Collegiality in Schools: Its Nature and Implications for Problem Solving

Abstract

Greater collegiality among teachers is frequently suggested in the research literature as one way of improving decision making and problem solving in schools. In this article, we argue that this claim cannot be sustained without more sophisticated theorizing about the attributes of collegiality that promote quality decision making and problem solving. In the first part of our argument, we use a constraint inclusion theory of a problem to argue that the attributes of collegiality most frequently discussed in the literature are as likely to generate poor as high quality problem-solving processes and solutions. In the second part of the article, we illustrate this argument in a case study of collegial problem solving by identifying the precise processes that contributed to the quality of the problem solutions.