Teachers’ Experiences of Collaborating in School Teaching Teams

Teachers in numerous countries worldwide often confront education reforms in their career, in which, collaborating is considered a feasible approach to changing teachers’ traditional teaching philosophy. This study aims to examine Taiwanese teachers’ experiences of collaborating in school teaching teams. We invited six teachers from different schools for an interview. Afterward, we conducted two sessions of focus-group interviews with 18 participants from various roles in teaching teams as well as various geographical areas. The findings show that information exchanges of education works, uncoordinated processes of collaboration, and discussions not involving pedagogical knowledge are the general experiences on participating in the teaching teams. Certain barriers to teacher collaborations are from inadequate focuses during team discussions and a lack of curriculum leadership. Through experience-sharing, the participants considered that a focus on student learning during discussions and examples of practices for curriculum leadership were the key aspects for successful experiences in teacher collaborations.