Teacher professional leadership in support of teacher professional development

Counteracting perceptions of teaching as a profession with a flat career trajectory may require professional leadership opportunities for experienced teachers that differ substantively from those typically available. This evaluation study investigated the results of a professional development initiative for subject specialist teachers seconded to a leadership role in their curriculum areas. Interview and survey data supported teacher growth in subject expertise and leadership capacity attributed to the opportunities provided by the new teacher-leadership role. The findings of this study indicate expanded leadership roles may further develop experienced professionals while simultaneously supporting teacher knowledge during a period of embedding educational reform.     

Still keen and committed: piloting an instrument for identifying positive veteran teachers

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1980s, the working lives of teachers has become an enduring research topic. Much research has focused on early-career teachers and is often reported from deficit positions, i.e. why they leave the profession. However, career trajectory studies have described a small cohort of veteran teachers who remain positive and committed to teaching. This article reports on the creation and piloting of an instrument designed to test whether this positive cohort can be empirically identified within a wider teaching population. Four constructs (experimentation, challenge, comfort and leadership) drawn from Huberman (1993), and Day and Gu (2007) formed the basis for an online pilot survey completed by 145 teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported three of the four factors (experimentation, comfort, leadership), with challenge loading strongly with experimentation. Initial findings suggest the potential of the instrument in helping identifying positive veteran teachers within systems, as well as the voracity of the research approach. Examining and articulating how these veteran teachers maintain their positive outlook may prove valuable as many countries confront an ageing teaching workforce, increasing student numbers and difficulties in retaining experienced teachers, meaning those who remain will be expected to sustain their commitment for longer.     

When Identity and Leadership Intersect: The Experiences of Six Female Principals in South Africa

While literature on the interplay between educational leadership and context abounds, the attention granted to the experiences of female principals has, to a large extent, treated the construction of women as a homogeneous entity. Consequently, very little, certainly within the South African context, is known about how women in leadership positions construct and enact their leadership identities. Drawing on the experiences of six female principals at public schools, this article investigates the extent to which conceptions of gender give shape to the formation of leadership identity. To this end, the focus of the article is to explore the complex intersections of constructions of identity in relation to female principals; and how these constructions hold particular implications for conceptions of gendered leadership in South African schools.     

Empowerment amongst teachers holding leadership positions

This study used semi-structured in-depth interviews to explore empowerment patterns among teachers who hold leadership positions in school. Our qualitative analysis presents a hierarchical ladder with three types of empowerment amongst these teachers, ranging from limited empowerment through rewarding empowerment to change-enhancing empowerment. The level of empowerment seems to be related to the leadership position which the teachers hold and to their perception of the position. Our results contribute to the theoretical understanding of empowerment as a complex construct that affects the career characteristics of the teacher, ranging from limited impact of the leadership position to a powerful effect on the organizational culture. We also suggest that this model has practical implications on the way principals can evaluate their teachers’ empowerment patterns and accordingly assist their development toward change-enhancing empowerment.     

促进教师发展的校长领导力研究——以两所初中学校校长为个案

以素质教育为核心的教育改革对学校管理带来了冲击与挑战。它要求教师转变传统的教学观,学习新的知识和教学方法。校长是学校管理的关键人物,其领导实践对于帮助教师发展具有重要作用。本研究采用质性研究方法,尝试揭示两位校长在真实情境中帮助教师发展的领导实践全貌与过程。研究发现,促进教师发展的校长领导力主要具有以下三方面的特征:(1)以提升教师专业知识与技能的工具取向为主;(2)以转变教师认知、情感与态度的文化取向为辅;(3)在规范教师教学行为与激发教师改革动机之间寻求平衡。     

学生领导力发展的内涵及其策略

当前学界对于教育领导力的研究主要集中在校长领导力方面,对教育中的主体——"学生"其领导力的发展较少关注。对学生领导力发展的研究是国际教育领导力理论研究和实践的新趋势。本文从学生领导力发展的研究意义开始,探究了学生领导力发展的内涵,阐述了影响学生领导力发展的学校、教师等教育教学因素,提出了在学校中促进学生领导力发展的三个主要策略。     

