Collaborating to Reform Science Education in Context: Issues, Challenges, and Benefits

Within recent times, the call for collaboration among stakeholders in education has been made with increasing frequency. In current thinking, community building and collaboration are posited as critical elements in school reform. The literature reveals various models for initiating collaboration. There is the model that describes the initiative for collaboration as undertaken by "researchers"/university personnel. A second model describes the perspective in which schools as organizations invite researchers to collaborate on a project. The Reforming Science Education in Context (ReSEC) project is an example of the first model. This paper reports the isssues that emerged in forging collaborative relationships among two lower secondary science teachers at a selected New Sector High School in Trinidad and three members of staff from the School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, during the period September 2005 to July 2006. It also presents the benefits and challenges associated with the process of collaboration, which aims to achieve a sschool-based agenda for education.