Reappraising the AITSL Professional Engagement Domain: Clarifying Social Capacity Building for School Leaders to Enhance Overall Teacher Job Satisfaction and Career Longevity

Abstract

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2018) stipulate what teachers should know and do through each career stage. School leaders are complicit in promoting the Standards are met by all staff, including Professional Engagement (Standards Six and Seven). While the Standards emphasise content and pedagogical capacity building, we contend that teaching is a social enterprise. Although social capacity building is implied in the Professional Engagement domain through terms such as ‘collegiality, collaboration and dialogue’, we question the degree to which it is understood by school leaders. We ask this in light of influential studies by Waldinger (2010) and Vaillant (1977) which highlight the importance of workplace social connection in terms of job satisfaction and career longevity. Using an Appreciative Inquiry lens, we interviewed a number of positive school leaders about social capacity building among their staff against the Professional Engagement domain. While interviews affirmed many inspiring examples of its application, we also uncovered a degree of uncertainty, lack of clarity and practical difficulties experienced by these exemplary leaders. As per our research approach, we do not suggest that there is any fundamental problem with the Professional Engagement domain per se. However, findings indicate value for AITSL in reappraising this domain in relation to its wording, implications and application. A more explicit emphasis on the social context may in turn help address some of the issues confronting Australia’s aging teaching workforce.

Leadership and Capacity Building; The Construction of Madrasah Quality Improvement

“…The research results show that the presence of a leader is expected to bring about change for madrasas through their touch and thoughts (Hill-Berry, 2019;Abowitz & Kathleen, 2019;Samsu et al, 2021). Such a leader can make existing human resources into an organizational force to make extraordinary changes by the expectations of all parties (Imhangbe et al, 2019;Lowe et al, 2020;Wahyudin et al, 2021;Salim & Hasanah, 2021). Leaders who can increase the capacity of all components of the madrasa to make changes and equip them with the competencies and skills expected to accelerate quality improvement at Madrasah Tsanawiyah Al Ihsan.…”

“…Leadership is the process of influencing others to achieve a common goal (Miroj et al, 2020). Leadership is an attempt to motivate individuals to complete some goals of an organization (Lowe et al, 2020).…”

A bibliometrics analysis of research on teachers' satisfaction from 1956 to 2022

“…For example, gender (Rezaee et al ., 2020) and teaching style (Li et al ., 2021) have a mediating role in the influence of leadership on teachers' satisfaction. Besides, several antecedents like social support (Ali et al ., 2021) and social engagement (Lowe et al ., 2020) are also significant in enhancing teachers' satisfaction. Last but not least, students' achievement and teachers' perceptions and beliefs about students' achievement are predictors of teachers' self-efficacy and stress (Liu et al ., 2018; Heyder, 2019).…”

Improving Madrasah Quality Through Leadership and Capacity Building

“…Leadership influences other individuals to achieve common goals (Miroj et al, 2020). Leadership is an effort to inspire individuals to achieve several organizational goals (Lowe et al, 2020).…”