Exploring School Principals’ Leadership Styles and Learners’ Educational Performance: A Perspective from High- and Low-Performing Schools

School leadership is fundamental to the educational functioning of schools and their improvements of results. The study employed a qualitative approach to explore school principals’ leadership styles and the educational performance of learners in high- and low-performing schools in Vhembe District, Limpopo, South Africa. The participants were purposefully selected from 10 secondary schools in terms of their performance. Focus group interviews were conducted with five teachers from each school. The interview data was transcribed and analysed, and identical patterns of coded data were grouped together under emerging themes. The overall results of the study indicated that the democratic leadership style together with the transformational leadership style contribute to high educational performance of learners. School principals from high- and low-performing schools employ a democratic leadership style and differ only in the sense that the latter are permissive or lenient towards learners’ behaviours or conduct. The study recommends that school principals engage teachers as members of a disciplinary committee in order to deal with those learners whose conduct is not conducive to successful teaching and learning. It is recommended that school principals from low-performing schools strengthen their democratic leadership by not being lenient to learners’ behaviour which is not conducive to successful teaching and learning.     

Distributed leadership: challenging five generally held assumptions

This article reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three head teacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. Drawing from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each head teacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff, the article analyses the experiences and the perceptions of head teachers. The paper finds that in practice, distributed leadership is more complex and challenging than often represented, challenging five generally held assumptions in the theoretical, policy and practice frames. Implications are drawn for educational leadership at both school and system levels.     

Understanding teachers’ professional learning goals from their current professional concerns

In the day-to-day workplace teachers direct their own learning, but little is known about what drives their decisions about what they would like to learn. These decisions are assumed to be influenced by teachers’ current professional concerns. Also, teachers in different professional life phases have different reasons for engaging in professional learning. In this study, we explored the professional concerns underlying teachers’ learning goals in order to understand variation in professional learning over a teacher’s career. In this qualitative study, we administered a semi-structured interview and a card sorting task to 15 secondary school teachers to elicit teachers’ learning goals and current professional concerns. By conceptually combining teachers’ learning goals with professional concerns in concern-goal pairs, we sought to understand the different reasons for teachers’ learning. These concern-goal pairs were characterized in three different types of reasons: continuous, growth and improvement, and work-management. The results showed that early career teachers have mainly growth and improvement concerns, whereas mid- and late-career teachers have both continuous and growth and improvement concerns. Work-management concerns differ for early- and late-career teachers. Results are further discussed in terms of professional life phase models and teachers’ developmental tasks throughout their career.     

Leadership styles predict career readiness in early college high‐school students

This study examined leadership style as a predictor of career readiness among a sample of (N = 281) students from two early college high schools from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Participants included 165 females and 116 males ranging from 14 to 19 years of age and 96.8% identified as Hispanic. Participants provided demographic information and reported their own leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5x) as well as their career readiness using the Employability Skills Inventory (ESI). Additionally, pre‐existing district Texas Success Initiative (TSI) data was used to identify college readiness in Reading, Writing, and Math. The results indicated that college readiness, dual enrollment, year in school and gender predicted some of the dimensions of career readiness, but leadership style emerged as a significant predictor of all eight dimensions of career readiness.     

When teachers face teachers: listening to the resource “right down the hall”

This article explores the social and professional dynamics “when teachers face teachers” seeking to impact colleagues’ instructional practices to improve student learning. Specifically, it examines a group of 40 teachers leading staff development sessions at their schools in an effort to bring more literacy strategies into the pedagogies of disciplinary teachers. Drawing from the research on distributed leadership and teacher leadership, the study looks at how three factors impact teacher leaders: (1) the actions of the principal; (2) relationships among teachers; and (3) teachers’ own beliefs about leadership.

Using primarily qualitative methods, supplemented by pre‐and‐post quantitative survey data, the study found: strong administrative and collegial support for teacher leadership, the use of savvy and emotionally attuned leadership techniques by teachers, and overall impactful sessions. However, not all school environments were conducive to teacher leadership. The article concludes with suggestions for better utilizing teacher leaders for the local enhancement of education reforms.     

School principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours: realities vs. ideals

The purpose of the current study was to examine primary and middle school principals’ evaluations of their own instructional leadership behaviours, and thereby pay closer attention to the ideal instructional leadership behaviours suggested in the related literature and the realities of principals’ instructional leadership behaviours. Although studies in the instructional leadership literature have vastly examined instructional leadership and its relationship with various variables, few studies have focused on school principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours using a qualitative approach. This study was framed to contribute to gain an insight into the essential characteristics of instructional leadership in Turkey and to suggest some educational implications for school leadership in a Turkish context. The researchers conducted a qualitative case study in a large city in South-eastern Turkey in the academic year of 2012–2013. The study group consisted of 11 primary and middle school principals chosen via a maximum variation sampling technique. It was found that some of the school principals painstakingly tried to improve school-related factors which may potentially increase positive student outcomes. However, they were not able to display some instructional leadership behaviours such as change management, promoting teachers’ professional growth, collaborating with teachers and forming a positive learning environment due to multifarious reasons. The study concludes by presenting implications for the development of school principals as instructional leaders in Turkey.     

Enacting instructional leadership: perspectives and actions of public K-12 principals

This article’s purpose is to highlight the perspectives and actions of urban, public school K-12 principals who are noted for prioritising instructional leadership. Grounded in the conceptual framework of agency, I examined the work experiences of 18 New York City public school principals nominated by supervisors, colleagues, trained educational consultants, parents, and students through a four-phase qualitative study consisting of interviews, time surveys, document review, and observations with participants. In order to uphold instructional leadership, analysis highlighted that participants assumed agency by engendering perspectives and actions that viewed instructional leadership as: grounded in learning, influenced by teachers/staff, requiring time and planning for principals and teachers/staff, and calls for teacher/staff empowerment.     

教学领导的研究进展与实施策略

教学是学校的中心工作。随着全国范围内课程和教学改革的深入推进,人们越来越关注教学领导。教学领导研究是当前国际上的一个研究热点,并呈现新的特点。教学领导涉及多方面的因素,校长不仅要担当教学监控、反馈和指导等职能,而且还要致力于营造良好的学校文化和组织氛围;校长不仅是教和学的领导者,同时还承担支持者的角色,为教学提供资源和时间上的保障,促进教师在专业上不断进步。而教师也不再只是单纯的课程执行者的角色,而是被赋予课程开发者的角色,创造性地生成课堂和开展教学。     

The role of leadership in small scale educational change

By investigating the factors facilitating and hindering a small scale educational change, this study highlights the crucial role of leadership in designing and implementing an educational change at a transnational university in Vietnam. During its initiation stage, the programme leaders seemed to fail to (1) set up a clear schedule for changing, (2) assist external advisory groups in providing training sessions and (3) clarify the responsibilities of external advisory groups. At the implementation stage, programme leaders and teachers were less likely to (1) develop the collective knowledge and understandings required for ongoing instructional improvement, (2) adjust the teaching quality control system and (3) cooperate with advisory groups. The lessons that can be learned include (1) mutual trust between stakeholders is vital to its successful implementation as it may determine the level of efforts stakeholders would make, (2) preparations should include clarifying stakeholders' responsibilities and the accountability system and (3) the external advisory groups need to be properly managed from the very beginning of the change.     

Changing policy contexts and teachers´ work-life narratives: the case of Estonian vocational teachers

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the work of teachers worldwide has undergone deep change. We have seen that teachers have encountered recent challenges differently and adapted to educational changes to a different extent depending on their personal disposition, but also school leadership and workplace support. This study focuses on the example of Estonian vocational teachers that serves as an interesting case for analysing how the interplay of the transitional context and neo-liberal policy trends adopted since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after 50 years under Soviet rule, have affected the individual trajectories of teachers’ lives. This paper aims to understand how the interplay of the institutional context and individual (work) lives shapes Estonian vocational teachers’ understandings of their work and professionality. We suggest that certain periods of practice are visible in teachers’ narratives and those periods might be considered as enabling different degrees of agency. However, our interviews also revealed that different reform periods have been perceived and responded to differently. In the context of 25 years of the educational reform process, the policies and requirements introduced have been refracted at different levels (Goodson & Rudd, 2017), including that of the vocational field, the schools and individual teachers. Our results confirm that teachers individual, social, cultural and material resources such as competence, career stage, relations and networks, school leadership and prevailing culture at schools have their role in enabling or hindering the agency of teachers.     

