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"Anne DiPardo’s journey to the heart of teachers’ work is a compelling narrative in which joint work turns out to be an essential dialogue for teachers struggling with the modern complexities of teaching and learning. This book deepened my understanding of the necessity of joint work in the professional lives of teachers. School reformers, take notes."
–Miles Myers, former Executive Director of NCTE
"This richly descriptive book marks an important contribution by going deep inside collaborative work, joining teachers’ shared endeavors with their personal ways and commitments, all intertwined in the dense fabric of daily work."
–Judith Warren Little, University of California, Berkeley
Despite frequent calls for increased collaboration among teachers, we know very little about what this means for real educators in real schools. Teaching In Common offers vivid, richly textured portraits of four collaborations, tracing complex connections across school culture, pedagogic innovation, and teachers’ lived experience. The text discusses the demands of the public school workplace and the challenges and benefits of collaboration, providing valuable insights for preparing the next generation of teachers for collaborative activity. The absorbing portraits of teachers will help practitioners to contemplate this recent school-reform push as it relates to other issues and pressures in their professional lives. DiPardo explores the kinds of conditions that best support collaboration and proposes new ways of thinking about the relationship between teachers’ joint work and school culture.
Anne DiPardo is an Associate Professor of English and Education at the University of Iowa.
