School collaboration: A mixed methods study

The education system aims to increase student success and support their social-emotional development. Collaboration between all stakeholders ensures students' success and provides solutions. School collaboration refers to individuals coming together in different roles to work towards common goals, sharing their experiences and acting in a complementary way. Therefore, in addition to focusing on academic success, the importance of "collaboration" and "solidarity" is emphasized in contemporary education, which focuses on the holistic development of students. Creating a collaborative climate allows students to be successful in a safe and supportive learning environment, while increasing teachers' professional satisfaction and helping principal use their leadership and management skills effectively. In this study, the phenomenon of cooperation between stakeholders (principals, teachers, parents and guidance services) in schools was analysed with both quantitative and qualitative methods. In the quantitative part, based on the School Collaboration Scale developed by Saylık and Arastaman (2022), stakeholders' levels of school collaboration were evaluated in the light of variables such as gender, professional seniority, educational status, branch and age. Thus, it was aimed to reveal which demographic factors affect teachers' and principals' perceptions of collaboration. The main problem of the research is to determine the level of cooperation of the stakeholders in the school and the factors that prevent the development of this cooperation. In the methodology section, an explanatory mixed design was adopted to determine the level of cooperation between school stakeholders and to suggest strategies for improvement. In the first stage, quantitative data were collected through the 38-item School Collaboration Scale developed by Saylık and Arastaman (2022) within the framework of a stratified sample consisting of 383 teachers and 78 principals working in Siirt city centre and three socio-economically similar districts. Quantitative analyses were conducted with SPSS using parametric (t-test, ANOVA) and non-parametric tests based on normality test (Creswell, 2005; Delice, 2015). In the second stage, a semi-structured interview form was used to deepen the quantitative findings (Yıldırım & Şimsek, 2018). The integration of quantitative and qualitative data provided a multidimensional understanding by supporting the general cooperation profile obtained in the first stage with the thematic findings in the second stage in the explanatory mixed design (Kılıç, 2013; Saylık & Arastaman, 2022). In this respect, the study presents data on the perception of school collaboration at the primary school level in Turkey (the example of Siirt province), both statistically reveals the current situation and reflects the field experiences of the participants, revealing the root causes of the problem and possible solution suggestions. The findings obtained show that in addition to the perception differences that vary according to the professional seniority, gender, branch or age of the teachers, factors such as democratic leadership, effective guidance services and support for parental participation in schools will strengthen the culture of collaboration. In this context, it is thought that the practices to be implemented by both educational policy makers and school principal will guide the construction of a more participatory and effective school structure in the future.