Kent Peterson

Kent Peterson, professor of educational administration, University of Wisconsin-Madison, challenges administrators to support team-building and collaboration by providing time and resources, in order to reap the benefits effective teams can bring to schools. Excerpted from a presentation given at NCREL's Urban School Leadership Mini-Conference in July 1993.

"If you really value collaboration, make sure that your resources support that, that can be substitute time, time to go to conferences-that may mean your time to cover teachers classes so that they can meet together and collaborate. Let me tell you teachers have a sixth sense of how your time is being spent and how resources are being distributed. They have a very very strong sense of equitableness, and they get the message, that if you support collaboration, collegiality, working together, that that's an important thing. The thing about collaboration is that over time, it becomes its own reward."

This Critical Issue summary was researched and written by Kent Peterson, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Date posted: 1995