This show provides an introduction to the use of protocols for collaboration in a school environment.

1. (And how do they help build teams and manage conflict?)

2. According to the National School Reform
Faculty, protocols are . . .
Structured processes or guidelines to promote
meaningful and efficient communication,
problem solving, and learning. Protocols used
within a group that shares common values,
permit an honest, deeply meaningful, and often
intimate type of conversation which people are
not in the habit of having, building skills and
culture needed for successful collaboration.

3. Protocols provide a structure for discussion. They
have different purposes in different situations.
For example, a protocol might be used to help
teachers analyze student work in an efficient
manner and in a nonthreatening environment.
In another situation, a protocol might be used to
help a team work through a difficult team issue in a
positive, productive way. Again, the protocol
provides structure for the conversation and helps
the team achieve a positive result.
Why Use Protocols?

4. Allen and Blythe (2004) points out that
protocols have a unique feel to them based on
a series of tensions between:
 Talking and listening
 Discipline and play
 Safety and risk, and
 Individual learning and group learning

5. Some schools have a culture in which:
 Conflict is avoided at all cost
 Teachers guard what their students do, or only
share in a “show and tell” manner after the fact
 Teachers are isolated and don’t share at all
 Staff feels more comfortable sharing “tips and
tricks” rather than deep aspects of professional
practice – often because the structure isn’t in place
to show them how to have those conversations
Protocols help teams overcome these obstacles
and start a productive dialogue!

6. Protocols work for a number of reasons, but
chiefly because they protect the presenters and
participants (diplomatic nature of the protocol)
and push the conversation deep (the scientific
nature of the protocol) . . .
-Lois Brown Easton in Protocols for Professional Learning

7. Most protocols protect presenters by teaching
participants to provide warm and cool feedback
to the teacher presenters as they discuss
difficult issues or student work.
Warm feedback states what should stay in the
presenter’s practice.
Cool feedback states what might be different,
using statements like, “I wonder what would
happen if . . .”

8.  Conflict, in a positive form, is productive for a
team. Conflict that occurs in an unproductive
environment causes teams to become “stuck”
and unproductive.
 The structured conversations provided by
protocols helps teams grow in a meaningful
way and often prevent unproductive conflict
from every arising.

9.  Groups often create norms or
agreements that define group behavior
during work in teams and when
implementing a protocol.
 Watch for more information about
creating group norms in Session 6.

10. The National School Reform Faculty lists over 300
protocols for use in schools in alphabetical order on
its newly revised site:
http://www.nsrfharmony.org/free-resources/protocols/a-z
When you have time, explore the protocols on this
site. Could any improve the performance of teams at
your school?

11. Protocols for Professional Learning; Lois Brown Easton -
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development –
2009