Exploring Teachers’ Instructional Practice Profiles: Do Distributed Leadership and Teacher Collaboration Make a Difference?

Abstract

Purpose: While the literature includes multiple studies on the relationship between school leadership and instructional quality, they often use instructional practice as a continuous variable, assuming that a teacher would perform all sub-dimensions of instructional practice at a similar rate and failing to link distributed leadership to classroom teaching. Addressing these gaps in the literature, this study aims to identify teacher- and school-level latent profiles of teachers’ instructional practices and to investigate how distributed leadership predicts teachers’ membership in different instructional practice profiles, with the mediating role of teacher collaboration. Research Methods/Approach: The study employed a cross-sectional survey design using Türkiye's TALIS data for lower secondary education. Multilevel latent profile analysis with mediation modeling was conducted on data from 3,223 teachers in 192 schools. Findings: This analysis yielded four teacher profiles: laissez-faire, typical, controlling, and versatile; and two school profiles, high controlling and high laissez-faire. Findings indicate that distributed leadership promotes professional collaboration in lessons among teachers, which could, in turn, play a critical role in determining both individual teacher- and school-level profiles. Implications: This study provides practical contributions to understanding the nature of classroom teaching, suggesting that future studies should use instructional practice profiles instead of a single construct of teaching.

The design and operationalization of the teacher competence management framework: The method and practical tools to identify and close teacher competence gaps for the teaching of 21st century skills

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“…This research is based on the hypotheses that a work environment dominated by team innovativeness and that the power of a collaborative culture can trigger more willingness in the teachers to improve their instructional practices (Bellibaş, 2023;Buyukoze et al, 2022;Özdemir, 2020;Özdemir et al, 2023). We investigated the relationship among team innovativeness and to what extent an innovative climate impacts teachers' instructional and professional practices, the key outcomes, including sub-contextual effects, such as exchange, coordination, and professional practices, basing our research on the teachers' perceptions.…”