Teacher Teams and Distributed Leadership: A Study of Group Discourse and Collaboration

Abstract

Purpose: This article explores distributed leadership as it relates to two teacher teams in one public secondary school. Both situational and social aspects of distributed leadership are foci of investigation. Methods: The qualitative study used constant comparative analysis and discourse analysis to explore leadership as a distributed phenomenon. Data from field notes and video recordings of two teacher teams during one semester were used. Findings: Three constructs emerged that informed our understanding of collaborative interaction within each professional learning team: purpose, autonomy, and patterns of discourse. Purpose and autonomy, manifest as organizational conditions, largely shape patterns of discourse that characterize the interaction of the team members. We argue that the nature of purpose and autonomy within a teacher team can influence the social distribution of leadership. Conclusions: The nature of teams in shared governance structures—the fact that teams can organize to either find or solve problems—has important implications for the creative and leadership capacity of individual teams. Thus, structures and social dynamics of distributed leadership must be attended to and not taken for granted. Implications include (a) conceptualizing leadership in terms of interaction, (b) needing to help teachers become aware of conversational dynamics that lead to or subvert effective collaboration, and (c) needing to help principals become more aware of their role in helping to establish clarity of purpose and appropriate levels of autonomy, so that teams may engage in work that leads to effective and innovative problem-finding and problem-solving activities.

Using Social Network Analysis to Study How Collegial Interactions Can Augment Teacher Learning from External Professional Development

“…One such condition is that leaders set a clear and focused purpose for teachers with respect to instructional improvements. When particular teams of teachers receive or co-construct a charter for their work with leaders, their work together to improve practice produces a common sense of purpose to use as a benchmark for progress (Kaufman and Stein 2010;Scribner et al 2007). Another condition is that teachers must be willing to open their practice to scrutiny by colleagues (Little 2002).…”

“…This research has explored the conditions under which teachers within schools form professional learning communities that enable teachers to reflect on and improve their practice (McLaughlin and Talbert 2006;Woolworth et al 2001). Case analyses have illuminated the critical conditions for forming such communities, including a shared goal for improvement (Scribner et al 2007), a commitment to opening up one's practice to others (Little 2002), and a strong alignment between the formal or designed social organization of schools and the actual pattern of collegial ties (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1997). These conditions, in turn, enable teachers to reconstruct their practice through repeated interactions around artifacts and representations of teaching practice and student thinking (Kazemi and Franke 2004;Little 2003), opportunities to observe one another engaged in the act of teaching (Lewis et al 2006), and routines for scaffolding interactions about teaching (Horn and Little 2010).…”

The Study of Relationship between Distributed Leadership and Principals’ Self-Efficacy in High Schools of Iran

“…Distributed leadership provides a new lens to observe leadership practice. "Empowerment", "interaction", "democratic environment" and "shared responsibility" are the most expressed words mentioned in various definitions (Hartley, 2007;Scribner, Sawyer, Watson & Myers, 2007;Firestone, Mangin, Martinez, & Polovsky, 2005;Harris, 2005;Spillane, Dimond,& Jita, 2000). Some researchers perceive distributed leadership as an overlapping concept with "shared leadership" and "teacher leadership", because they all emphasize the power delegation, internal interaction, as well as teachers' dynamics and professionalism (Hartley, 2007;Sheard, 2007;Duignan & Bezzina, 2006;Murphy, 2005).…”

Liderazgo en organizaciones educativas

“…Las investigaciones que han intentado abordar el liderazgo en los contextos educativos han proliferado en los últi-mos años (Scribner, Sawyer, Watson, & Myers, 2007) y han surgido como una necesidad de dar respuesta al fracaso de muchas políticas educativas en el ámbito nacional que no han podido insertarse exitosamente en un nivel local (Townsend, 2011a). Donaldson (2006), en el contexto de las reformas educacionales en Estados Unidos, señala la difi cultad que tienen hoy los directores norteamericanos para compatibilizar los distintos programas y para encontrar espacios y tiempo sufi ciente para desarrollar un liderazgo en el sentido tradicional del término.…”