Using a Wiki in a Scientist-Teacher Professional Learning Community: Impact on Teacher Perception Changes

In this study, a wiki was integrated into a professional development model that systemically addresses early-career teachers?? needs. This study was conducted to examine the impact of wiki-based professional development activities in a scientist-teacher professional learning community and focused on early-career teachers?? perceptions of the role of wiki technology and knowledge of teaching through inquiry. Teachers participated in the Professional Learning Community Model for Entry into Teaching Science (PLC-METS), a professional development program that is based on an integrated teacher education model of knowledge sharing, collaboration, and communication between teachers and scientists, with the goal of supporting early-career teachers?? ability to engage their students in scientific inquiry. The use of a wiki environment to collaborate on activities, deliver resources, and share knowledge is rapidly expanding in professional development communities. The use of the wiki in PLC-METS positively predicted the results of teachers?? knowledge of inquiry-based teaching. Results demonstrate that the wiki can contribute to building a learning community for collaboration between early-career science teachers and scientists. The paper also discusses the educational implications for the design of wiki-based professional learning communities that impact teachers?? professional development.     

Twenty-first-century headteacher: pedagogue,visionary leader or both?

In recent years the UK secondary educational landscape has witnessed significant change, with the introduction of an ever-extending spectrum of competing government initiatives and policies. This has resulted in the steady erosion of the traditionally recognised role of headteacher. This paper presents the results of a practitioner-based study centred on the professional career journeys of a selected group of senior incumbent headteachers from across Liverpool, United Kingdom. The purpose of the research was to consider key features of difference in the headteacher role over a 30-year period. Five heads were interviewed about how they rose to headship and the influences and events that guided their career choices. Findings include acknowledgement of the requirement for self-directed career development, paucity of skills in preparation for headship, transformation in leadership models and the changing skills, qualities and qualifications required of contemporary and emergent headteachers.     

Teachers’ career ladder policy in Ethiopia: an opportunity for professional growth or “a stick disguised as a carrot?”

In response to the ever-declining status of the teaching profession, and its adverse effects on the country's educational system, the Federal Ministry of Education in Ethiopia introduced a policy of the teachers’ career ladder in 1994. While reformers believe that the introduction of the policy has improved the condition of the teaching profession, the net gains of the policy remain deceptive and even, in part, reduce some of the benefits teachers used to enjoy in the single salary scheme in the past. Among other things, central to the claims of the policy's advocates stands an improved salary scale for teachers. While this was admittedly true by the time the policy was introduced, the gain in salary raise has gradually been lost to the bureaucratic hurdles and watchdog structures erected to screen teachers’ eligibility at each stage of the career ladder. After critically assessing the major aspects of the policy, along with the voices of Ethiopian teachers, the current study argues that the policy of the teachers’ career ladder in Ethiopia is another prototypical case of a failed experiment both in terms of improving the lives of teachers and maintaining their professional rights.     

“互联网+”教育浪潮下开放大学教师信息化领导力何以可为

最初开放大学在远程教育领域有着较强的领导力与影响力,但是开放大学并没有及时借助这些新兴的技术与理念在"互联网+"教育浪潮中充分发挥其领导力。研究在分析相关文献基础之上总结出开放大学教师信息化领导力的特征,提出开放大学教师信息化领导力包括信任影响力、教学领导力、理念执行力和社会协作力四个维度,细化为14个评价指标。同时,提出从四个维度促进开放大学教师信息化领导力提升的方法和策略。