Teachers Leading Instructional Change: A Process Model of Change Engagement

Author(s):

Thanh Dong Nguyen(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 06 B, Teacher Leadership and Teachers' Dealings with Educational Leadership

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

K6.02

Chair:

Sigríður Margrét Sigurðardóttir

Contribution

1. Background

The concept of teacher leadership, which can be traced back to the early 20^th Century in the United States (Smylie et al., 2002), has established itself as one of the core leadership models within the field of educational leadership and management (Bush & Glover, 2014; Gumus et al., 2016). Teacher leadership has been defined as “the process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of the school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student learning and achievement” (York-Barr & Duke, 2004, p. 287-288). The definition underscores the key tenets of teacher leadership: nature, method, and purpose. First, the nature of teacher leadership is conceived as a process rather than a positional concept. It is not confined to only a certain set of specific skills or tasks to be accomplished. Second, teacher leadership is centered on the basis of “influence and interaction”, rather than power and authority (Poekert, 2012, p.117). Finally, this definition highlights improved student learning as an ultimate goal of teacher leadership.

Enquiry on teacher leadership has considerably developed quantitatively for the last three decades, particularly the recent years. The 2004 review of York-Barr & Duke synthesized 140 works on teacher leadership published from 1980 to 2003.

Most recently, our research team conducted a systematic review of teacher leadership research in the 2003-2016 period as an extension and continuity of York-Barr and Duke (2004) (forthcoming). The team reviewed 474 peer-refereed articles published between January 2003 and April 2016. Our review has identified noticeable gaps for further scrutiny. Within this paper, the author wishes to highlight two suggestions based on those gaps. First, most empirical studies on teacher leadership are still confined to the mere description with either using small-scale qualitative case study designs (mostly) or some descriptive survey designs. There is a need to make more efforts at offering the theoretical perspectives of teacher leadership. Second, while teacher leadership is influence-based (Collinson, 2012; Hatch et al., 2005; York-Barr and Duke, 2004), little has been known about the process of how teacher leaders exert positive influences on their colleagues for enhanced student learning and school effectiveness. This leaves a potential void for future investigation.

2. Objectives and Significance of Study

The current study was conducted to address the two aforementioned suggestions for empirical research. Specifically, this study aimed to construct a theoretical model of describing and explaining the process of how teacher leaders influence their colleagues for improved teaching and learning quality. Addressing this research problem, the study sought to: (1) give voice to an underexplored problem; (2) contribute to theorizing the peer-influence process in the educational setting.

3. Relevance to International/European Scope

Although this study was primarily undertaken in the Singapore context, it offers potential contributions on the international scale. First, the final outcome is a theoretical model of teacher peer influence that targets at theoretical generalizability, rather than population generalization. European researchers might be interested in seeing how the lateral influence is elucidated in a model and testing it in their specific contexts in the future research. Second, this presentation will provide an account on how grounded theory methodology (GMT) has been applied. This might attract European educational leadership scholars because (a) the application of GTM for the purpose of theory building varies amongst disciplines (Charmaz, 2014; Urquhart, 2013) and (b) little effort has been done to discuss the use of GTM in the discipline of educational leadership.

Method

4. Methodology Grounded theory methodology was officially introduced in the 1967 book of Glaser & Strauss. After nearly 5 decades of development, there are currently three popular methods within the grounded theory methodology for selection: (1) Glaserian grounded theory method; (2) Straussian grounded theory method; and (3) Constructivist grounded theory method (Charmaz, 2014). The constructivist grounded theory method was adopted in this study. The study was conducted in seven primary schools in Singapore within two years (2015-2016). Key participants were 21 teacher leaders and 4 school leaders from the first four schools (Schools A, B, C, & D). Additionally, 20 teachers in three other schools (Schools E, F, & G) participated in three focused group discussions. The process of data collection and analysis comprised three main stages as follows. Stage 1: Conducting 25 interviews and 50 visits This stage involved conducting 25 interviews with 21 teachers leaders in Schools A, B, C, & D and 4 school leaders. Each individual interview lasted between between 50 and 80 minutes and was recorded and transcribed verbatim. The author paid 50 visits to the first four schools within the one-year participant observation period. The observational activities included: attending meetings; having informal talks with school leaders, teachers, and students; observing classes; and observing or participating in other school activities (e.g., extra-curricular activities and seminars). Employing a theoretical sampling strategy, the author analyzed data in each school prior to gathering data in the subsequent school. Generally, the essentials of data analysis included three main interactive tasks: coding, constant comparison, and memo-writing. Stage 2: Conducting 13 follow-up interviews The second stage entailed conducting 13 follow-up interviews with the participants in four schools in Stage 1. For each interview, the author summarized the initial findings and asked participants for their reactions and comments on the summary as well as further questions. Upon data analysis of this stage, five focused concepts and key themes emerged. The tentative relationships between these concepts were sketched. Stage 3: Conducting 3 focused groups discussions (FGD) Three FDGs were held in three other schools (E, F, & G) with the participation of 20 teachers (6-7 teachers for each FGD). The purpose of these FGDs was to discuss the focused concepts and initial theoretical model of peer influence emerged from analysis of data gathered in the previous stages. The tentative model was accordingly revised and then engaged with the extant proximal theories.

