"This book is about how teachers and other educators can and do collaborate. In a good way, collaboration can really get under the skin - and just how it does this, shifts from one culture to another. Something else we have learned by studying different examples of collaboration is how the ways that people collaborate are also changing over time. They are becoming more precise in their methods, more embedded in deeper professional relationships, and more widespread throughout everyday practice. At its best, collaboration is becoming more formal and more informal; more precise and more pervasive. Through the examples we have studied and the literature we have consulted, we believe there have been five evolutionary stages of professional collaboration. After a long period in which the culture of teaching was one of individualism and where professional collaboration was largely absent, the four succeeding stages have been ones of: 1. Emergence - professional collaboration is an alternative to individualism. 2. Doubt - some forms of professional collaboration are found to be too weak in their overreliance on talk rather than action. Others (known as contrived collegiality) are too forced when they are used to implement top-down mandates. 3. Design - specific models of professional collaboration are created in the form of professional learning communities, data teams, collaborative action research, and so on. 4. Transformation - professional collaboration transitions to deeper forms of collaborative professionalism that are more precise in their structures and methods."-- Provided by publisher.

The case for collaborative professionalism -- Moving towards collaborative professionalism -- Open class & lesson study -- Collaborative curriculum planning networks -- Cooperative learning and working -- Collaborative pedagogical transformation -- Professional learning communities -- Ten tenets of collaborative professionalism -- The four Bs of collaborative professionalism -- Doing collaborative professionalism.