The Challenges of Promoting Teacher Collaboration: A Taiwanese Context

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