Conference Agenda

As the concept, idea, practice, and goal of ‘innovation’ has grown in dominance in the discourse around leadership and educational change, there remains a scope for exploration as to how innovation is conceptualized, theorized and supported in policy making and practice (Poirier, et al, 2017). Varied societal, systemic, and contextual conditions which influence the work of educators and leaders can come to frame how innovation is understood and manifested. Cultural values, systemic priorities, political norms, and competing demands can enable or inhibit the emergence of innovation in its varied forms (Lu & Campbell, 2020).

Deriving from an ICSEI Educational Leadership Network webinar, and subsequent research group, this session aims to explore how leaders, as sense-makers and influencers within their organizational contexts, are well placed to utilize contextual knowledge, negotiate political demands, and mobilize others in developing and sustaining collective forms of professional learning that can lead to innovation, and the improvement and change that can result (Murphy & Devine, 2023).

What remains, and will be explored through this innovate session, is the need for a critical examination of how innovation is understood and manifested across systems, how this relates to broader concerns of equity, excellence, and professional capacity building in the pursuit of improvement and change, and the lessons that can be derived from varied cultural and systemic contexts.

To facilitate this, the session will be framed around three key questions:

- How is innovation understood and manifested across contexts?

- Which, if any, underpinning concepts relating to innovation could transcend context and system?

- How might we understand the relationship(s) between innovation, leadership, and capacity building?

The session will begin with a brief provocation exploring innovation in the context of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area drawing upon the work of Lu (2019). Participants will then be invited to collaboratively, in smaller groups, respond to the questions driving the session, and visually represent the common threads and themes for presentation back to the whole group. Following this, avenues for continued exploration of these ideas and themes will be shared; namely through a collaborative research group, Twitter Chats, and subsequent ICSEI Educational Leadership Network activity.

Participants will consider Innovative Learning Environments, the changing patterns of educators’ work, and subsequent implications for professional learning. Drawing on findings from research undertaken in Aotearoa|New Zealand (Charteris, Smardon and Kemmis, 2022), the session will explore contradictions in the practices described by school leaders working in new and refurbished school buildings.

Teachers’ professional work has changed with innovations in school building design, shifting expectations around pedagogical approaches, and revolutions in learning technologies. Taken in combination, these factors contribute to a ‘21st century learning’ rhetoric around ‘21st century skills.’ There is a manufactured urgency that schools need to respond to forces of globalisation and the associated rapid advances in technology. The case for change is premised on the notion that new sorts of learning and forms of knowledge are necessary for students to be active, contributing citizens, and future potential workers. Findings from the research suggest how practices in ‘innovative learning environments’ or ‘new generation spaces’ are shaped through discourses, workplace activities, and power relations.

Participants will be provided with an opportunity to examine and reflect on practice initiatives in the context of new school building design and associated pedagogies. This interactive session will actively engage participants to explore recently published research where there is a focus on leading for change. The format of the session is as follows.

Participants in this session will view summary slides outlining the literature on Innovative Learning Environments and the context of the research with educational leaders. Conversation will be generated through the initial information shared and snippets of data from school leaders. The following prompts may be used to structure conversation:

• Share an example where you have seen one or more of the contradictions and tensions signalled in this research.

• Are there other contradictions or tensions that you have encountered in context when leaders have worked to foster new practices and ways of thinking?

• How might you raise awareness around the contradictions in schooling setting where innovation is a priority?

The session addresses the theme of the conference: Quality Professional Education for Enhanced School Effectiveness and Improvement. There is recognition of the contradictions that leaders encounter when they engage in practices that target educational change. Specifically, the session enables participants to consider how leaders can promote high quality professional learning for teachers and also the influential discourses that underpin organisational change.

Leaders practice in an era characterised by uncertainty and meta-change. Consideration is given to what it means to engage in practices that support continuous improvement, where there is an emphasis on restructuring and reconstructing what has come before. Within the education context, where there is an emphasis on changing practices in new and refurbished school buildings, a new pedagogical imaginary and associated conception of professionalism can be compromised if assumptions are left unexamined.

Knowledge Building is an approach to teaching and learning that places students' questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience. Students move from a position of wondering to enacted understanding and further questioning.

Being an instructional leader is a key role for school leaders. As Principal, being a Co-Learner along the journey has made the difference; as well as, being intentional in providing Professional Learning for all.

