Collaborative Inquiry Driving Leadership Growth and School Improvement

Abstract

Australia's largest schooling system, the NSW Department of Education, is in a period of unprecedented change as the Department of Education initiates a range of reforms. One critical reform occurred in 2014 when the Department of Education and the New South Wales Teachers' Federation agreed to link teachers' salaries with accreditation. For the first time, all Department of Education principals, executives and teachers must complete an annual Performance and Development Plan. This article describes the work of a team of academics from the School of Education, Southern Cross University, and the Department of Education school leaders in northern NSW, exploring opportunities to accomplish school improvement through the "North Coast Initiative for School Improvement" (NCISI). The impetus for this initiative is based on the work of Alberta academics and researchers, Dr. David Townsend and Dr. Pamela Adams. The approach is based upon small teams, comprising a member of a school district's central office, a district principal and university academics, who once a month visit the leadership team of a school in order to build instructional leadership. This process involves the use of a guiding question, generative dialogue and a collaborative inquiry methodology. Early findings indicate the NCISI's approach is having positive impact leadership growth, through collaboration. Key elements of trust and professional identity have developed within teams. The very positive reaction of school communities to the project in its early stages is heartening and shows that there is a strong desire by school leaders to draw upon collaborative support in order to grow professionally. The project also demonstrates a strong level of commitment from a regional university to build productive relationships with schools.

Collaborative Inquiry and School Leadership Growth: An Australian Adaptation of an Albertan Approach

“…At a practical level, he has harnessed generative dialogue within a collaborative inquiry approach to drive positive outcomes in teacher engagement, student learning, and school leadership development. While engaged with the North Coast Initiative for School Improvement, he contributed directly to facilitating the development of local school leadership and to encouraging school leaders to undertake further studies and personal research projects (Baker et al, 2018;Campbell et al, 2019;Chaseling et al, 2016Chaseling et al, , 2017. His influence is now evident in more than one hundred schools in the North Coast region of New South Wales.…”

“…In practical terms, a school leadership team commits to having regular meetings facilitated by an external team usually comprised of a district office official, a university academic, and a principal from another school, at which the team develops a guiding question that relates to strategic goals and then reports routinely on evidence of success in seeking to address the guiding question. The importance of having a guiding question is pivotal to the success of the process (Chaseling et al, 2016). The external team contributes to the process by returning routinely to the same three questions: what have you done since we last met in relation to your guiding question?…”

“…The North Coast Initiative for School Improvement has now been active for the past six years. Progress summaries have previously been published (Chaseling et al, 2016(Chaseling et al, , 2017, and this Special Issue brings the reporting process forward. The group of participants has remained relatively stable, including over 100 members of leadership teams from as many as sixty primary and secondary schools across the region, together with a small group of Department of Education officials based in the region, and up to as many as 12 members of academic staff from Southern Cross University.…”

Generative dialogue: A concept analysis

“…During successful workshops and educational leadership projects, the Canadian academics Townsend andAdams (2009, 2010) introduced the use of generative dialogue. They came to claim it as an essential component of their leadership growth initiatives, which have now extended to more than 400 schools in Alberta, Canada, and also in New South Wales, Australia (Chaseling et al, 2016(Chaseling et al, , 2017. Over more than two decades, Townsend and Adams (and now their colleague, Carmen Mombourquette) have developed and implemented a collaborative inquiry approach that has been shown to lead to measurable growth in school improvement (Adams, 2014;Chaseling et al, 2017;Townsend, 2015;Townsend and Adams, 2008).…”

A grounded theory of educational leadership development using generative dialogue

“…In addition, some are self-published and lack the rigour of a peer review process (Townsend, 2015; Townsend and Adams, 2009, 2010). Previous research by Chaseling et al (2016, 2017) evaluated the implementation of GD in schools in Australia, which showed encouraging results regarding increased collaboration and trust. The current study is therefore timely and necessary as the first attempt to objectively evaluate the use of GD as applied to educational leadership in Canada, by a third party team of researchers who are uninvolved in the process they are evaluating, and to publish findings through a peer-reviewed process.…”