Teacher’s Leadership In Inclusive Societies

Author(s):

Samuel Gento(presenting / submitting)José Cajide Ascensión Palomares Ruiz Raúl González Fernández Vicente Orden

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 02, Teaching within Inclusive Schools

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

15:15-16:45

Room:

W2.10

Chair:

Samuel Gento

Contribution

The topic refers to teacher’s leadership profile according to a reference model of pedagogical or educational leadership. Te research tries to answer to questions such as: is it necessary to consider the teacher as a true leader? What are the typical dimensions of an authentic educational leader? Is it necessary to have teachers able to act as authentic pedagogical leaders? What is the leadership profile of teachers working in European educational systems?

Te current most relevant specialized literature emphasizes that the need of leaders who promote effective activity of individuals and groups is now evident in all areas of our society. And according to most recent sources, the need of authentic pedagogical or educational leaders is even more important if one takes into account the role of social leadership that corresponds to educators in the new society of knowledge (Branson, 2010; Coronel, 2005; European Commission, 2013; Gajda and Koliba, 2008; Perrenoud, 2013; Pont, Nusche and Hopkins, 2008; Pont, Nusche and Moorman, 2008).

Need of educational leaders in Europe

The important investments that education persistently asks from taxpayers and families for an education of quality (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1994). But the authentic quality of education can only be achieved if human resources of educational institutions work with high levels of satisfaction: only a suitable approach and support of the leadership role may lead to such effects. Undoubtedly, if all members of educational institutions must exercise the role of educational leadership, this role must be especially incarnated by the professionals directly involved with the promotion and improvement of education, i.e. by teachers and educators. The European Union in its "Conclusions of the Council on Effective Educational Leadership' (Diario Oficial de la Unión Europea C30 / 2 of February 2014) states: "Effective school leadership is a key factor for coining a general environment for teaching and learning, provoking aspirations and supporting students, parents and staff, thus promoting higher levels of performance".

Need of teachers as educational leaders

The European Union considers leadership as one of the most important factors to attain an education of quality; but it emphasizes teacher’s leadership as a propriety due to the fact that he/she has the most direct effect on student’s learning (European Commission, 2013). Teacher’s basic mission must be to provoke student’s ability for he/she to discover the necessary knowledge, the way of acquiring it and the proceedings of exploiting or using it for his/her practical life (Gento, 1994).

Attention to educational treatment of diversity

The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (approved by the General Assembly of United Nations on December 10^th 1948) states: “Every person is born free and equal in dignity and rights” (ONU, 1948). The same Declaration issues: “Every person has right to education’. And, as a consequence, the concern must be how to attain that every person, most particularly those with stressed diversity, have access to a true education of quality.

The need to offer specialized educational treatment to every person accommodated to the particular type and degree of diversity is expressed by the ‘Madrid Declaration’ of 2002 issued by the ‘European Congress on Disability: “Only those politics that respect diversity will be successful” (Congreso Europeo sobre Personas con Discapacidad, 2002). And the President of the ‘European Agency for Development of Special Educational Needs’, Jorge Greve (2009), declares: “Working, by considering people’s diversity is the most important challenge facing educational institutions and their professionals” (p. 30) As a consequence, the need of educational leaders and teachers able to promote education with this approach of attention to diversity is one of the most relevant needs of today’s education.

Method

To collect data of teacher’s leadership dimensions, two techniques have been implemented: a questionnaire on evaluation of the educational leadership in educational institutions; and interviews on leadership exercise to people involved in the functioning of educational institutions (mainly directing professionals and teachers). The questionnaire ‘internal consistency’ has been calculated to determine its reliability. To such purpose, the index alpha of Cronbach has been obtained. This index determines the correlation among the instrument items. If the index gets closer to 1, it reveals that its reliability is attaining its maximum value. It is generally accepted that a coefficient of 0.60 is enough as a measure of reliability (Thorndike, 2003). The index obtained for our questionnaire has been of 0.990. As a consequence, it may be estimated that the instrument is highly reliable. Other index has been the coefficient of Spearman-Brown: the obtained result is 0.997, that also confirms the questionnaire high degree of reliability. The following types of questionnaire validity have been checked: • Content validity. To obtaining it, the following professionals have given their opinion: o University Professors of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Israel, Latvia, México Perú, Scotland, Spain and, USA. o Principals or heads of educational institutions working on different levels (pre-school, primary, secondary, technical) in different countries, particularly the mentioned ones; o Teachers of non university schools; o Fathers and mothers of students from different levels; o Students of particular institutions, including university grade and postgraduate courses. • Construct validity. It has been checked by opinions from relevant authors: Bertone, Poggi y Teobaldo (1995); Best y Kahn (2003); Tuckman (1978) and other ones. • Reactive validity. To confirm it, opinions have been collected from those who filled in the questionnaire: o 87 % of participants manifested that there is nothing in the questionnaire which is not referred to educational leadership; o 93.7% of these participants responded that it does not lack in the questionnaire any aspect that should be included in such questionnaire of educational leadership. Opinions expressed by experts who emitted their judgment to check content validity of the questionnaire have been taken into account and used to correct expressions or to add contributions. The methodology has also included some interviews to representatives of sectors involved into the exercise of educational leadership. 32 of these interviews have been processed and interpreted by using a qualitative approach and with the help of AQUAD programme (Huber y Gürtler, 2013).