Will highlight experiences in implementing Knowledge Building, for both educators and students, to transform learning environments into authentic places of wonder filled with imagination and opportunities for problem solving and places where children are forever curious, as they explore new learnings based on their questions.

Research: The session builds on Scaradamalia's 12 Principles and the ongoing research in Knowledge Building community. Underlying this approach is that both educators and students share responsibility for learning. When involved in this type of learning, students are better able to take other points of view and to make connections. In doing so, their literacy skills are strengthened as they are involved in purposeful and authentic ways. Knowledge Building involves creating an environment where there is diversity of ideas and the students are researchers in their own learning. Student curiousity is nurtured to create a classroom culture of authentic learning.

Presenters: Cassandra Reda Gavin is a teacher with 7 years experience, who is including Knowledge Building principles and KB circles in her teaching, informed by her research and understanding of the KB pedagogy. Her thesis, "The Implementation of Knowledge Building in the Elementary Classroom" guides the learning.

Silvana Reda, is a former experienced administrator with global experience, who places importance on Professional Learning. Using a Collaborative Inquiry approach through Knowledge Building, to maintain a high level of expectations, develops authentic, relevant and meaningful learning,

Format: Knowledge Building Circles is an approach in allowing for both knowledge sharing and discourse. All participants are sitting in a circle; in doing so, there is the ability to interact with one another and share diverse ideas and perspectives. It adds to the contribution of knowledge in the community.

This will be the format for the presentation. That is, participants will sit in a circle. After a short presentation on Knowledge Building, questions and further learning will be part of the Knowledge Building Circle.

Connection to Conference theme: Principals and Instructional Leaders can make improvements and support the learning for both educators and students, through Knowledge Building. By using the Collaborative Inquiry approach for Professional Learning, administrators and educators work alongside one another, regardless of their official role in the school. It is important for the Principal to be part of the learning, and clearly demonstrate the importance of life-long learning and that learning together and collaboratively is instrumental in making changes. It builds the efficacy for all.

Objectives

- Discuss how an intentional and systematic commitment and approach to supporting the deep learning and reflexivity of staff can prepare them to effectively build cultures of belonging among a diverse student population

- Describe a powerful critical inquiry approach to professional learning with regards to diversity, equity, and inclusion

- Share concrete and practical steps taken as part of the staff-wide critical inquiry as well as emergent outcomes

- Describe key learnings that can serve to guide schools and school systems to increase the likelihood of significant positive impact of efforts to promote more equitable environments

Educational Importance for Practice

The teaching staff at the Calgary Girls Charter School endeavour to make belonging central to our practice. We believe that the psychological need to belong in a school community is antecedent to successful learning. The research widely agrees on the importance of the construct of belonging in schools yet offers few frameworks or models to guide its operationalization in school-based settings (Allen and Kern, 2017). To enact a pedagogy of belonging in our school (Beck and Malley, 1998), we realized that staff members needed to focus on our own inner work before we would be able to be of best support to students and the broader community. We knew that to enhance understanding and truly live these beliefs and values, time needed to be spent analyzing our own stories, assumptions, beliefs, biases (Sealey-Ruiz, 2021) and developing our equity-mindedness. We co-constructed a cascade of critical inquiry questions and challenges that we committed to working through together.

The emergent outcomes have been extremely promising. Staff were able to speak to how this learning made an imprint on them personally and on our learning community as a whole. The ways we interact with one another and the ways that we program for students has shifted because each of us continues to grow and change. To symbolize our learning, staff took their shared vision of a forest, where the ecosystem has individuality, yet is intricate and connected, to a few students who have turned it into a beautiful art piece to live in the school as a reminder of the commitments we have made to ourselves and one another.

Format and Approaches

In this interactive and practical session, participants will engage with the cascade critical inquiry questions developed by CGCS staff and consider the key elements of the professional learning approach that might be adaptable and transferable to their contexts.

Connection to the Conference Theme

We connect to the conference theme: “Leading schools and education systems that promote equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, social justice, global citizenship and/ or environmental sustainability”. As schools and educational systems around the world grapple with how to promote more equitable outcomes, more inclusive environments and cultures of true belonging, the crucial importance of the inner work that educators must engage in cannot be taken lightly. We are eager to share our learnings about how a critical inquiry approach to professional learning can truly make a difference.

