The peculiarities of teacher collegial collaboration in pursuit of professional development

Mokytojų profesinis tobulėjimas, kaip vienas iš svarbiausių ugdymo kokybę lemiančių veiksnių, neįmanomas be jų nuolatinio kolegialaus bendradarbiavimo. Straipsnyje atskleidžiama bendrojo ugdymo mokyklų mokytojų kolegialaus bendradarbiavimo, orientuoto į profesinį tobulėjimą, svarba. Remiantis empirinio tyrimo rezultatų analize išskiriami bendrojo ugdymo mokyklose vyraujantys mokytojų kolegialaus bendradarbiavimo ypatumai: mokyklos administracijos ir kolegų mokytojų teikiama parama, mokytojų diskusijos ir gerosios patirties sklaida, mokymasis su kitais ir iš kitų, pamokų stebėjimasSocial change is a continuous process and poses new challenges. The quality of education depends on many factors but teacher professional development is one of the most important ones and is hardly possible without close collaboration. Teacher collegial collaboration is a precondition of not only personal and professional development, it is also an opportunity to share experience, build a learning school community open to innovation. Research problem: how and with whom teachers collaborate in pursuit of professional development. Research aim: to reveal the peculiarities of teacher collegial collaboration in pursuit of professional development. Research methods: 1) review and generalisation of scholarly literature, 2) anonymous survey using questionnaires. Research methodology: The open database National Student Achievement Research 2012 (http://nec.lt/436/) was used, teacher survey was carried out, a questionnaire consisting of closed-ended questions on education, the teaching process, student assessment, subject teaching, the use of ICT, etc. was designed. The findings allowed the authors to identify the peculiarities of teacher collegial collaboration from the teacher’s perspective. Empirical findings revealed that the majority of the respondents understand the importance of professional self-development, take responsibility for it but not for their colleague’s professional growth, get support from the school administration and colleagues. The most common forms of collegial collaboration are experience sharing, dissemination of innovative teaching practices and co-learning, meanwhile lesson observation is not a popular formVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij