A query from Armenia: Can School-to-School Collaboration be Applied

in Developing Countries?

Context is a key word because it matters in educational leadership. When it comes to Armenia, major obstacles adversely affect S2SC:

• Rapid policy change (schools have little time to process change)

• Geographical and regional peculiarities (rural communities are located in high-altitude regions with major issues in infrastructure)

• Time and access to technology

• Competition between schools for limited resources

• Low educational leadership capacity (school principals pass a multiplechoice examination to be certified as principals without adequate educational leadership preparation).

The work of NorArar Education NGO

Collaboration is hard, yet it is a fruitful and rewarding experience through which it is possible to reveal the tacit knowledge of local educational leaders for more sustainable development in education.

This belief is fundamental for NorArar Education NGO, a charity co-founded by UCL IoE alumni in the Lori region of Armenia. Partnering with Armenia’s national and local state agencies responsible for inclusive education and schools, NorArar has been integrating innovative practices in capacity development for improved reading literacy in disadvantaged regional schools. Collaboration across schools, Joint Practice Development principles of equal partnership, appreciation, and synthesis of procedural, and contextual knowledge have been incremental in NorArar work with schools.

While there is a myriad of reasons to believe that collaboration is time consuming and hard to achieve without sustained external facilitation, our belief in S2SC is based on school principals’ and teachers’ inspiration and engagement in collaborative practices.

To explore the local educational leaders’ perceptions and readiness for S2SC, NorArar engaged school leaders in a series of creatively facilitated sessions supported by Karen Edge, a Reader from the UCL Centre for Educational leadership (UCL CEL). Supported by the British Council Armenia, NorArar implemented a pilot project. The analysis of qualitative data from participative sessions suggests our principals mostly cooperate by helping each other understand and act on policy changes and engage in the share of immediate resources, such as teaching staff substitution.

Participation in events and competitions in neighboring schools is perceived as collaboration, which means more critical and informed reflection is needed to develop a deeper understanding of S2SC among school principals. While principals find value in S2SC to find solutions for specific issues that often remain in the margins of policy objectives, time, space, trust, technology, and quality facilitation are needed to collaborate.

NorArar continues to strive to find novel solutions to embed S2SC in existing mechanisms and systems.

References

Armstrong P. W., Brown C., & Chapman C., J. (2021) S2SC in England: A configurative review of the empirical evidence. Review of Education 9(1): 319–351.

National Bureau of Economic Research. (2022). Global Universal Basic Skills: Current Implications and Deficits for World Development, Massachusetts. Retrieved from: https://www.nber.org/system/files/ working_papers/w30566/w30566.pdf

Vangrieken K, Dochy F, Raes E., & Kyndt E. (2015) Teacher collaboration: A systematic review. Educational Research Review 15: 17– 40.

World Bank. (2019). Learning Poverty Brief: Armenia.Report Number: 166222.

Retrieved from: https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documentsreports/ documentdetail/745741637566026842/ armenia-learning-poverty-brief-2019

Wu, H., Shen, J., Reeves, P., Zheng, Y., Ryan, L., & Anderson, D. (2021). The Relationship Between Reciprocal S2SC and Student Academic Achievement. Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 1-24.