"The writers weave a tale of increasing care among the teachers and increasing mutuality. This book becomes an exemplar of a community in the making, which is one of the ways in which democracy is described. We are left in a kind of wonderful uncertainty, challenged to explore collaboration in our multiple contexts."


—From the Foreword

As Marilyn Johnston writes in the Introduction, "This is not a tidy tale; collaboration is an untidy business, full of uncharted territories, ambiguities, and institutional complexities." Contradictions in Collaboration describes this complexity and questions the collaboration experience of all participants. This text is about experience and speaks in many voices—classroom teachers, principals, doctoral students, and university faculty.

Based on a 6-year longitudinal study of collaboration in a professional development school project at The Ohio State University, Marilyn Johnston and the Educators for Collaborative Change use their experience to examine the issues and challenges of cross-institutional collaboration. They speak openly about their differences and difficulties as well as what they have learned. They change their minds about many things and recast their relationships in ways that reflect new understandings of roles, power relations, and institutional constraints.