26. Educational Leadership
Paper
The Diverse Futures Orientations of Teachers and School Leaders: A collaborative research study
Jean-Claude Couture1, Guðrún Ragarsdóttir3, Anne Looney2, Roar Grottvik4, Jón Torfi Jónasson3, Penelope Stiles1
1University of Alberta; 2Dublin City University; 3University of Iceland; 4Education Futures Partnership
Presenting Author: Couture, Jean-Claude;
Ragarsdóttir, Guðrún
This paper describes an international research study undertaking a comparative analysis of the diverse futures orientations of school leaders in the context of the short and longer-term impacts of the pandemic. Based on the first phase of work undertaken by research-practitioners from Iceland, Ireland and Alberta (Canada), and Australia, this session will invite participants to engage with the survey tool and facilitation processes developed and to explore some of the detailed and rich findings that have emerged from the project over the past two years.
Despite the work of organizations such as UNESCO and the Comparative & International Education Society, the teaching profession and its organizations remain largely preoccupied by the present and find themselves largely in a reactive mode (Jónasson, 2016; Education Futures Partnership, 2022). Rather than deferring to so-called self-proclaimed “thought-leaders” (OECD, n.d.) in organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, school leaders need to recognize how their work is influenced by “the productive power of ‘best-guesses as to the impacts and implementation of any number of policies” that “conjure anticipated futures with real effects in the present” (Sellar, 2015, 135). As well, the session will outline how the study has sustained its initial commitment to contribute to UNESCO’s Education 2050 Learning to Become initiative by taking up John Urry‘s invitation to “democratize the future“ since ultimately in our everyday lives “power should be viewed as significantly a matter of uneven future-making (Urry, 2016, p. 189).
Over the past two years the research team has engaged school leaders as co-creators of a survey instrument for comparing the variations in their experiences across a number of international jurisdictions in terms of the impact on their futures orientations. As well, it is hoped that the instrurment will act as a catalyst for empowering school leaders to have a voice in how the future is imagined and framed by increasingly influential policy actors such as the OECD and ministries of education (Zhao & Gearin, 2018) who are increasingly driven by the impulses of anticipatory governance (Flyverbom & Garsten, 2021).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFoundational to this project are the findings of recent studies concerning the impacts of the pandemic on upper secondary principals in Iceland (Gestsdóttir et al., 2020; Ragnarsdóttir & Gestsdóttir, 2022; Ragnarsdóttir & Jónasson, 2022; Ragnarsdóttir et. al., 2022). This research identifies some of the impacts of the pandemic and applies these findings to understanding how disruption can be an opportunity for rethinking conceptions of school leadership including theories of change.
Contributing to this study‘s evolution was a pilot workshop (June, 2022) that brought together 17 principals from Dublin, Ireland and Edmonton, Alberta with research practitioners from the University of Alberta and Dublin City University. In Iceland, November, 2022, a joint futures institute and graduate course (University of Iceland, 2022) further advanced the work. This institute saw the application of interdisciplinary futures thinking methodologies (Riel, 2018) to engage the 25 participants in processes that helped them to consider their pandemic experiences as an opportunity to “rethink from the future” (Murgatroyd, 2015). The institute opened spaces for participants to:
• Collectively create conditions for conversation that enable school leaders to face the disruptions and opportunities of the future.
• Offer opportunities to learn from diverse international and local contexts that shape the schooling and education systems of nations.
• Apply the tools of social innovation and design thinking to learn from their diverse local and global contexts that shape school life and educational systems.
• Critique a pilot of a survey instrument that contribute to the international comparison of the futures orientations of school leaders.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe session will conclude by offering offer initial findings from both the Iceland institute and the pilot survey regarding how respondents see themselves both in the present moment and what they anticipate moving forward. For example, in the pilot survey, principals were offered six statements currently widely circulating in educational policy spaces (e.g. Build back better; Address learning loss; The only certainty is uncertainty). Respondents were invited to respond to two questions: Have you heard of these? How impactful/important are they to your work? As the respondents indicated, while these policy mantras were often advanced as expressions by policy-makers of particular preferred futures, there were wide variations in their perceived importance and impact on school leaders’ day-to-day work and longer-term concerns.
As the study moves into year three and the research project continues to offer possibilities for school leaders to build their capacity and sense of agency:
• to reflect on their diverse experiences with colleagues across the world as they
respond to the long-term impacts of the pandemic on their schools and communities;
• determine the degree to which they are energized or fearful of the future, given
the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous nature of the global landscape;
• consider possible futures beyond the pandemic and reflecting on the future of
the profession and its broader role in civil society.
ReferencesEducation Futures Partnership. 2022. What are Education Futures?
https://education-futures-partnership.education/index.php/2020/01/23/what-are-education-futures/
Flyverbom, M. and Garsten, C. 2021. Anticipation and Organization: Seeing, knowing and governing futures. Organization Theory. 2: 1–25
Jónasson, J. 2016. Educational change, inertia and potential futures. Why is it difficult to change the content of education? European Journal of Futures Research 4:1, 1-14. DOI:10.1007/s40309-016-0087-z
Miller, R. (Ed.) 2018. Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. Oxon, UK: Routledge / UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000264644
Murgatroyd, S. 2015. How to Rethink the Future – Making Use of Strategic Foresight. New York: Lulu Press.
