Study claims US schools less welcoming to peer networks & knowledge sharing than British Schools

In sharp contrast to England’s support for peer networking, the climate for sharing locally developed knowledge and best practices appears much less hospitable in U.S. schools and school systems, concludes a report issued today by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (AISR).

Entitled “Lessons from England and Implications for the United States,” the research compared the policy and practice landscape of networking and collaboration among school leaders and teachers within England versus New York City schools, and examined whether peer networks in New York City and London fostered effective practice. The investigation, conducted over a six-month period during 2009-10, is part of a series called the “Transatlantic Dialogue on Collaborative Networks.”

“Many public sector organizations and schools are not designed to promote sharing and collaboration; they have cultures of knowledge hoarding, where ‘knowledge is power’ is still a central cultural tenet,” states the report, co-authored by the Annenberg Institute’s Jacob Mishook and Sara McAlister, and Karen Edge of the Institute of Education at the University of London. “The push in the U.S. for new teacher-evaluation systems that rely primarily on matching individual teachers with their students test scores threatens to exacerbate this competitive, rather than collaborative, system of teaching.”

Read the full report here.