What is the impact of collaborative working between teachers on their classroom practice?

Socio-cultural theorists and empirical studies suggest teachers increase their expertise through collaborative learning in environments with specific modi operandi and ways of thinking. However, few of these studies examine the classroom impact of this collaboration. In this inquiry, the factors which enable and constrain collaborative task design between teachers in a large modern languages faculty are explored. The classroom impact of this collaboration and the reasons for differences between colleagues are then examined. Classroom impact appeared most significant when colleagues had the autonomy to choose their area for development, based on an immediate gap identified in their pupilsâ knowledge and when a menu of research-informed classroom tasks to bridge that gap was provided. Factors such as trust between participants, teacher agency and beliefs, the extent to which managers relinquished their power and competing demands on teachersâ time also explained differences in classroom outcomes. An additional finding, often neglected in the write-ups of action research, are the challenges faced in data-collection and interpretation, when the researcher and the participantsâ line manager are one and the same person.