Purpose of the Session

The purpose of this innovate presentation is to provide a discussion and examination of the utilization of auxiliary school leaders. By auxiliary school leaders, we refer to those members of the school team that are not administrators, teachers, or support staff, but rather support students in other ways. In the United States, examples of these leaders include school psychologists, school counselors, school social workers, and school nurses. These leaders are extremely important to the successful operation of a school yet are frequently underutilized or relegated to administrative tasks.

Educational Importance

Auxiliary leaders such as school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and nurses have the potential to greatly alleviate the overwhelming load that is typically placed on school leaders and administrators. Despite their specialized skills, such auxiliary leaders have not been included in the commentary and research about school leaders employing distributed leadership (Hargreaves & Fink, 200; Harris, 2004; Spillane et al., 2007; Tian et al., 2016). By adequately attending to student discipline, social-emotional learning, and counseling to name just a few, auxiliary leaders may alleviate the workload of school leaders (Hochbein & Meyers, 2021). Currently, in many schools in the United States, there is an inappropriate resource allocation at play where auxiliary school leaders are relegated to administrative tasks, while administrators are forced to pick up the burden of student support issues (Wang, 2022). This is an economic and political failure and is leading to inefficient and ineffective educational practices. The appropriate use of these professionals may also lead to positive outcomes, such as more appropriate student discipline practices (Richardson et al., 2019), improved student and teacher mental health (Paternite, 2005), and smaller racial gaps in academic achievement (Zink & Anderson, 2023) as well as disproportionality in exclusionary discipline (Darensbourg et al., 2010). This is due to the specialized training that these professionals have but are not using. The appropriate allocation of these professionals will lead to more effective schools.

Format and Approaches

In this session, participants will be encouraged to share techniques which they have utilized auxiliary school leaders across different educational settings and locations. A discussion surrounding potential professional development options will be conducted, where participants will have the chance to share their ideal utilization of these professionals and suggest recommendations for professional development and training that may aide in obtaining such a utilization.

Connection to Conference Theme

This session is particularly relevant to the conference theme, quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement. Improving professional education and professional development for administrators and teachers on the effective use of these auxiliary leaders will help make schools more efficient and safer for students. The appropriate allocation of resources will also lead to a greater productivity by school personnel, as administrators and teachers will be free to pursue other work and auxiliary administrators will be relieved from administrative burdens that lead to a lack of productivity. These auxiliary leaders may also be recruited into leadership preparation programs, which would lead to a more diverse workforce.

The EdEco Initiative is an ongoing experimental process designed to support a deeper level of connection and education ecosystem coherence in South Africa. Initiated in February 2021, and supported within the South African Department of Education’s Innovation Unit, DBE-E3, the initiative supports education actors to co-sense and co-evolve a model to deepen levels of trust, connection, collaboration, systems insight, co-creation, and learning ecosystem emergence within South African education sector, using a variety of systems change modalities.

Participants are drawn from diverse segments of the education landscape, and include Civil Society, Education NGO’s, Business, Philanthropy, and Public Private Partnership actors. The process has successfully fostered dialogue, leading to deeper levels of shared and generative understanding.

To achieve education outcomes fit for an uncertain future (in particular, the critical learning competencies of character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking), education systems need to transform to allow for more humanised, experiential, and individuated approaches to learning. This requires a reconfiguration of the underpinnings and philosophical approaches to education, with a shift in the ability of all actors to operate collaboratively and coherently towards the transformation of education, understanding their synergistic roles. This is a Systems Transformation process, requiring Systems Thinking and Systems Action capacity to become embedded within the education system itself.

Globally, this systems approach is being explored through the “learning ecosystem” model. The United Nation’s Transforming Education Summit in September 2022, the work of UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education, the OECD Handbook for Learning Innovative Environments and World Innovation Summit in Education Learning Ecosystems Playbook all reference the key importance of the establishment of education networks able to support the exchange of ideas and facilitate collaboration and shared learning. This work is relatively unchartered in the South African context. It is this transformation towards systems thinking and approach that we are seeking support in South Africa through the EdEco Connect Initiative.

