Collaboration in Elementary Education - Research Paper Example

Collaboration in elementary education Collaboration in elementary education Collaboration involves in an elementary schoolor other schools working together to solve problems and come up with creative decision-making or solutions to the problems facing them (Hunt & Marshall, 2012). It also involves the teachers working together to come up with effective and efficient means of impacting knowledge on the students. My experience with collaboration is when I had to be involved in group-work with other students in our classroom to come up with creative problem-solving skills.

This later helped me in my examinations since I was able to understand concepts better through group discussions. For collaboration to be successful, it is important for the parties involved to have the same goals and objectives. They should work together in a group to achieve their desired goals and objectives in education. The involved parties should have diverse skills and knowledge so that they can each assist one another where they are weak. However, if the parties involved collaborate for the sake of it with no motivating force, then it is destined to fail.

For instance, if teachers force their students to form groups and hold group discussions without their will, then such collaborations are bound to fail. Unlike collaboration, co-teaching and consultation allows two or more teachers to work together in the same classroom to help solve problems in a classroom setting. It is an effective strategy to enable the teachers to teach students with diverse needs (Reynolds & Fletcher-Janzen, 2007). My experience in consultation or co-teaching occurred when more than one teacher attended a classroom to teach.

Since each of these teachers had their differing skills and knowledge, they were able to help students with differing educational needs.ReferencesHunt, N., & Marshall, K. (2012). Exceptional Children and Youth. Education , 608.Reynolds, C. R., & Fletcher-Janzen, E. (2007). Encyclopedia of special education. New York: Wiley.