Conference Agenda

The concept of “teacher leadership” is complex. The development of leadership qualities in teachers is combined with improving their autonomy and accountability at the same time. Teacher leadership, in its widest definition, is the process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of the school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim to increased student learning and educational achievement (CCSRI, 2005, pp. 287-288). One of the characteristics of teachers with leadership qualities is their ability to foster a conducive environment for students, enabling them to realise their full potential. In general, teacher leadership is characterised by a combination of high intellectual and professional qualities and wisdom, literacy and sensitivity, proficiency in understanding the diverse psychological needs of students, and a capacity for adapting to changes. Teacher leadership promoted around the world, and Kazakhstan is no exception. For example, Qanay and Frost (2023) assert that the Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan initiative professionality as described by Hoyle (1974), thus they can also contribute school improvements and build organisational capacity. Nevertheless, it is vital to consider that teachers actively interpret and implement teacher leadership concept based on the context and conditions (McLaughlin & Ayubayeva, 2015). Consequently, pedagogical leadership is distinctive, shaped by the objectives to be fulfilled and the prevailing context. Contemporary research widely agrees that teacher leadership qualities can be both innate and learnt. There is acknowledgment that individual can develop and enhance their leadership skills through intentional efforts and meaningful experience.

The ongoing implementation of the SHARE (School Hub for Action Research in Education) initiative across 22 Astana city schools in Kazakhstan, has demonstrated the potential for cultivating teacher leadership qualities by engaging teachers in collaborative action research (Ayubayeva & McLaughlin, 2023). Since 2019, the schools involved in the SHARE project have organised three cohorts: in the 2019-2020 academic year, the 1^st cohort comprised of 5 schools; in the 2020-2021 academic year, 2^nd cohort included 8 schools, and in the 2021-2022 academic year, 3^rd cohort consisted of 9 schools. It is worth noting that the impact of the SHARE on teacher development may vary, given that schools joined the initiative at different stages of its implementation.

In 2022-2023 academic year SHARE schools across all three cohorts were engaged in conducting action research on student engagement in classroom learning. A core team comprising of five teacher-participants from each school underwent trainings facilitated by Professor Colleen McLaughlin, Mrs Kate Evans and Dr Nazipa Ayubayeva. The trainings provided the participants with a structured algorithm, following which, each school identified the classes, a subject teacher for study, requiring video recording of her/his lesson, followed by the focus group interview with student and one-to-one interview with the teacher, whose lesson was observed, and recording a learning from the process of discussion and transcribing of the interviews. Obtaining permission from both students and their parents for video recording of a lesson was crucial to ensure compliance with the ethical standards. The process of conducting this small-scale action research revealed that while some members of a core team were active, the others were reluctant to take a responsibility.

Hence, the team of school coordinators, consisting of schools #37, #60, #62, #67, and #68, collaborated under the guidance of the national coordinator, Dr Nazipa Ayubayeva, who also served as a critical friend, to research the SHARE teacher-participants’ perception about teacher leadership. The aim of this small-scale research is to explore the effect of the SHARE initiative in fostering teacher leadership qualities among teacher-participants and beyond.

Self-efficacy has been widely established as an important construct in educational research and can be defined as the belief that own capabilities are strong enough to reach a set goal (Bandura, 1977). To date, there is extensive research on self-efficacy for student outcomes (Bartimote-Aufflick et al., 2016) and for teachers (e.g., Perera et al., 2019; Hajovsky et al., 2020). However, it has been less focus on school leaders’ self-efficacy (Fischer, 2020), which can be defined as the leaders’ belief in their own competence to induce change in their school (Fischer 2020; Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2004), and which proves to be a predictor of student achievement (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2008), organizational learning (Hesbol, 2019), and crisis management (Röhl et al., 2022). In particular, few findings exist on the sources and conducive factors that influence school leaders’ self-efficacy. Taking up this desideratum, the present study that is presented in the poster addressed the research question of what factors foster school leaders’ innovation-related self-efficacy.