Despite the common perception that alignment around a unified, compelling purpose is sufficient to enable genuinely collaborative, indeed co-creative work to occur, it has proven extraordinarily difficult to achieve multi-stakeholder collaboration and coherence around compelling global issues such as education. As expressed by Jean Oelwang in her book “Partnering”:

“We mistakenly expect groups and individuals to be able to collaborate spontaneously. Yet this is like expecting a group of amateur gymnasts to come together and instantly perform a gravity-defying double backflip in unison, before they have even mastered how to spot each other in a simple cartwheel”.

The EdEco Connect initiative has been designed as a space to explore, discuss, practice, and build a collective capacity for experiencing and stepping into connection, relationship, and trust, as well as for seeding additional spaces that enable this for others within the sector. Our goal, rather than “scaling this initiative” is to diffuse this capacity into the system, through equipping participants to hold similar spaces in their own workspaces, networks, and geographies, and through connecting and learning from others who are doing similar work.

A movement of continuous improvement (CI) is on its way of becoming a new paradigm of school improvement. CI is a label that groups ideas such as Improvement Science, Design-Based School Improvement, Lesson Study, Data-Wise, and the like as a prototypical approach to improving school organizations (Yurkofsky et al., 2020). A dominant “What Works” paradigm (Bryk et al., 2015; Penuel et al., 2011) has positioned leaders as implementers who must create “buy in” for addressing problems and solutions decided from the outside. The CI movement, by contrast, offers opportunities to reframe the role of leaders as to foster agency for internally-driven and participatory change in schools. At its core, CI involves a novel way to navigate complex and dynamic improvement problems for which prescriptive programs or centrally coordinated standards do not necessarily have answers (Mintrop, 2016).

Addressing emergent organizational problems can give school leaders agency to define and diagnose problems and design well-adjusted solutions that respond to local needs. However, given the prevalence of outside-in approaches to change, it cannot be presumed that leaders necessarily have the right skills or mindsets for internal organizational problem solving (Author, 2019; Yurkofsky et al., 2020). Before CI can take off as a method of organizational change, we need to find powerful ways to help educational leaders cultivate an appropriate problem-solving mindset. How to do this depends on understanding what specific core competencies school leaders need to develop to enact new problem-solving skills. To fill this gap, this paper asks: what are the core competencies that educational leaders must develop to successfully implement CI-like strategies of change?

We begin this inquiry by first identifying the purpose and scope of problem solving for continuous improvement at the school level. Next, we review the literature on problem solving, leadership decision making, and continuous improvement in education. Third, informed by the literature review, we consider a particular model of problem solving that captures key thinking steps for CI: the IDEAL model (Bransford & Stein, 1984) which stands for Identify, Define, Explore, Act, and Look. We break down the IDEAL model to understand the specific competencies—knowledge, skills, and attitudes—that school leaders need to learn for applying this model to school organizations.

The findings offer a competency framework for developing a problem-solving mindset. The framework sheds light on skills needed to breakdown the complexity of adaptive challenges at the school level through specific heuristics that can be applied to emergent problematic situations. At the same time, the framework highlights the critical competencies to engage people in continuous improvement dynamics through practice-centeredness, work motivation, and adult learning. These aspects are critical to encourage leaders’ agency in the face of situations for which there are not ready-made solutions. In line with the ICSEI 2024 conference theme of quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement, this competency framework shows a promising path to professionalize school leaders who seek to develop a new skillset for improving their schools in the context of growing social complexity.

Research in Danish ECEC practices points to quality differences resulting in different opportunities in what children gain from and experience when participating in childcare (EVA, 2020; Nordahl, Hansen, Ringsmose, & Drugli, 2020; VIVE & EVA, 2023). With research stressing the importance of leadership as an important lever for educational quality (Douglas, 2019; Robinson, 2011; Fullan & Quinn, 2015) the Municipality of Copenhagen initiated the research- and development project ‘Leadership with Markable Impact for Children’ (2021 – 2023). The project is based on a partnership with Laboratory for Research-informed ECEC and School Improvement (LSP), Aalborg University. It builds on systemwide collaborations and obligations using evidence and thinking evaluatively about the impact (DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Fullan & Quinn, 2015; Rickards, Hattie, & Ried; Urban et al., 2011). It has a specific focus on how to foster quality improvement in ECEC by leading staff professional learning and development (Robinson, 2011; Timperley, 2011).

