Elsevier

Teaching and Teacher Education

Volume 67, October 2017, Pages 227-236
Teaching and Teacher Education

Influence of teacher collaboration on job satisfaction and student achievement

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.06.016Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Teachers collaborate in many different ways.

  • Different types of collaborative activities are associated with unique outcomes.

  • In the USA, collaboration during lesson planning predicts student achievement.

Abstract

Teacher collaboration consists of many types of activities and interactions. This quantitative study examines how the effects of collaboration differ according to both the type and frequency of collaborative activity. TIMSS data was analyzed to determine whether five indicators of collaboration predicted student achievement, teacher job satisfaction, and teacher confidence in Japan and the United States. Collaboration during lesson planning was a significant predictor of student achievement in the United States. Time spent visiting other classrooms corresponded to higher job satisfaction ratings in the United States. The results provide insight into the effectiveness of different collaborative activities in each nation.

Introduction

The turnover rate for teachers in the United States in the first three years of teaching is estimated to be 46% percent (Parker, Martin, Colmar, & Liem, 2012). A major contributing factor to teacher burnout is low job satisfaction due to feelings of isolation (Tatar & Horenczyk, 2003). Because teachers in the United States spend a majority of their working day in a classroom with students, there may be little opportunity for them to interact with other professionals in the school (Huberman, 1989). Collaboration may reduce feelings of isolation, and thereby reduce burnout, by increasing teacher job satisfaction, teacher confidence, and student achievement in their classes (e.g. Brownell et al., 1997, Cooper and Alvarado, 2006; Johnson et al., 2012, Wimberley, 2011).

Research describing the exact benefits of teacher collaboration in the United States has produced mixed results, largely due to the utilization of inconsistent definitions of collaboration in different studies (Kelchtermans, 2006, Lavié, 2006). Exploring the potential benefits of multiple forms of teacher collaboration in different educational systems would yield more specific recommendations that could be adopted in multiple contexts. In the current study, data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is examined to determine the unique influence that several different collaborative activities have on student achievement, teacher's job satisfaction, and teacher confidence in both the United States and Japan.

Despite having different cultures and educational systems, Japan was used as a comparison because of its low rate of teacher turnover and the emphasis placed on collaboration with the practice of lesson study, which is growing in prominence in the United States and other education systems across the world (Blum et al., 2005, Lewis and Tsuchida, 1997, Stigler and Hiebert, 1997). Given the various definitions of collaboration that exist and the many ways that collaborative activities can be structured, a strong argument could be made to increase the use of any forms of collaboration that positively impacts student achievement, teacher confidence, and job satisfaction in both countries. Any collaborative activity that only influences one or two variables in a single country should be further researched to determine its viability in a different culture or context.

Section snippets

Literature review

Educators and policy makers in the United States have recently advocated for increasing the amount of time that teachers collaborate when planning, administering, and evaluating their instruction (Huffman and Kalnin, 2003, Jorgenson et al., 2003, Klentschy, 2005). Numerous studies have found advantages to engaging in teacher collaboration. While there is no comprehensive theory that explains the effects of teacher collaboration (e.g. Kelchtermans, 2006, Lavié, 2006), there is evidence to

The current study

The current study was designed to address the following quantitative research questions: Do teachers in Japan and the United States participate in different types of collaboration activities? If they do, does the type of collaboration predict student achievement, teacher job satisfaction, and teacher confidence in the Japan and the United States?

The TIMSS survey contained questions related to five different types of collaborative activities: discussing how to teach a topic with other teachers;

Data

To examine the role of teacher collaboration on students' achievement and teacher's job satisfaction, we used eighth-grade mathematics achievement and teacher data from the 2011 TIMSS. Beginning in 1995 and every four years thereafter, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has administered TIMSS with the purpose of gaining a deeper understanding of the effects of policies and practices across countries' different education systems (Mullis, Martin,

Results

In Table 2, we present descriptive statistics for variables used in the analysis from imputed data sets for Japan and the United States. Teachers in the USA showed higher level of mean scores in four indicators for collaboration. The lone exception was the item “visiting another classroom” which teachers in Japan had a higher average score on. Regarding instruction hours per week, American teachers taught math about one and half times more than Japanese teachers. About 70% of math teachers are

Discussion

Supporters of teacher collaboration often highlight potential benefits including improved student achievement, increased teacher job satisfaction, and improved teacher confidence (Cooper & Alvarado, 2006). However, the existing evidence supporting collaboration has produced mixed results possibly due to inconsistent definitions of collaboration across studies (Kelchtermans, 2006, Lavié, 2006). The current study extends the existing literature by simultaneously examining the effects of five

Limitations

The study had several limitations. First, collaboration occurs in the context of an individual school, educational system, and culture. As evidenced by the descriptive statistics, education in Japan and United States differ in many ways. For instance, Japanese students performed higher than American students on math achievement. Japan also had lower scores for mother's education level, student's attitude towards math, student's confidence in math, and how much students value math. Furthermore,

Conclusion

The five indicators of collaboration that were analyzed influenced student achievement, teacher job satisfaction, and teacher confidence differently in Japan and the United States. In Japan, sharing teaching experiences positively predicted teacher confidence. In United States, working together on new ideas negatively predicted teacher job satisfaction, visiting another classroom positively predicted teacher job satisfaction, and collaborating during planning positively predicted student

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      Research findings indicate that collaborative work among teachers facilitates knowledge-sharing and critical thinking on instructional practices, provides emotional support, and provides a context for jointly devising new pedagogical practices (Duyar et al., 2013; Wolgast & Fischer, 2017). Research has been carried out to identify several patterns of collaboration bringing together the forms, types, and frequency of collaborative activity among teachers (Pancsofar & Petroff, 2016; Reeves et al., 2017). However, despite considerable effort to improve the extent to which teachers collaborate and research findings providing evidence of the advantages of collaboration, individual work seems to be structurally and culturally embedded in teachers' jobs (Honingh & Hooge, 2014; Vangrieken et al., 2015).

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