OECD. n.d. OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 Thought Leaders.
https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/contact/thought-leaders/
Gestsdóttir, S. M. et al. 2020. Fjarkennsla í faraldri: Nám og kennsla í framhaldsskólum
á tímum samkomubanns vegna COVID-19 19 Upper secondary education in Iceland
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Sérrit um
COVID-19 og menntakerfið. https://doi.org/10.24270/serritnetla.2020.25
Ragnarsdóttir, G., & Jónasson, J. T. 2022. Stofnunareðli framhaldsskóla í
faraldurskreppu. Ný reynsla og breytt umboð skólastjórnenda. Stjórnmál og stjórnsýsla
The institutional nature of upper secondary education during the COVID-19 pandemic
crisis: New experience and changed agency of school leaders.
https://doi.org/10.13177/irpa.a.2022.18.2.6
Ragnarsdóttir, G. & Gestsdóttir, S. M. 2022. Togstreita og andstæð sjónarmið: Sýn
kennara og skólastjórnenda á þróun og framtíðarmöguleika framhaldsskólans Conflict
and colliding points of view: Teacher’s and school leader’s vision of the development
and future possibilities of the upper secondary education, Netla – Veftímarit um
uppeldi og menntun. https://doi.org/10.24270/serritnetla.2022.80
Ragnarsdóttir, G., et al. 2022. Starfsumhverfi framhaldsskólakennara á fyrsta ári
COVID-19 heimsfaraldurs The working environment of upper secondary school
teachers during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Netla – Veftímarit um
uppeldi og menntun. https://doi.org/10.24270/netla.2022.12
Sam Sellar. 2015. A feel for numbers: affect, data and education policy, Critical Studies in Education, 56:1, 131-146, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2015.981198
University of Iceland. 2022. Leadership in a New Era: New and Changing Issues, Challenges and Crises.
https://menntavisindastofnun.hi.is/is/forysta-nyjum-timum-ny-og-breytt-vidfangsefni-askoranir-og-kreppur?%20%20fbclid=IwAR1HakeVWIvrI_yW273_IwFCqtL4c_M2wExFCEdyCyYpi59bG23MCvCkDow
Urry, J. 2016. What is the Future? Cambridge: Polity Press.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
School Leader Trust and Collective Teacher Innovativeness - Individual and Organisational Ambidexterity as a Mediator
Marcus Pietsch1, Kathrin Dedering2
1Universität Lüneburg, Germany; 2Universität Erfurt, Germany
Presenting Author: Pietsch, Marcus
Trust is a key resource of social action, becoming necessary when moments of uncertainty must be bridged, and decisions must be made, but it remains uncertain whether expectations will be met on the individual or organisational level (Colquitt et al., 2011). Therefore, trust in others’ competence, reliability and integrity comes with a certain risk.
In education science, trust phenomena from leaders’ perspective play a minor role in general, particularly in the school context. Nevertheless, a large amount of school trust literature has revealed that trust is an antecedent to important education processes and outcomes, e.g., professional learning, instructional change and collaboration (Adams & Miskell, 2016).
In our study, we built on research that examines the relationship between trust and schools’ functioning, tying trust to schools’ innovation capacity (Louis & Murphy, 2017; Tschannen-Moran, 2009). More concretely, we focussed on school leaders and examined the effects of school leader trust in teachers on collective teacher innovativeness as a precursor of school improvement and change. In doing so, we examined individual and organisational ambidexterity’s potential role as a complementary set of activities and processes in mediating these effects, as the literature suggests that (organisational) ambidexterity – i.e., “the ability to simultaneously pursue both incremental and discontinuous innovation…from hosting multiple contradictory structures, processes and cultures within the same” (Tushman & O’Reilly, 1996, p. 24) organisation – mediates the trust-innovativeness relationship (Gibson & Birkinshaw, 2004).
Two central questions guided our research:
- What is the relationship between school leader trust in teachers and collective teacher innovativeness?
- How does individual and organisational ambidexterity mediate the relationship between school leader trust in teachers and collective teacher innovativeness?
Three concepts are key to our study: school leader trust in teachers; collective teacher innovativeness; and individual and organisational ambidexterity. Based on a literature review, we tested a mediation model which illustrates the relationships between the variables of interest in this study, namely school leader trust in teachers, school leader exploration and exploitation, school exploration and exploitation, and collective teacher innovativeness. In this conceptual framework, school leader trust in teachers is the key independent variable. Its direct effects on collective teacher innovativeness are proposed based on the very first empirical evidence concerning the relationship between both variables. School leader exploration and exploitation are viewed as micro-foundations of school exploration and exploitation, which are viewed as predictors of collective teacher innovativeness. Thus, exploration and exploitation among school leaders and schools are posited as mediators between school leader trust and collective teacher innovativeness.
With these variables in mind, the following hypotheses were tested:
H1: School leader trust in teachers affects collective teacher innovativeness directly.
H2a: School leader trust in teachers affects school leader exploration.