In the project, 2 out of five of the city’s ECEC districts participated, including 2 district leaders, 19 middle-tier leaders (with overall responsibility for 4-7 ECEC centers), 105 ECEC-center leaders and 20 municipal consultants. Together these participants had a shared and distributed leadership of the quality in 100 ECEC centers, including 2000 ECEC staff and 9000 children aged 0-6. The research interest was to investigate the effects on the learning environment of introducing ECEC leaders to knowledge, approaches and tools supporting capacity building for learning environments of high quality in own organization. The participants were i.e., introduced to theory and research about instructional leadership and organizational learning (Robinson, 2011; Timperley, 2011; Timperley, Ell & Le Fevre, 2020), they learned about systematic environmental quality rating scales (ERS), and they were educated in observations gathering data in their own ECEC centers (Ringsmose & Kragh-Müller, 2020). In addition, they were introduced to analyze data and identify improvement goals (Datnow, 2014; Bernhardt, 2013; Nordahl, 2013). This skill was emphasized as an essential tool for making informed decisions and driving improvements in own practice together with staff . Also, they were given a specific task to lead staff professional learning and development (Robinson; 2011; Timperley, 2008; Timperley, Ell, Le Fevre, 2020). Their work in own organization was supported by their district- and middle-tier leaders as well as municipal consultants. With the first data as a baseline, the ECEC-center leaders worked with the data and improvement goals for a year. The work was followed up with a second round of data and analysis.

The learning from the mixed-methods research (Creswell, 2011) using results from observations (n:190), document analysis (n:190) and interviews (n:20) indicates that developing quality ECEC environments building a collaborative approach and evaluative capacity in a whole system effort is important and that educating leaders in ERS, data analysis and leadership raised the awareness of quality in own ECEC center, and an improvement by 10-20 % were identified in many of the ECEC centres. The qualitative data provided insights into what leadership tools and processes were used when the leaders took the lead in improvement.

Leadership and management scholars are concerned with time, how leaders use it and on what (e.g. French & Daniels, 2007; Lavigne, Shakman, Zweig, & Greller; Reid & Creed, 2021; Riley, See, Marsh, & Dicke, 2021). This paper sits within this corpus of work; it complements the argument made by Creagh and colleagues (Creagh, Thompson, Mockler, Stacey, & Hogan, 2023) that it is insufficient to simply quantify hours worked and to attribute negative career and well-being consequences to the sheer number of hours over the average. Rather, it is important to also focus, they suggest, on work intensification, the nature of the work expected and its pace.

This paper takes this argument as its starting point, offering an analysis that explores how work intensification plays out in, and as, ongoing work practices.

The pandemic created new time problems for school leaders, with most reporting both additional time spent as well as new forms of work intensification. This paper brings three iterative studies of school leaders’ work during the pandemic in England (authors, 2021, 2022, 2023) together with Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis. The three studies included two national surveys and over 100 interviews with headteachers, deputy and assistant heads.

Lefebvre (2004) was interested in recognisable patterns which are not identical and not entirely predictable, but which can still be anticipated. For Lefebvre, while the experience of everyday life appears to be linear - one moment after another, one day following the next – it is also made up by a range of different cyclical patterns. Drawing on this insight, the paper explores how the bedrock rhythmic cycles of daily, weekly, termly and annual events which usually structure work and learning in schools were disrupted during the pandemic by an external cycle of virus, government and media.

In ‘normal’ times, school time-space patterns provide knowable, predictable, stable routines for teachers’ work and children’s learning. They provide a solid foundation on which the inevitably serendipitous and reactive work of living and working together for prolonged periods can take place. Such stability is the basis for improvement and for sustainable careers. Part of the job of school leaders is to manage these routines, as a bedrock for cycles of learning and improvement. Leaders must also manage the inevitable but not always predictable arrythmic events that impact on schools – such as a visit from the inspectors, unwanted media attention, or a dramatic change in student population from one year to the next - restoring order and routine so that everyone can get on with their work. The pandemic however was of a different order to the usual crises which schools and their leaders understand: as a result, re-establishing regular rhythmicity proved almost impossible for extended periods. The resulting arrythmia had profound and damaging impacts on leaders’ work and well-being as well as on the longer-term cycles of cohorts, careers and improvement.

We argue that rhythmanalysis has important implications for the recruitment, training and retention of school leaders and offers rich possibilities for further research.

