Do task type and partner role matter? An experience sampling study on the perceived benefit of teacher collaboration in Swiss primary schools

• Via ESM, we collected 5625 collaborative activities from 596 teachers. • Collaborative activities are often unrelated to instruction or student learning. • Collaboration on instruction and student learning are viewed as more beneficial. • Collaboration with special needs teachers focuses mainly on individual students. • School tasks involving instruction tasks are more beneficial than school tasks alone. Collaboration, an essential part of teachers’ professional practice, has significant potential to enhance student learning by improving instructional quality through professional learning. However, research findings on such benefits are not consistent. This study examined the specific tasks teachers collaborate on during non-instructional work time as well as the perceived benefit of their collaboration using an experience sampling method. 5625 collaborative activities among regular teachers and between regular teachers and special needs teachers in primary schools in Switzerland were analyzed. We used multilevel models to compare the perceived benefits of different task types in collaborative activities. Our key findings are: First, collaboration involved nearly the same amount of administrative and pedagogical tasks for the school (secondary tasks) as for the class (primary tasks). Second, teachers perceived primary tasks as more beneficial than secondary tasks. Third, collaboration between regular teachers and special needs teachers predominantly focused on primary tasks, mostly related to individual student support, and only little on instructional planning. Fourth, no significant difference in perceived benefit was found between collaboration among regular teachers and collaboration between regular and special needs teachers. The high frequency of secondary tasks, particularly in collaboration among regular teachers, raises questions about the overall effectiveness of teacher collaboration.