Collaboration of Vocational Teachers in VET Schools in the Czech Republic

Context: Collaboration, as one of the forms of professional practice of vocational teachers, which supports the professional development of teachers and can benefit VET schools (technical secondary schools and vocational secondary schools) and the whole segment of upper secondary education, has not been studied in the Czech Republic.

Approach: The aim of this paper is to find out how teachers of vocational subjects and practical teaching from public VET schools and private VET schools evaluate their collaboration with the school management and with other teachers in the school at different stages of their career and whether their attitudes towards collaboration and the intensity of collaboration differ. Based on a secondary analysis of data from the Czech School Inspectorate (CSI), we observe the intensity of cooperation between vocational teachers and school management and with each other in public VET schools and private VET schools.

Findings: Beginning vocational teachers are more likely to work with school management to improve the educational process than teachers in later stages of their careers. Teachers do not differ in the intensity of collaboration according to the length of experience. In private VET schools, vocational teachers express a greater degree of cooperation with school management and among themselves than in public VET schools established by the region, but public VET school teachers show more intensive cooperation.

Conclusion: Our findings are among the first results mapping vocational teachers' collaboration in the Czech Republic and our conclusions support the proposition on the benefits of vocational teachers' collaboration for themselves and for improving the quality of the educational process in individual schools.