Session Information
01 SES 04 B, Research Perspectives on Leadership (Part 1)
Paper Session to be continued in 01 SES 06 C
Contribution
In education today, increased attention is paid to how to develop the competencies students need for their future social and professional lives. The complex challenges of the 21st century have resulted in a worldwide call to teach students key competencies, such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. Various frameworks have been developed to inform curriculum policies across the world. Consequently, increasing countries have reviewed their curricula considering 21st-century skills (Ananiadiou & Claro, 2009). Hence, there is a need to develop innovative learning environments in schools that support the development of 21st-century skills and how to lead and design the development of these skills (OECD, 2013).
School leaders play an important role in teachers' professional development. Administrators shape productive learning environments that support teachers' learning, teaching and influencing students' learning (Darling-Hammond et al., 2022). The effective professional development of school leaders has been found to support and transform school leaders' practice. Important characteristics of effective professional development for school leaders include authentic, active learning experiences that apply learning in practice; a focus on developing instruction; people and how to create a collaborative organisation. Other highlights include feedback and room for reflection and professional development structured to create a professional learning community (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007). This paper presents findings from a research and development programme exploring the ways in which cooperative learning (CL) as a theory and method can support school leaders' learning and practice.
Cooperative learning is a pedagogical model with a long history and extensive research base demonstrating its benefits for students' academic and social learning (Kyndt et al., 2013). It has been proposed as a powerful tool that teachers can use to develop the competencies students need for their future (Johnson & Johnson, 2014). The foundation of CL is learning through collaboration combined with learning to collaborate and can be described as the instructional use of small groups whose members work together to maximise everyone's learning (Slavin, 2015). The theory and method are based on five research-validated elements that mediate effective collaboration (Johnson & Johnson, 2002).
As a prerequisite for supporting students’ learning through collaboration and developing the competencies they need for their future, teachers, themselves, should experience the benefits of collaboration as learners. According to recent research, CL is also a promising tool for teachers' professional development; it supports their collaboration, cultivates teacher teams and enables them to become communities of practice (Liebech-Lien, 2021). Therefore, cooperative learning can be a powerful tool that school leaders can use to facilitate teachers' professional development (PD). Limited research has been conducted on how school leaders can use CL as a theory and method to support teachers' professional learning. As it is the school leader's responsibility to oversee and facilitate the learning and development of teachers and students, it is vital to explore how to support school leaders to develop good structures for collaboration that will benefit teachers' and students' learning. Accordingly, that was the objective of this research and development project.
This paper aims to explore the following research question:
In what ways can cooperative learning as a theory and method in school leaders’ professional development programme support their learning and practice?
Method
The data reported in this paper are based on a PD programme for all school leaders in primary and lower secondary schools in a municipality in Norway. The PD programme focused on CL as a theory and method to support school leaders to facilitate learning processes for teachers within their schools and to build professional learning communities. The aim of the project was to support school leaders' learning and implementation of new curriculum reform that is influenced by 21st-century skills and accentuate collaboration for teachers and students (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2020). The aim of the PD programme was twofold: 1) To provide school leaders with knowledge and first-hand experience with the pedagogical model and how it can be used as a theory and method to support teachers’ professional development and students' learning and 2) To give school leaders first-hand experience with CL as learners, themselves, to support a common focus for all the school leaders in the municipality. The author had the role of a researcher in her own organisation and developed and facilitated the PD programme in close collaboration with the municipality's leadership and school leaders. The PD programme comprised a two-day workshop in CL and monthly follow-up sessions during the 2021/2022 school year with a focus on CL and teachers' learning and with school leaders developing a proactive action research project to use CL to facilitate learning processes within their school. In proactive action research, participants act first and then study the effects (Schmuck, 2006). Altogether, 52 school leaders participated. During the workshop and in the follow-up session, school leaders worked in small groups. Data collected during the project were reflection logs from school leaders, participant observations, documents and material from the PD project. The main data from the study were reflection notes written after the two-day workshop and reflection notes written after the PD programme ended. Qualitative content analysis was used to enquire into the main data (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Preliminary analyses and findings from the research project and which ways CL as a theory and method had supported school leaders' learning were presented and reflected on with the municipality leadership, who also participated in the learning sessions. This discussion provided feedback and reflection and confirmed that the findings resonated with their experiences.