H2b: School leader trust in teachers does not affect school leader exploitation.
H3a and H3b: School leader exploration and exploitation are micro-foundations of school exploration and exploitation and, therefore, affect them.
H4a: School exploration affects collective teacher innovativeness.
H4b: School exploitation does not affect collective teacher innovativeness.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFor our research we used a unique, randomised and representative data set of N = 411 German school leaders. For gaining the data we used a questionnaire which comprised 35 item blocks, from which we used only a small part. We considered the following variables as part of our study: School leader trust was measured following Mayer at al. (1995) and Cunnigham and MacGregor (2000), School leader exploitation was measured by applying three items developed by Mom et al. (2009). School leader exploration is based on the same preliminary work as the school leader exploitation scale. School exploitation also is based on the features by which March (1991) characterised exploitation in the context of organisational learning. However, the items here do not refer to the school leader as a reference, but to the school as an organisation. Based on this and the work of Da’as (2022), three items were developed to capture the school’s exploitative orientation. School exploration was measured just like school exploitation. Again, three items were developed and used to capture the construct. Teacher innovativeness was measured with a scale from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS, OECD 2019).
To test our hypotheses, we estimated mediated structural equation models in MPLUS 8.4 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). To avoid a confounding of structure and measurement in our model, we followed the two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988). As we estimated an indirect path model, a model containing mediator variables, we tested mediation effects’ robustness by applying a bootstrapped mediation analysis, providing 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals with 1,000 bootstrap replications (Hayes, 2018). As our data stemmed from a single instrument, we also tested for common method bias by conducting Harman’s single factor test (Harman, 1960) in advance. Thus, we loaded all model variables on a single unrotated factor and tested whether these variables explained a substantial amount of the factor variance. This procedure indicated that the items collectively explained 26.7 percent of this single factor, well below the threshold of 50 percent, above which substantial bias in further estimations through common method bias is expected (Lance et al., 2010). Accordingly, we took no further action in this regard.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results indicate that school leader trust strongly affects collective teacher innovativeness. An additional effect could be achieved if school leaders, as a consequence of trusting their teachers, take more risks themselves, act exploratively and, as a result, create an explorative working environment for teachers. As school leaders’ exploitative and explorative activities impact schools on the organisational level, they are micro-foundations of organisational ambidexterity. The results provide evidence to advance an understanding of factors influencing collective teacher innovativeness and ambidexterity’s mediating role. This understanding might help promote collective teacher innovativeness that encourages change to improve schools.
ReferencesAdams, C. M., & Miskell, R. C. (2016). Teacher Trust in District Administration: A Promis-ing Line of Inquiry. Educational Administration Quarterly, 52(4), 675–706.
Anderson, J. C., & Gerbing, D. W. (1988). Structural Equation Modeling in Practice: A Re-view and Recommended Two-Step Approach. Psychological Bulletin, 103(3), 411–423.
Colquitt, J. A., LePine, J. A., Zapata, C. P., & Wild, R. (2011). Trust in Typical and High-Reliability Contexts: Building and Reacting to Trust among Firefighters. Academy of Man-agement Journal, 54(5), 999–1015.
Cunningham, J. B., & MacGregor, J. (2000). Trust and the design of work complementary constructs in satisfaction and performance. Human relations, 53(12), 1575–1591.
Da’as, R. A. (2021). The missing link: Principals’ ambidexterity and teacher creativity. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1–22.
Gibson, C. B., & Birkinshaw, J. (2004). The antecedents, consequences, and mediating role of organizational ambidexterity. Academy of management Journal, 47(2), 209–226.
Harman, H. H. (1960). Modern Factor Analysis. University of Chicago Press.
Hayes, A. F. (2018). Partial, conditional, and moderated moderated mediation: Quantifica-tion, inference, and interpretation. Communication monographs, 85(1), 4–40.
Lance, C. E., Dawson, B., Birkelbach, D., & Hoffman, B. J. (2010). Method effects, meas-urement error, and substantive conclusions. Organizational Research Methods, 13(3), 435–455.
Louis, K. S., & Murphy, J. F. (2017). Trust, caring and organizational learning: the leader’s role. Journal of Educational Administration, 55(1), 103–126.
March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization science, 2(1), 71–87.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, D. F. (1995). An Integrative Model of Organiza-tional Trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709–734.
Mom, T. J., Van Den Bosch, F. A., & Volberda, H. W. (2009). Understanding variation in managers' ambidexterity: Investigating direct and interaction effects of formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms. Organization Science, 20(4), 812–828.
Muthen, L. K. & Muthen, B. O. (2017). Mplus User’s Guide. Muthén & Muthén.
OECD (2019). TALIS 2018 technical report. OECD. https://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS_2018_Technical_Report.pdf
Tschannen-Moran, M. (2009). Fostering Teacher Professionalism in Schools – the Role of Leadership Orientation and Trust. Educational Administration Quarterly, 45(2), 217–247.
Tushman, M. L., & O’Reilly, C. A. (1996). The ambidextrous organization: Managing evo-lutionary and revolutionary change. California Management Review, 38, 1–23.
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