Expected Outcomes

3500 questionnaires filled in 2000-2014 show that the importance of educational leadership (mainly referred to the principal or school head) was, in general, lower than the one of the other basic components of quality of educational institutions (6.76 of educational leadership, maximum of 7.94 of student’s satisfaction). Afterwards, information from 1328 questionnaires has been processed in 2016: 754 questionnaires correspond to the evaluation of teacher’s leadership by different countries. To estimate the evaluation of the importance of leadership dimensions, the arithmetic mean of the marks (from 1 to 9) given by the participants has been calculated. The results obtained for each dimensions are: emotional: 7.79; charismatic: 7.71; professional: 7.60; formative: 7.56; anticipatory: 7.56¸ participative: 7.52¸ cultural: 7.27, administrative: 7.18. The arithmetic mean of marks obtained for the dimensions of a teacher’s educational leadership are all higher than 7 (out of a maximum of 9). This could be interpreted as a manifestation that all dimensions are important. The emotional dimension appears as the most important one, followed by the charismatic one and successively by all the other ones. It is nevertheless surprising that the participant dimension appears at the 6th post: perhaps teachers do not highly estimate student’s active intervention. This is one aspect that it would be worth studying in future analysis. Evaluation of the evidence in the teacher’s professional exercise shows that this is, in general, lower than the importance: this seems quite reasonable as importance refers to the desirable aspiration, while evidence refers to how the desirable aspiration is put into practice. Charismatic dimension and the emotional one are considered very important. The other dimensions got marks lower than 7. It seems quite surprising that the formative dimension (with a mark of 6.68) is the lowest one: this could mean that in service training is not considered extremely important.

References

Bertone, A., Poggi, M. y Teobaldo (1995). Evaluación. Nuevos Significados para una Práctica Compleja. Buenos Aires: Kapelusz. Best, J.W. & Kahn, J.V. (2003). Research in Education (9th edition).Boston: Library of Congress. Branson, Ch. M. (2010). Leading Educational Change Wisely. Totterdam: Sense Publishers. Congreso Europeo sobre Personas con Discapacidad (2002). Declaración de Madrid. Recuperado dehttp://www0.usal.es/webusal/files/DeclaracionMadrid_2002.pdf. Coronel, J.M. (2005). El liderazgo del profesorado en las organizaciones educativas: temáticas para su análisis e investigación. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 232, 471-490. Diario Oficial de la Unión Europea (2014). Conclusiones sobre Liderazgo Educativo Eficaz (C/302 de 1 de febrero). European Commission (2013).Teachers, School Leaders and Teacher Educators. Recuperado de https//ec.europa.eu/education/school- Gajda, R. &Koliba, C.J. (2008).Evaluating and improving the quality of teacher collaboration: a field-tested framework for secondary school leaders. NASSP Bulletin, 92(2), 133-153. Gento, S. (1994). Participación en la Gestión Educativa. Madrid: Santillana. Greve, J. (2009). La inclusión educativa en Europa. Líneas de actuación de la Agencia Europea para el desarrollo de necesidades educativas especiales. En M.A. Casanova y M.S. Cabra de Luna (Coords.), Educación de Personas con Discapacidad: Presente y Futuro (p. 26-30). Madrid: Fundación ONCE. Huber, G.L. y Gürtler, L. (2013). Aquad 7. Manual del Programa para Analizar Datos Cualitativos. Tübingen: Ingeborg Huber Verlag. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (1994). Centros Educativos y Calidad de Enseñanza. Madrid: Secretaría de Estado de Educación. ONU (Organización de Naciones Unidas) (1948). Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos. Recuperado de http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/ABCAnnexessp.pdf. Perrenoud, Ph. (2013). Dix Nouvelles Compétences pour Enseigner (7e. edition). Issy-les Moulineaux: ESF. Pont, B., Nusche, D. & Hopkins, D. (Ed.)(2008). Improving School Leadership, Volume 2: Case Studies on System Leadership. París: OECD. Pont, B., Nusche, D. & Moorman, H. (2008).Improving School Leadership, Volume 1: Practice and Policy. París: OECD (publicado en español, en 2009, como Mejorar el Liderazgo Escolar, Volumen 1: Política y Práctica). Thorndike, R. (2003). Medición y Evaluación en Psicología y Educación. México: Trillas. Tuckman, B.W. (1978). Conducting Educational Research. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Janovich.

Author Information

Samuel Gento (presenting / submitting)

UNED

Didactics, School Organization and Specific Didactics

Madrid

José Cajide

FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN

MÉTODOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN Y DIAGNÓSTICO EN EDUCACIÓN

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA

Ascensión Palomares Ruiz

University of Castilla-La Mancha

Albacete

Raúl González Fernández

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

Didáctica, Organización Escolar y Didácticas Especiales

Madrid

Vicente Orden

UNED, Spain

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