Expected Outcomes
The analysis of the data identified four important themes in which ways CL as a theory and method as well as how the school leader's PD programme supported their learning and practice. The first theme illustrates how the CL workshop provided first-hand experience with the theory and method and how this motivated school leaders to further use the method in their practice. Experiencing CL as learners, themselves, was deemed important, as it motivated school leaders to experience how the method really worked. The second theme revealed that CL provided the school leaders with an extended toolbox for planning and facilitating learning processes within their schools. The findings clearly show that the PD programme gave school leaders new ways to structure collaborative learning processes in their schools. In particular, they had tried direct CL methods in the workshop such as the "jigsaw puzzle" (Aronson, 2021) and meeting in the middle (Kagan & Stenlev, 2006), both considered methods they could easily apply in their own practice. The third theme demonstrated that proactive action research was a vital component that supported school leaders in trying CL in their leadership practice in their schools. The proactive action research also enabled school leaders to plan, attempt, obtain support and feedback and reflect on their experiences together in the small school leaders' groups in the PD programme along the way. Last, CL was found to cultivate a community of practice within the small school leader groups during the PD programme. The small school leader groups to which they were assigned during the PD programme supported their learning and fostered collegiality among them. The development of communities of practice can be a powerful source of learning for the individual and organisations (Wenger et al., 2002).
References
Ananiadou, K., & Claro, M. (2009). 21st century skills and competences for new millennium learners in OECD Countries, OECD Education Working Papers, 41, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/218525261154 Aronson, E. (2021). The jigsaw classroom: A personal odyssey into a systemic national problem. In Pioneering Perspectives in Cooperative Learning (pp. 146–164). Routledge. Darling-Hammond, L., LaPointe, M., Meyerson, D., Orr, M. T., & Cohen, C. (2007). Preparing school leaders for a changing world: Lessons from exemplary leadership development programs. School Leadership Study. Final Report. Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Darling-Hammond, L., Wechsler, M. E., Levin, S., & Tozer, S. (2022). Developing effective principals: What kind of learning matters? Learning Policy Institute. Hsieh, H. F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative Health Research, 15(9), 1277–1288. https://doi:10.1177/1049732305276687 Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2002). Learning together and alone: Overview and meta‐analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 22(1), 95–105. https:// doi:10.1080/0218879020220110 Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2014). Cooperative learning in the 21st Century. [Aprendizaje cooperativo en el siglo XXI]. Anales De Psicología/Annals of Psychology, 30(3), 841–851. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.30.3.201241 Kagan, S., & Stenlev, J. (2006). Undervisning med samarbejdsstrukturer. Cooperative Learning. Alinea. Kyndt, E., Raes, E., Lismont, B., Timmers, F., Cascallar, E., & Dochy, F. (2013). A meta-analysis of the effects of face-to-face cooperative learning. Do recent studies falsify or verify earlier findings? Educational Research Review, 10, 133–149. https://doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2013.02.002 Liebech-Lien, B. (2021). Teacher teams – a support or a barrier to practising cooperative learning? Teaching and Teacher Education, 106, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103453 OECD. (2013). Leadership for 21st century learning. Educational research and innovation. OECD Publishing. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264205506-en Schmuck, R. A. (2006). Practical action research for change (2nd ed.).Corwin Press. Slavin, R. E. (2015). Cooperative learning in elementary schools. Education 3–13, 43(1), 5–14. https://doi:10.1080/03004279.2015.963370 Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2020). Core curriculum – values and principles for primary and secondary education. https://www.udir.no/lk20/overordnet-del/prinsipper-for-laring-utvikling-og-danning/kompetanse-i-fagene/?lang=eng Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.
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