Teacher Leadership, Professionalism and Professional Development: Findings from a 3-year Research Project in Portugal

Author(s):

Maria Assunção Flores(presenting / submitting)Fernando Ferreira Cristina Parente Fátima Vieira Cláudia Pinheiro

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 01 A, Evaluating Professional Development Programmes - England, Portugal and Cameroon

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

13:15-14:45

Room:

203.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Sara Bubb

Contribution

Teacher leadership has gained increasing attention from researchers in recent years, especially internationally. This notion has been developed in the USA (Little, 1988; Lieberman, 1992; Lieberman & Miller, 2004; Lieberman & Friedrich, 2008), UK (Frost & Durrant, 2002, 2003; MacBeath et al 2006; Frost, 2004; Durrant, 2004), and Australia (Crowther, 1999), amongst others. All this work has drawn attention to the need for a vision of teacher leadership as a key element in improvement efforts in Education. While in many contexts terms such as distributed leadership have been used widely in the literature, they also have tended to focus rather on capacity building of heads of departments and other management teams at school (Naylor, Gkolia, & Brundrett, 2006).This reinforces the formal leadership as opposed to informal leadership which may exist regardless of a given role or responsibility at school. Within the view of schools as learning communities, members are encouraged to exercise leadership and to engage themselves in improvement and change in the settings in which they work. In other words, while there are projects which have focused upon leadership in regard to specific roles and responsibilities (Lieberman & Miller, 2004; Lieberman & Friedrich, 2008; Crowther, 1999), others do see them with some limitations as they tend to depend upon formal role designation linked to existing structures and programs at school. Others (Frost, 2004; Spillane, 2006) tend to emphasize the informal kind of leadership in which teachers engage in order to enhance their professionalism and to make a difference in their work and in the schools in which they work.

There is scope for further developments in this area by promoting strategies to enable teachers to develop further their capacity for leadership in their schools and across schools. However, this is dependent upon the ways in which teaching and being a teacher are understood, in other words, teacher professionalism. Fostering teacher leadership in schools implies, therefore, the analysis of teacher professionalism in a given social, cultural and political setting, of the existing resources and conditions for teacher leadership and of the strategies for supporting teacher leadership.

However, understanding teacher professionalism implies the consideration of the historical, cultural and political context in which it is embedded. Not only is it a concept under permanent construction (Gimeno, 1991) and subject to different, and sometimes competing, interpretations and analyses, but it also entails different ‘voices’ or ‘perspectives’ which are rooted in different political, professional and institutional endeavors (Helsby, 2000; Hargreaves, 2000; Flores, 2005; Day, Flores & Viana, 2007). Clearly the extent to which teachers are able to engage in strategic action for change depends on the way their professionalism is perceived by themselves and their colleagues and on the conditions for them to exercise leadership, to lead innovations in schools and to transform their educational practice (Frost, 2007).Research on teacher leadership would need therefore to account for the way professionalism is constructed within policy and institutional settings, and in particular in the Portuguese context which has been critical for the teaching profession over the last few years due to the economic, financial and social crisis.

Method

The goals of the project are: i) to understand the wider social, cultural and political setting and the policy environment in which teachers’ work is framed, especially in terms of challenges and opportunities; ii) to analyze the professional and organizational culture and structures of the schools in which teachers work; iii) to understand the ways in which teachers construct their professionalism; iv) to develop strategies in order to enhance teacher leadership in schools. In order to achieve these, a mixed-method research design was devised. The project includes; i) the phase one of data collection - a survey on teacher professionalism and wider policy context of teaching in a sample of schools nationwide (n=2702 teachers); the pahse two - interviews to principals in 11 schools nationwide (n=11), and 45 focus group (n=99 teachers and n= students), and phase three – the development and evaluation of strategies to involve teachers exercising leadership in their schools (n=66 teachers). In the process of analysis, an inductive approach was used, and substantive themes were defined as they emerged from the data, according to the overall principles of ‘grounded theory’, as suggested by Glaser and Strauss (1967) and Strauss and Corbin (1990). The process of data analysis was undertaken according to two phases: a vertical analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994) according to which each of the respondents’ interviews was analyzed separately. A second phase was then carried out according to a comparative or horizontal analysis (cross-case analysis) (Miles and Huberman, 1994). In this phase, the method of ‘constant comparative analysis’ (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was used to look for common patterns as well as differences. This process was undertaken iteratively and adjustments in the coding process were made where necessary. Quantitative data were analyzed statistically with the use of SPSS 18.0.