Bandura (1977) proposed that mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasions, and physical and emotional states are antecedents of self-efficacy. The influence of these factors on self-efficacy has been widely researched and empirically proven (e.g., Pfitzner-Eden, 2016). We firstly hypothesize that mastery experience (here, perceived achievement), vicarious experience (here, mentors as role models), verbal persuasion (here, encouragement from mentors or colleagues), and emotional state (here, exhaustion) impact school leaders’ innovation-related self-efficacy (H1). Secondly, studies on factors which are included in professional training and development opportunities have indicated to influence school leaders’ self-efficacy positively (Anselmus et al., 2022; Fischer, 2020; Versland, 2016). Based on these findings, we hypothesize that also leadership-related professional development factors increase school leaders’ innovation-related self-efficacy (H2).

The issue of security in an organisation is a very important parameter for the smooth running of the organisation and its profitability. For educational organisations in particular, the issue of security is crucial as unsafe operating conditions cause dysfunction and obstacles to the educational process. The feeling of insecurity caused to students and teachers does not contribute to the smooth functioning of the school and the achievement of its objectives. The head teacher of a school and the teachers' association, as the collective governing body, play an essential role in ensuring all aspects of the safe operation of the school.

Safety in schools is divided into physical, emotional and digital (Hammond, 2020; Sergiovanni, 2000; Freiberg, 1998). In addition to the issue of safe facilities, there are also serious incidents of violence, such as shootings, kidnappings, etc., that take place in school environments (Armstrong, 2019).

Today, in the era of globalisation of knowledge and information, with the spread of digital technology and its use both for educational purposes in an organised and personalised way by every student or adult, information is accessible in many ways (Sherry, 2020).

School violence, victimization and acrimonious relationships in schools today are occurring with enough frequency to take on epidemic characteristics, and research to analyze them applies epidemiological methods. The term Epidemiology is a compound of the adverb " ep" meaning upon, the term "demos" meaning population and the term " logos" meaning the scientific analysis of the issue. "Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related conditions or events in specific populations and the application of this study to the control of health problems." (Last, 2001, p. 61). Methods of investigating factors that harm public health are appropriate for investigating factors that negatively affect the work of schools. Education researchers who adopt the methods of epidemiology are able to identify key problems that harm the educational process and school effectiveness and find solutions. "The purpose-driven teacher understands the value of seeking information about the underlying problem so that the problem can be identified and solved." (McGiboney, 2023, p. 22).

The purpose of this study is to explore the views of school principals and teachers, as members of the faculty and therefore a collective governing body, regarding safety and the creation of a healthy school climate in the school.The research aims to highlight the current issues of safety and school climate in schools, which seem to be negatively escalating, and to record the views of school management on this vital issue.The choice to interview principals and teachers on these issues is made because they are the ones who are most knowledgeable about the relevant problems and the most competent to highlight the critical parameters that will help prevent risks or improve difficult situations.The principal and teachers experience the daily life of the school internally, they are not external evaluators.For this reason, their opinions and suggestions are the most valid and useful for taking measures that will help to create safe schools, schools that all teachers and students want to belong to. Based on the above, the research questions posed are:

A) What are the safety challenges according to the views of school principals?

B) What are the factors that compromise school safety and how do they address them?

C) What policies and practices can help overcome any problems in this regard?

Researchers argue that determining one’s positionality requires one to reflect on his/her multiple identities derived from group membership, roles and responsibilities, personality and value systems, characteristics and even language use. These factors may influence the research questions, methods and the way you interpret research findings. Hence, this small-scale research aimed to explore the teacher’s positionality in conducting collaborative action research.

The issue related to our own positionality was identified when we, as teachers, engaged in collaborative action research to examine students’ engagement in classroom learning (SECL). The SECL collaborative action research project was introduced as a part of the SHARE (School Hub for Action Research in Education) initiative that our school joined in September 2023. The team consisting of five teachers, who are the authors of this paper, from Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools of Physic and Maths in Astana (NIS), participated in trainings on SECL project conducted by Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge Collen McLaughlin, Ex-Principal of Bottisham Village College Kate Evans and the national coordinator of SHARE in Kazakhstan, Dr Nazipa Ayubayeva. In SECL collaborative action research, teachers were tasked with conducting structured action research, including delivering a lesson, videotaping this lesson, conducting a reflective interview with a teacher and students, transcribing and making sense of collected data and organizing an in-depth discussion of the findings. Each team member was responsible for one of the processes to be undertaken in the project. In all this processes we were asked to observe the ethical considerations.

