team meetings, mentoring, and Critical Friends Groups as successful ways to collaborate, since they foster effective instruction. Current research and data agree that there is a positive partnership between effective instruction and collaboration. The paper confirms the findings of recent literature: cooperative settings offer teachers the opportunity to research, reflect and support one another and those collaborative settings foster effective instruction.

References:

Bambino, Deborah. (March 2002). Critical Friends. Educational Leadership, 25-27.

DuFour, Rick. (2003). Leading edge: 'Collaboration lite' puts student achievement on a starvation diet . Journal of Staff Development, 24(3). Retrieved August 13, 2006, from http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd/dufour244.cfm

Elias, Maurice J. (2003). Academic and Social-emotional Learning. International Academy of Education, 11. Retrieved from http://www.casel.org/downloads/BIE_Practices_11.pdf

Gruenert, Steve. (2005). Correlations of Collaborative School Cultures with Student Achievement. NASSP Bulletin, 89(645), 43-55. Retrieved August 9, 2006

Lambert, Linda. (May 2002). A Framework for Shared Leadership. Educational Leadership, 37-40.

Moir, Ellen & Bloom, Gary. (May 2003). Fostering Leadership Through Mentoring. Educational Leadership, 58-60.

Routman, Regie. (March 2002). Teacher Talk. Educational Leadership, 32-35.



If you are interested in reading my paper, please e-mail me.