Collaboration for School Improvement: A Resource Dependency and Institutional Framework of Analysis

Those with an interest in public sector institutions increasingly recognize the necessity for those institutions to work collaboratively with each other and with other organizations. In part, this trend is based on the acceptance that many public policy problems are interconnected and can only be meaningfully tackled interorganizationally. One such policy area is school improvement, which constitutes the central concern of the article and is currently a dominant feature of education policy in Britain. The article conceptualizes the notion of educational collaboration by developing a framework through a review of the relevant literature. The analytical framework makes a paradigmatic distinction between resource dependency and institutional perspectives on collaboration. It recognizes that, although the perspectives interrelate in practice, the interests they serve are distinct and different. The framework acknowledges that individual actors, such as teachers, those in leadership positions in schools, and managers in local authorities may have different purposes for collaboration and disaggregates the antecedents, the process and the successful and unsuccessful outcomes of collaboration.