ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the difficulties of working with colleagues, and how readers can handle these in such a way as to make the best possible use of the opportunities for enhancing classroom practice which collaborative work provides. It attempts to unravel some of the complexities of the task and draws out the implications for the development of effective collaborative work. The chapter presents an interpretation of collaboration as a process of negotiation of a developing partnership which is structured by a set of decisions about how teachers will organise their collaborative work. It shows that because of the tensions which these generated, working collaboratively could often seem to have an inhibiting rather than enhancing influence upon our efforts to provide worthwhile learning experiences for children. The impact of the 'collaborative dimension' of the new support role has become a familiar topic in discussions amongst support teachers in nineteenth century.
