Job Jacobs has written an excellent series dealing with barriers to collaboration in the educational world.
Click the heading for a link to each of the articles, or you can find Rob's blog, Education Innovation, at http://educationinnovation.typepad.com/
1. The Not Invented Here Barrier
“…the not-invented-here barrier, which arises when people are not willing to reach beyond their own units to input and collaborate.” ...
Some Professional Learning Communities struggle with team members who do not share ideas, do not share knowledge, do not share data, and seemingly do anything they can not to participate or cooperate with the rest of their team members. They are “hoarders.” ...
Obviously, not every school or district is going to face this issue. But, many schools and districts are so large that one hardly knows all the staff and finding who has the information, knowledge, expertise, or data to help Professional Learning Communities solve problems is a challenge. ...
“People run into problems in transferring expertise, know-how, and technologies when people from different units do not know how to work together. This transfer problem is not about motivations but about abilities: people can be highly motivated to work together, but they find it difficult to do so.” ...
