Problematising pre-service teachers’ conceptions of collaboration in working relationships

The work teachers engage in throughout the school building requires joint action with a variety of individuals—administrators, other teachers, students, and even parents of students. Collaboration is often the gold standard for teacher work, regardless of the group with whom they work. The term is used extensively to describe expectations for teachers in policy and teacher preparation programmes but is often conflated with cooperation or coordinated efforts. This study explored how pre-service teachers conceptualised their future work with four groups of stakeholders in schools. Pre-service teachers at a private university in the western US responded to prompts of potentially contentious scenarios with each of the stakeholders and were later interviewed regarding their view of working relationships with each group. Overall, collaboration was less likely to be envisioned in working relationships in favour of cooperation to accomplish individual goals. Tensions and appropriateness of the different approaches are discussed. Teacher education programmes and policymakers are implicated in the misunderstanding and misuse of the term in educational settings as now constituted.