School Improvement Through Teacher Leadership

1. School Improvement Through Teacher Leadership Fatimiyah Education Network Academic Conference June 16, 2007 Keynote Address Dr. Meher Rizvi Aga Khan University – Institute for Educational Development

2. Teacher Leadership There is a need to “awaken the sleeping giant” within each teacher (Katzenmeyer and Moller, 1996) The question is “How is the sleeping giant within each teacher awakened?

3. Focus of the Presentation • Defining teacher leadership – the sleeping giant. • Awakening the sleeping giant or developing teacher leadership for effective school improvement.

4. My Thesis I strongly believe that schools are only as good as their teachers, regardless of how high their standards, how up-to-date their technology, or how innovative their programmes. I also believe that school improvement depends on what teachers think and do – it is as simple and as complex as that (Fullan, 1982)

5. AIM OF THE RESEARCH SCHOOL REFORMS Relationships TEACHER PROFESSIONALISM • Teacher Efficacy • Teacher Practice • Teacher Collaboration • Teacher Leadership

6. Teacher Leadership If teachers are controlled as “factory workers” in schools, then it matters little what kind of preparation they have, what kind of preparation is available to them, or what credentials they hold. Analogously, if physicians were placed in large public bureaucracies and stripped of the authority to make decisions, the argument that “doctors are professionals” would mean little.

7. Teacher Leadership Cooper and Conley (1991, p. 7) assert that teacher professionalism greatly depends on such factors as level of discretion, control over work, ability to mobilize resources, and inclusion in school decisions. The effectiveness with which teacher leaders perform their leadership roles also depends on these factors.

8. GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOL REFORM INITIATIVES IN KARACHI Primary Education Program (PEP) 1997 – 2002 Adopt a School Program – 1997 to Date Government School Project – 1995 to Date Sindh Primary Education Development Project (SPEDP) 1991–1998

9. MULTIPLE CASE STUDY RESEARCH SURVEY RESEARCH MIXED METHODS RESEARCH DESIGN 4 schools – 1 from each reform initiative 35 schools In-depth interviews with 4 teachers, principal and reform manager from each case school Questionnaire administered to 550 teachers. 450 teachers participated

10. Defining Teacher Leadership

11. Table 1: Factor Analysis for Teacher Leadership Scale

12. Teacher Leadership • Advocates of professional learning communities suggest that teacher leadership surfaces as an important element in addressing school improvement. • In such communities teachers lead within and beyond the classroom, influence others toward improved educational practice, and identify with and contribute to a community of leaders. • They are problem solvers, staff developers, and powerful influences in their work with colleagues (Moller et al., 2000).

13. Teacher Leadership • According to Apple (1992) when individuals cease to plan and control a large portion of their own work, the skills essential to these tasks are forgotten. Some argue that increased bureaucratic control and intensification over the last 20 years have reduced individual teachers’ areas of discretion in decision-making, have led to ‘chronic and persisting’ overload and have effectively resulted in deskilling.

14. Developing Teacher Leadership for Effective School Improvement

15. Developing Teacher Leadership The research findings illustrated that the school reforms have been able to develop teacher leadership and have taken it to a higher level than where it was when the reforms were initiated in the schools. Reform managers used various processes to develop teacher professionalism, resulting in enhanced teacher leadership. I have brought these processes together in the form of a three staged framework for developing teacher professionalism.

16. SCHOOL REFORMS Laying the Foundations Professional Development Opportunities to Expand Teacher Capabilities Building Teacher Capabilities Embedding Teacher Learning in Class and School Activities Further Development In Teacher Capabilities Enlightened and Committed Principal Professional, Administrative, Emotional and Structural Support Development in Teacher Professionalism

17. Developing Teacher Leadership • The development of teacher leadership depends on: • How successful the reform managers have been • in building positive relationships with the • teachers, • How involved the teachers are in the reform • initiatives, • How hybrid the support structures are in the • school, and • How informed or enlightened the school principal • is.

18. Centrality of the School Principals

19. The Centrality of the School Principals The school principals in the four case study schools involved teachers constructively in the decision-making regarding school matters, delegated authority, empowered teachers with classroom authority, listened to the teachers and offered them emotional and moral support.

20. The Centrality of the School Principals It was the shift from the more traditional patterns of leadership to the new practices of devolved and shared approach to leadership that helped teachers to gain confidence, enhance their professional capabilities and assume leadership roles.

21. The Centrality of the School Principals Based on the research findings a baseline proposition is that in order to assume a devolved, shared, and supportive approach to leadership for enhancing teacher leadership, school principals need training that goes beyond developing sound technical expertise to include understandings of how power within a school organisation is devolved, distributed and shared.

22. The Centrality of the School Principals A distributed view of leadership implies a social distribution of leadership function where the leadership task is accomplished through the interaction of several leaders. Gronn (2000) describes leadership as an emergent phenomenon where individuals work conjointly to pool their expertise for a product which is greater than the sum of their individual actions. In this way, leadership is no longer an individual matter but is spread throughout an organization with leaders’ roles overlapping and shifting as different development needs arise. It suggests inter-dependency rather than dependency.

23. Hybrid Support Structure

24. Hybrid Support Structure The research findings have illustrated that teachers need a “hybrid” support structure, which has elements of professional guidance (follow-up of the training sessions, providing teachers with feedback about their work, group discussions, collective administrative work, cooperative work techniques, teachers learning from one another in a planned manner), an emotional touch (encouraging teachers for trying, listening to them, respecting their point of views, praising their effort, promoting their work), proper structures and school administration (provision of teaching resources, availability of teaching staff, regular school supervision, setting aside time for teacher learning, relatively safe and clean working conditions).

25. Hybrid Support Structure Teachers need professional guidance to experience the positive effect of their enhanced capabilities. Guskey (2002) argues practices that are new and unfamiliar will be accepted and retained when they are perceived as increasing one’s competence and effectiveness. New practices are likely to be abandoned, however, in the absence of any evidence of their positive effects.

26. Hybrid Support Structure • The emotional lives of teachers are being adversely affected by high-stakes inspection processes (Jeffrey & Woods, 1996), stress-inducing reform strategies (Nias, 1999), authoritarian leadership styles among principals and the general speeding-up and intensification of teachers’ work (Hargreaves, 1994). This was very obvious in all the case study schools. • While an accountable and transparent teaching profession is important, what is equally important is that the accountability procedures are implemented in the schools in such a manner that the teachers’ trust and confidence is maintained and teachers’ emotions are considered.

27. Hybrid Support Structure • Firmly inscribed structures can impede efforts because educators find themselves trying to squeeze new projects and initiatives into old, unsympathetic structures rather than transforming the structures so that they accommodate and support new practices (Hargreaves et al., 2001). • Teachers need proper administrative structures, but they do not want structures that are too rigid. The policy-makers and the reform managers need to develop a structurally supportive school environment along with developing teacher capabilities and changing school practices.

28. Conclusion

29. The Long Lever of Leadership Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and I can change the world.” For sustainability of school improvement that lever is leadership – a certain kind of new leadership that operates at all levels, leaders who leave behind a legacy of leaders who can go even farther, leaders who step out to make wider contributions, and pipeline of leaders developing their dispositions and skills well before they take their first fulltime formal position of authority. (Fullan, 2005)

30. Conclusion I present a challenge to the schools to play their part in developing the long lever of leadership. It is important to regard teachers as change agents capable of generating knowledge and of making change happen, rather than as passive recipient and users of knowledge. There is a strong need to realize that there is a sleeping giant in each teacher and it is the responsibility of reform managers to awaken this sleeping giant and create a community of teacher leaders.