The first stage of the SECL project was concluded with a reflective discussion on the processes undertaken facilitated by the national coordinator of SHARE. Through this deep reflection and discussion, it became evident that understanding our own positionality as teachers in this project was crucial for effectively harnessing the collected data to achieve valid, transparent, and accurate results for action. Hence, a decision was made to explore the aspects of teacher positionality before digging into the data on the SECL project.

This summary part of my dissertation deals with the conflicting gender equality discourses in the recent curriculum process for Finnish basic education. From the perspective of radical democracy, the study investigates the potential of an open curriculum process to bring discursive conflicts into light. Despite the study focuses on the Finnish context, it provides a global perspective on the open and inclusive curriculum processes.

The latest Finnish curriculum process provides a compelling perspective on the curriculum drafting and to struggles related to gender equality in basic education for two significant reasons. Firstly, the curriculum process demonstrated greater openness compared to its predecessors, which offered a possibility to members of society to voice their opinion on education policies during the process. Secondly, the Finnish National Core Curriculum (FNCC) for basic education underwent revision at the same time with the amendment (1329/2014) of the Act on Equality between Women and Men (609/1986) in 2014. Following the revisions, Finnish comprehensive schools are now required to formulate equality policies, and the understanding of gender was extended from a binary concept to gender diversity. In the latest curriculum process topic of gender gained visibility when both national and local policies had to adapt revisions.

Finland is well-known for being a model country of gender equality (Edström & Brunila 2016; Lahelma, Öhrn & Weiner 2021). Because of this reputation, there is a perception that gender equality achieved state of affairs. As a result, Finnish educational policies have stressed gender-neutral discourse, taken binary essence of gender for granted and avoided challenging gendered power relations (Edström & Brunila, 2016). Thus, the amendments to the Act on Equality may raise conflicting views on gender equality within a context accustomed to gender-neutral discourses.

The study critically examines discursive construction of gender equality (see Fairclough 1992; 1995), and asks, how gender equality is discursively shaped and what kind of conflicts between discourses arise at different phases of the curriculum process, in 1) FNCC 2004 and 2014, 2) the FNCC2014 draft and feedback comments given on it and 3) school-based gender equality policies (n=140).

The study also explores the notably open curriculum process, investigating how discursive conflicts on gender equality are addressed within the process and examining the transformative potential linked to these conflicts from the standpoint of radical democracy. Previous studies on curriculum process have assessed the success of the processes from the perspectives of shared meaning making, coherence, validity, transparency and consensus (e.g. Pietarinen et al. 2016; Säily 2021). However, deliberative democracy has been criticized for instance by policy researcher Chantal Mouffe. She (2013; 2020) argues that the principles of deliberative democracy often supersede the interests and ideologies linked to political matters. Furthermore, in the deliberative model, policymaking focuses more on the outcome rather than the conflicts that emerge during negotiation. Mouffe challenges deliberative understanding of democracy with her own model of radical democracy.

Within radical democracy, ideological conflicts are viewed as essential for the politicization of issues and for exposing the underlying power dynamics. Mouffe argues that consensus solutions do not eliminate power relations. Alongside with these notions made by Mouffe, feminist policy researchers (Lombardo et al., 2009; Prügl, 2011; Rönnblom, 2017) have emphasised the need of politicisation of gender. Then gender is to be articulated in terms of conflicting interests and as a matter of power relations (Rönnblom, 2017, p. 162; Elomäki & Ylöstalo 2021).

The study adopts a critical perspective on the tradition of deliberative democracy within Finnish curriculum studies. It assesses the capacity of radical democracy to effectively handle discursive conflicts and address the social power relations in the curriculum process.