Collaboration in East Africa: A contextualised approach to defining the construct

Collaboration has been highlighted internationally as a key skill for learning, working, and living in the twenty-first century. However, to teach it well, enhance its performance, and measure its growth, it is essential to have a clear and consistent definition of the skill. There are a number of frameworks that describe collaboration in a way that is meaningful to learning and growth. Despite some differences across frameworks, it is clear there is a common core set of contributing subskills. This suggests that collaboration is of global interest, and that there are components that transcend national or cultural specificities. Notwithstanding, definitions and frameworks need to be suitable for the context in which they will be applied, ensuring the approach is integrated and sustainable in education systems. One focus of the ALiVE project was to develop a collaboration framework suitable and relevant for the sub-Saharan African context. The approach included auditing frameworks internationally, curricula regionally, and conducting an ethnographic study. The resulting framework was used in the development of assessment tasks to sample the skill among adolescents in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. The issues highlighted in this chapter reveal the need for further study of collaboration in specific contexts in order to understand local variations and ensure optimal approaches to measurement.