Mapping the Terrain

Abstract

In this chapter, I present a review of the broad body of literature that is theoretically related to teachers’ collective responsibility for student learning. As mentioned in Chapter 1, I acknowledge that the field of literature specifically addressing the phenomenon of collective responsibility is limited to a small number of empirical studies emerging in the 1990s. However, this body of literature is positioned within wider research and scholarship on school restructuring and how it relates to teachers’ work and students’ learning. Therefore, rather than use a traditional quality screen for the selection of studies and articles for review in order to establish what is known about collective responsibility, the approach I have taken instead draws on a range of related peer reviewed and non- peer reviewed and empirical and non-empirical literature in order to demonstrate the multifaceted, integrated and complex nature of collective responsibility.