Research for Teachers

There was a meeting several years ago that permanently changed the way I think about collaboration.

At the time, our team was discussing an upcoming assessment task. Most people in the room appeared ready to support the proposed approach. The conversation was polite, efficient, and moving quickly toward consensus. People nodded in agreement, built on one another’s ideas, and the meeting seemed to be progressing smoothly.

Then one teacher disagreed.

Not aggressively. Not emotionally. They simply explained that they were not convinced the assessment would achieve the learning outcomes we were aiming for. They raised concerns about how students might interpret the task, questioned whether the assessment design aligned with our broader goals, and suggested that we might be overlooking some unintended consequences.

I remember the atmosphere in the room shifting almost immediately.

Not negatively, but thoughtfully.

The conversation slowed down. People became more reflective in their responses. Several teachers who had been relatively quiet earlier in the discussion began contributing additional perspectives. Others clarified or reconsidered their original thinking. By the end of the meeting, the final assessment looked noticeably different from the version we would have approved twenty minutes earlier.

What stayed with me afterward was not the disagreement itself, but what the disagreement revealed about the team.

Nobody became defensive.
Nobody interpreted disagreement as disrespect.
Nobody tried to shut the conversation down.

Instead, the disagreement strengthened the collaboration.

That experience fundamentally changed how I think about psychological safety in schools.

Educational conversations often describe psychologically safe teams as supportive, trusting, and collaborative environments. While all of those qualities matter, I think schools sometimes unintentionally reduce psychological safety to something simpler: harmony.

But psychological safety is not the absence of disagreement.

It is the presence of enough trust that disagreement becomes possible.

Amy Edmondson’s research defines psychological safety as a shared belief that individuals can take interpersonal risks without fear of embarrassment, rejection, or punishment (Edmondson, 1999). In schools, those interpersonal risks often include asking difficult questions, challenging assumptions, expressing uncertainty, or offering perspectives that differ from the majority view.

That distinction matters enormously because schools are deeply relational environments. Most educators genuinely care about maintaining positive relationships with colleagues, and understandably so. Collaboration becomes much harder when relationships feel strained. But the desire to preserve harmony can sometimes lead teams to avoid the very conversations that would strengthen their thinking.

I have increasingly realized that some of the healthiest professional conversations I have participated in contained moments of genuine tension.

Not hostility.
Not interpersonal conflict.
But intellectual friction.

The kind of friction that occurs when professionals feel safe enough to interrogate ideas honestly, challenge assumptions respectfully, and acknowledge that the first solution proposed may not necessarily be the strongest one.

Research on professional learning communities supports the importance of this type of reflective dialogue. Vescio, Ross, and Adams (2008) found that effective PLCs engage teachers in collective inquiry, critical reflection, and collaborative examination of practice. Productive collaboration involves far more than sharing resources or agreeing on procedures. It requires teachers to think critically together, revisit assumptions, and remain open to changing direction when needed.

That is much harder than it sounds.

In many schools, disagreement can feel risky. Teachers may worry that pushing back will be interpreted as negativity, resistance, or a lack of collegiality. Particularly in collaborative teams that value positive relationships, there can sometimes be subtle pressure to maintain consensus even when uncertainty exists.

But I have come to believe that healthy teams are not the ones that avoid disagreement entirely. They are the ones where disagreement can happen without relationships breaking down.

That distinction feels increasingly important to me as I continue working in leadership.

When leaders unintentionally reward quick agreement, move discussions too rapidly toward closure, or communicate strong preferences too early, teams often become more cautious. Teachers begin reading the room rather than fully contributing to the discussion itself. Meetings may appear smooth and efficient on the surface, but important perspectives can remain unspoken.

Creating psychologically safe collaboration requires leaders to tolerate uncertainty longer than is often comfortable. It means allowing space for complexity, resisting the urge to interpret disagreement as dysfunction, and recognizing that productive collaboration sometimes looks slower and messier than quick consensus.

That meeting years ago changed the way I facilitate discussions.

Now, when a team reaches immediate agreement, I often become more curious. I find myself wondering whether alternative perspectives still remain unspoken or whether some team members are hesitant to challenge the direction of the conversation. I have learned that fast consensus is not always evidence of strong collaboration. Sometimes the strongest collaborative moments emerge when someone feels safe enough to say, “I’m not sure I agree.”

The best teams I have worked with were not the ones that avoided difficult conversations. They were the ones where people trusted each other enough to have them.

In those environments, disagreement stopped feeling like a breakdown in collaboration.

It became evidence that genuine collaboration was actually taking place.

References

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Vescio, V., Ross, D., & Adams, A. (2008). A review of research on the impact of professional learning communities on teaching practice and student learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(1), 80–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.01.004