Session Information
26 SES 04 B, School Improvement and Quality Through the Lens of Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Schleicher (2012) describes the fundamental role of school leaders as setting a vision and enhancing the capacities of the school community to achieve it. Similarly, other studies have identified core leadership practices exercised by principals including building vision and setting directions, understanding and developing people, redesigning the organisation and managing the teaching and learning program (Leithwood et al. 2006). It is clear schools do not become high performing in the absence of strong leadership. However, it is also apparent the single point accountability on principals to improve teaching and learning is a heavy burden to carry (Riley et al. 2021). As such, principals are increasingly encouraged to cultivate a support network to assist them through key improvement initiatives. While there are varied approaches principals can draw upon for support (see principal supervisor role, Community of Practice, executive coaching, etc) a recognised mechanism for principal support is the use of a critical friend.
A critical friend has been defined as ‘a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person’s work as a friend’ (Costa & Kallick 1993, p. 50). This has been extended to include helping schools make decisions, challenge expectations, patiently playing a role that is interpretive and catalytic, helping shape outcomes but never determining them, alerting the school to issues only half perceived, and being sympathetic to the school’s purpose (Doherty, et al. 2001). While broad definitions that allude to aspects of the role have emerged, there is still considerable debate about how to best capture the concept of a critical friend.
Arising from the ambiguous conceptualisation of a critical friend is a lack of guidance on the exact tasks a critical friend is expected to fulfil, competencies they should have, or skills and behaviours that should guide their work (MacPhail et al. 2021). It is acknowledged differences arise due to the contextual needs of a given situation (Swaffield & MacBeath 2005) and there does not appear to be one universally accepted definition, perception of, or role for critical friends in supporting and enhancing professional learning and development. This has led to a disjointed and fragmented literature which is difficult to synthesise and advance, and, it is suspected, replete with individuals in critical friend roles without calling them as such (MacPhail et al. 2021).
This study seeks to provide insights into the varied and potentially boundary spanning role a critical friend may need to draw upon. This is achieved by analysing the work of four critical friends whose primary role is to support principals to lead improvement in teaching and learning in a longitudinal mathematics professional learning program. The data presented in this study is derived from the first year of a 2-year professional learning partnership between the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE), the Maths Association of Victoria (MAV) and 39 primary school leadership teams. Prior to commencing the critical friend role in the project, the experienced educational consultants were invited to be part of a focus group. The intention of the study is to examine the way experienced consultants conceptualise the type of roles a critical friend might play as part of the improvement initiative.
Method
A focus group methodology was adopted to examine the type of role the experienced consultants anticipated they would be required to undertake as part of the improvement program. Focus groups are particularly useful for discovering new insights (Gould et al. 2008) and therefore appropriate for examining perceptions of the types of roles the consultants anticipate will be required as part of the professional learning program. Their perception is based on their previous experience working as a critical friend coupled with their understanding of the professional learning program. Focus group methodology is suited for obtaining in-depth responses (Morgan, 1998), which in this context meant the thoughts and diverse experiences of the critical friends would be effectively surfaced. Focus groups also allow the researcher to seek clarity and ask participants to verify their statements (Krueger, 1998). Hence, if the critical friends were lacking in specificity, additional clarification was requested to ensure the researchers understanding of the role matched with the critical friend’s description. The intention of the focus groups was to generate themes that could be transformed into explicit descriptions of the role a critical friend plays when supporting principals in improvement work. The critical friends were purposely sampled based their previous experience in this type of role. The five critical friends in the focus group interviews had a minimum of 4-years experience working with school leaders in this role. Two 90-minute focus group sessions were held over a two-week period. The focus group included the 6 critical friends and two investigators. Following standard focus-group guidelines (Morgan, 1998), each group consisted of the same 6 participants, as well as an investigator to capture the discussion and the other investigator to undertake the role of group facilitator. Both investigators were experienced educational consultants who had been extensively involved in school improvement efforts. In addition, they had both conducted qualitative research in the past considered the appropriateness of qualitative research methodologies within this context.
Expected Outcomes
The focus group sessions enabled the four consultants to highlight key aspects of how they conceptualised the critical friend role. The discussion was closely aligned to MacPhail et al. (2021) dual-continuum model. Following the focus group interviews, the data was analysed to identify patterns with how the critical friend role was conceptualised by experienced consultants working as critical friends with school leadership teams. From these patterns we derived four archetypes to make sense of, and provide insight about, the range of experiences the experienced consultants have had with the critical friend role to date, and how they consider the diverse roles they may be required to undertake. Workshop participants confirmed that the archetypes reflected the varying beliefs, attitudes and behaviours required for a critical friend to support school improvement. In addition to eight professional learning days school principals had access to a critical friend to support their improvement work throughout the duration of the program. The intention was that the critical friend would visit each principal at their school twice every academic year to support the contextualisation of the improvement work they were undertaking in mathematics. A critical friend is espoused as being a highly adaptable form of support for the leadership of school improvement (Gurr & Huerta, 2013). Due to the adaptative nature of the critical friend there is significant ambiguity surrounding the role. The four key archetypes the critical friends anticipated they would utilise during the professional learning program and the working definitions they established are: mentor, challenge partner, more knowledgeable other, and knowledge broker. The roles and definitions will be explored as part of the presentation.
References
Costa, A.L. and Kallick, B., 1993. Through the lens of a critical friend. Educational leadership, 51, 49. Doherty, J. , MacBeath, J. , Jardine, S. , Smith, I. & McCall, J. (2001) Do schools need critical friends? In J. MacBeath & P. Mortimore (eds) Improving School Effectiveness, pp. 138-151. Buckingham: Open University Press . Gould, D., Lauer, L., Rolo, C., Jannes, C., & Pennisi, N. (2008). The role of parents in Tennis success: Focus group interviews with junior coaches. Sport Psychologist, 22(1). Gurr, D., & Huerta, M. (2013). The role of the critical friend in leadership and school improvement. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 106, 3084-3090. Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2006). Transformational school leadership for large-scale reform: Effects on students, teachers, and their classroom practices. School effectiveness and school improvement, 17(2), 201-227. MacPhail, A.,Tannehill, D and Ataman, R. (2021): The role of the critical friend in supporting and enhancing professional learning and development, Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2021.1879235 Morgan, D. L., Krueger, R. A., & Scannell, A. U. (1998). Planning focus groups. Sage. Swaffield, S. and MacBeath, J., 2005. School self-evaluation and the role of a critical friend. Cambridge journal of education, 35 (2), 239–252. doi:10.1080/03057640500147037. Schleicher, A. (2012). Preparing teachers and developing school leaders for the 21st century: Lessons from around the world. OECD Publishing. 2, rue Andre Pascal, F-75775 Paris Cedex 16, France.
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