Expected Outcomes

By and large, issues such as bureaucracy, intensification, the deterioration of social image of the teaching profession, unemployment amongst teachers due to the financial and economic crisis, endless reforms in Education (such as external evaluations for teachers, schools and students) are amongst the external factors that account for teachers lack of motivation and dissatisfaction. However, internal factors such as teacher collaboration, classroom work and the relationship with students were identified as factors and sources of personal and professional motivation which help teachers in remaining in the teaching profession despite everything. Strong professional values, sense of professionalism and the capacity for resisting as well as teacher resilience which is related to their sense of identity as teachers also emerged from the data. Also, ambiguity and ambivalence in teachers’ views and perceptions of both leadership and professionalism emerged from the data which may be linked to two levels in which their discourse may be associated: the rhetoric level – in which the language of policy shapes teachers’ discourse; and the practice – which has to do with what teachers actually do. One might ask therefore about the effective existing conditions for a culture of leadership, which is to be related to teachers’ own understandings of leadership and their professional identities. In this regard, especially in a context marked by austerity and budget reductions for Education (as it is the case of the Portuguese context), one might ask about the ways in which teachers might exercise leadership in their schools and classrooms. These and other issues will be explored further in the paper.

References

Crowther, F. (1999) The IDEAS Project: Guidelines for Exploration and Trial in Queensland State Schools. Brisbane: Education Queensland. Durrant, J. (2004) Teachers leading change: frameworks and key ingredients for school improvement, Leading and Managing 10 (2) pp.10-29 Flores, M. A. (2005) Teachers’ views on recent curriculum changes: tensions and challenges. The Curriculum Journal, 16 (3), pp. 401-413. Frost, D. (2004) Resisting the juggernaut: building capacity through teacher leadership in spite of it all, Leading and Managing 10(2), pp. 70-87. Frost, D. and Durrant, J. (2002) Teachers as Leaders: exploring the impact of teacher-led development work, School Leadership and Management, 22(2), pp. 143-161. Frost, D. and Durrant, J. (2003) Teacher Leadership: rationale, strategy and impact, School Leadership and Management, 23(2), pp. 173-186. Hargraeves, A. (2000) Four Ages of Professionalism and Professional Learning, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 6 (2), pp. 151-182. Helsby, G. (1995) Teachers’ Construction of Professionalism in England in the 1990’s, Journal of Education for Teaching, 21 (3), pp. 317-332. Helsby, G. (2000) Multiple Truths and Contested Realities. The Changing Faces of Teacher Professionalism in England, in C. Day; A. Fernandez; T. E, Hauge and J. Moller (eds) The Life and Work of Teachers. International Perspectives in Changing Times (London, Falmer Press) pp. 93-108 Hoyle, E. (1974) Professionality, professsionalism and control in teaching, London Educational Review, 3 (2), pp. 13-19. Hoyle, E. (1980) Professionalization and de-professionalization in education, in E. Hoyle and J. Megarry (eds) World Yearbook of Education 1980: The Professional Development of Teachers (London, Day, C. (1999) Developing Teachers. The Challenges of Lifelong Learning (London, Falmer Press). Katzenmeyer, A. and Moller, G. (2001) Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders (2nd ed) Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Lieberman, A. (1992) Teacher Leadership: What are we learning? in C. Livingston (Ed) Teachers as Leaders: evolving roles, Washington DC: National Education Association Lieberman, A. and Friedrich, L. (2008) Changing Teaching from Within: Teachers as leaders in J. MacBeath and Y.C. Cheng. (eds) Leadership for Learning: International Perspectives, Rotterdam and Taipei: Sense Publishers pp. 37-57. Lieberman, A. and Miller, L. (2004) Teacher Leadership, San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass MacBeath, J., Frost, D., Swaffield, S. and Waterhouse, J. (2006) Leadership for Learning: Making the Connections, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. Naylor, P., Gkolia, C. & Brundrett, M. (2006) Leading from the Middle: an initial study of impact, Management in Education, 20 (1) pp. 11-16

Author Information

Maria Assunção Flores (presenting / submitting)

University of Minho

Institute of Education

Braga

Fernando Ferreira

University of Minho, Portugal

Cristina Parente

University of Minho, Portugal

Fátima Vieira

University of Minho, Portugal

Cláudia Pinheiro

University of Minho, Portugal

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