Exploring the Connections Between Action Research and Teacher Leadership: A Reflection on Teacher-Leader Research for Confronting New Challenges

ABSTRACT

This reflective article examines the relationship between teachers’ engagement in action research and their ability to lead within their schools. As part of The New Educator’s special issue, “Developing an Inquiry Stance toward Instructional Improvement: Teacher-Leader Action Research,” this article demonstrates the development of an inquiry stance. It shares the story of two practicing teacher leaders within the new and challenging circumstance of adjusting to, and studying, the professional development they provided to help teachers deal with a challenging transition to a radically different school space. This article examines the ways practitioner inquiry supported these teachers to be leaders in the new architectural space designed to promote innovative instruction for twenty-first-century teaching and learning. We posit that coupling teacher leadership and teacher research enables teachers (a) to lead with literature, (b) to lead from data, (c) to lead through sharing, and (d) to lead by example.     

Communication and emergent group leadership: Does content count?

Past research has been clear that talk time during discussion is directly associated with emergent group leadership, but has been inconsistent concerning whether communication content has an effect. The present study directly examines whether content has any impact on perceptions of leadership above the impact of quantity of talk. It utilizes a re‐analysis of data previously described in Pavitt, Whitchurch, McClurg, & Petersen (1995), consisting of a content analysis of discussion by zero‐history groups performing an ad‐hoc task and standing groups performing a task with real consequences to the members. Results suggest that content may count for the standing groups but not for the zero‐history. The implication, that content counts when groups perform “real”; tasks but not ad‐hoc exercises, may disambiguate the earlier ambiguous findings.     

Teaching thermodynamics to middle school students: What are appropriate cognitive demands?

What cognitive demands foster understanding of thermodynamics for middle school science students? We successively modified the cognitive demands of a 13-week thermodynamics curriculum for four cohorts of 100-200 eighth graders while maintaining the same basic experiments and real-time data collection software. When comparing posttest performance across four versions, we found two- to fourfold increases in understanding when (a) students actively predicted outcomes and reconciled results, and (b) students used a heat-flow model of thermodynamics to integrate their experimental results. We argue that the curriculum must explicitly motivate students to construct understanding, and that middle school students benefit from what we call “pragmatic models” of scientific concepts.     

Impact of Parenting Practices on Adolescent Achievement: Authoritative Parenting, School Involvement, and Encouragement to Succeed

This article examines the impact of authoritative parenting, parental involvement in schooling, and parental encouragement to succeed on adolescent school achievement in an ethnically and socio-economically heterogeneous sample of approximately 6,400 American 14-18-year-olds. Adolescents reported in 1987 on their parents' general child-rearing practices and on their parents' achievement-specific socialization behaviors. In 1987, and again in 1988, data were collected on several aspects of the adolescents' school performance and school engagement. Authoritative parenting (high acceptance, supervision, and psychological autonomy granting) leads to better adolescent school performance and stronger school engagement. The positive impact of authoritative parenting on adolescent achievement, however, is mediated by the positive effect of authoritativeness on parental involvement in schooling. In addition, nonauthoritativeness attenuates the beneficial impact of parental involvement in schooling on adolescents achievement. Parental involvement is much more likely to promote adolescent school success when it occurs in the context of an authoritative home environment.     

Weekly,technical and administrative work hours: Relationships to the extent R&D professionals innovate and help manage the innovation process

An exploratory study of 2308 R&D professionals working for U.S. based laboratories belonging to 24 large corporations finds inverted-U relationships between the technical, administrative and total hours R&D professionals work per week and the extent they innovate and help manage the innovation process. These relationships suggest that R&D professionals can increase the extent they accomplish these performance objectives by working up to an optimal number of weekly hours and by combining technical hours with up to an optimal number of administrative hours. When R&D professionals work 60 weekly hours by combining 50 technical hours with 10 administrative hours, they maximize the extent they innovate. When R&D professionals work 60 weekly hours by combining 35 technical hours with 25 administrative hours, they maximize the extent they help manage the innovation process. The implications of these findings for having R&D professionals increase the extent they accomplish these performance objectives and, therefore, develop their careers, are discussed.     

Parents and youth with learning disabilities: perceptions of relationships and communication

The study examined perceptions of family relationships and communication in 52 families who have an adolescent child diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD) with a matched group of 52 families who have a child without LD. Parents and youth completed a self-reported Family Relations and Communication Scales assessment. Findings revealed parents perceived their child as either overinvolved or underinvolved with their parents and not sharing the same values and norms as their parents. Findings indicated that parents of youth with and without LD share similar perceptions of both the openness and problematic aspects of family communication. Youth with and without LD reported higher levels of problematic maternal involvement than perceived by the mothers; youth without LD rated their mothers' affective expression higher than reported by their mothers; both groups of youth perceived their mothers' and their fathers' communication as less open and more problematic than reported by their parents.     

Adolescent Sleep Duration,Variability, and Peak Levels of Achievement and Mental Health

To inform public health recommendations for adolescent sleep, the amounts of sleep associated with the highest levels of academic achievement and mental health were examined. The degree to which daily variability in sleep duration represents an underappreciated but functionally significant sleep behavior also was tested. A total of 421 adolescents (M_age = 15.03 years) with Mexican‐American backgrounds reported nightly sleep times for 2 weeks; approximately 80% repeated the same protocol 1 year later. Multilevel modeling indicated that the amount of sleep associated with the lowest levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms was more than 1 hr greater than the amount associated with the highest levels of academic performance. Greater daily variability in sleep duration predicted greater symptomatology and mixed academic outcomes.     

Preschoolers' Spontaneous Emotion Vocabulary: Relations to Likability

Although there has been growing interest in the development of emotion, a surprisingly small amount of research deals with the vocabulary children use to refer to emotions. In the present study, we examined differences in children's spontaneous use of emotion vocabulary during their naturally-occurring peer interactions and explored these differences in relation to their likability as assessed by their peers. Preschoolers were observed in their interactions with other children and their utterances containing emotion words were recorded. The content, form, and pragmatic function of these emotion words then were analyzed. It was found that with increasing age, emotion vocabulary became more differentiated and complex. Moreover, children who used a larger number of different emotion words, made more references to others' emotional states, and used emotion vocabulary for social functions, were more liked by their peers. Discussion focused on understanding young children's use of emotion vocabulary, the contributions it makes to the quality of their social interactions, and the implications of these for early educators.