Expected Outcomes

5. Preliminary and Expected Findings The final outcome of this study is a grounded theory that describes and explains the process of how teacher leaders influence their colleagues for improved teaching and learning. Thornberg & Charmaz (2012, p.41) defined ‘theory’ as a statement of “relationships between abstract concepts and may aim for either explanation or understanding”. Urquhart et al. (2010) suggested three levels of theories: bounded context, substantive focus, and formal concepts; these levels of abstraction are associated with the degree of conceptualization. The current study aims to propose a substantive theory on peer influence in school settings. A grounded theory usually has a core concept/category (or sometimes two) that represents the main theme of the study (Glaser, 1978; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The emergent theory of this study comprises one core concept and four other focused/substantive concepts. ‘Trust’ is the core concept in this study. This core concept appeared with high frequency in the empirical data; almost all participants mentioned this concept directly or indicators pointing to this concept. ‘Trusting’ also has empirical links to the interrelated focused concepts in the peer-influence model. The three other focused concepts are: ‘persuasion’, ‘modelling’, and ‘collaboration’. Over the presentation, the author will present the properties of each concept and elucidate the relationships between these concepts.

References

References Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: what do we know?. School Leadership & Management, 34(5), 553-571. doi:10.1080/13632434.2014.928680 Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. Sage. Collinson, V. (2012). Leading by learning, learning by leading. Professional Development in Education, 38(2), 247-266. doi: 10.1080/19415257.2012.657866 Glaser, B. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.  Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery Of Grounded Theory: Strategies For Qualitative Research. Aldine, Chicago, IL. Gumus, S., Bellibas, M. S., Esen, M., & Gumus, E. (2016), “A systematic review of studies on leadership models in educational research from 1980 to 2014”, Educational Management Administration & Leadership 1741143216659296, first published on September 22, 2016. Hatch, T., White, M. E., & Faigenbaum, D. (2005). Expertise, Credibility, and Influence: How Teachers Can Influence Policy, Advance Research, and Improve Performance. Teachers College Record, 107(5), 1004-1035. Poekert, P. E. (2012). Teacher Leadership and Professional Development: Examining Links between Two Concepts Central to School Improvement. Professional Development in Education, 38(2), 169-188. Smylie, M. A., Conley, S., & Marks, H. M. (2002). Exploring new approaches to teacher leadership for school improvement. In J. Murphy (Ed.), The Educational leadership challenge: Redefining leadership for the 21st century. One-hundred-and-first yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I (pp. 162-188). Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory., 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications, Inc. Thornberg, R., & Charmaz, K. (2012). Grounded theory. In S. D. Lapan, M. T. Quartaroli, & F. J. Riemer (Eds.), Qualitative research: An introduction to methods and designs (pp.4167). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Urquhart, C., Lehmann, H., & Myers, M. D. (2010). Putting the ‘theory’ back into grounded theory: guidelines for grounded theory studies in information systems. Information Systems Journal, 20(4), 357-381. York-Barr, J., & Duke, K. (2004). What Do We Know About Teacher Leadership? Findings From Two Decades of Scholarship. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 255-316.

Author Information

Thanh Dong Nguyen (presenting / submitting)

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

National Institute of Education

Singapore

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