In Africa, progress towards equitable access to high-quality education has been slow. This has been attributed to education systems' inability to address factors underlying the learning crisis such as underprepared students, low teaching quality, a focus on educational resources that do not foster learning, and ineffective school leadership. Effective school leadership is considered essential in addressing all four elements because its key role in influencing education actors to strive towards greater learning and more resilient education systems. To ignite the potential of school leadership on the African continent, the Rwandan government, the Association for Development of Education in Africa, and VVOB - education for development, initiated the African Centre for School Leadership (ACSL) to assist governments in developing supportive school leadership systems with the goal of improving teaching and, as a result, learning outcomes.

Two studies were carried out to lay the theoretical groundwork for the Centre. The first study was a review of empirical research on school leadership in Africa that provided insights into what constituted effective school leadership on the continent. In this paper, we complement the findings of the review with the opinion of a panel of experts and the consensus that was built amongst these experts on the topic of school leadership in Africa. The findings of the scoping review were rewritten into statements on school leadership in Africa, organized around nine topics. The Delphi method is a group approach that involves a series of surveys between the researchers and a group of selected experts on a certain issue. This study brought together government partners, policymakers, researchers, development partners, and providers of CPD services to African school leaders to collect data in three survey rounds utilizing a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

The results of the first Delphi round, in which the panel of experts was given the opportunity to add additional statements about school leadership and school leadership professional development in Africa, revealed a strong interest in school leadership and school leadership professional development in Africa. In Delphi rounds 2 and 3, most statements and declared aims of the Centre received broad agreement and consensus. This indicates that the examination of empirical research on the subject accurately represents the viewpoints of experts from various countries as well as personal experiences. Statements on which no agreement was reached present prospects for additional analysis, investigation, and research. Of special interest are the statements regarding the potential interplay between gender and school leadership, and statements regarding Ubuntu school leadership as a potential model for effective school leadership, rooted in the African context. Both research avenues offer significant opportunities for exploratory and ground-breaking research.

In conclusion, this study emphasizes the upside of involving policymakers and practitioners in the validation of literature and the initiation of initiatives supporting school leader development, which is aligned with the conference theme, specifically on the subtheme on policy and practice learning to support teacher and school leader development.

Due to various reforms, efforts must be taken to make schools more inclusive. Although countries have different historically developed educational contexts, similar regulations must be implemented internationally. School principals play a major role in this chain of international guidelines, national and finally local implementation (Abrahamsen & Aas, 2019). However, due to different definitions of inclusion and the importance of local contexts, it is not exactly clear what this role looks like (Wermke & Prøitz, 2019). These ambiguities show that it is not possible to clarify what principals should be educated for in terms of designing inclusive schools. In order to give an impetus for this and improve schools on the long term, the study reveals:

1) How is school principals’ responsibility depicted in policy documents in Germany and Norway regarding the implementation of inclusion policies since 1994?

For investigating if the results are relevant for principals, the following question is further examined:

2) How is the discourse of school principals’ responsibility discussed in school leaders’ professional journals in Germany and Norway, regarding the implementation of inclusion policies since 1994?

Due to the Salamanca Declaration and subsequent efforts for more inclusive school systems, the analysis begins in the 1990s. Germany and Norway are particularly interesting for a comparison as both countries have different historically developed educational traditions, but similarities in recent educational reforms, with greater room for maneuver for principals on local level (Wermke & Prøitz, 2021).

For the analysis of legislation and journals, qualitative content document analysis (Bowen, 2009) in the further development of Prøitz (2015) was used. For the first part, school laws and their guiding documents regarding inclusive education were investigated. Principals in both countries are obliged to follow the law and justify their decisions based on the Education Act (Møller & Skedsmo, 2013), so principals’ responsibilities are specified here. The second part of the analysis worked with journals, partially written from principals for principals. The journals show how political implementations arrive in professional daily work life and how policies are understood and interpreted by principals and their associations. The material presents furthermore the interface between intentions and practice.

Preliminary results indicate that principals in Norway have more possibilities for shaping inclusive schools. This is seen in a wider room for maneuver and trust in their decisions. German principals instead are restricted by requirements of school authorities. While the analysis of the Norwegian journals reveals satisfaction on the whole and just some slight adjustments and requested support, German journals show job dissatisfaction in general but are still under more detailed analysis.

The results show what policies in various times and contexts imply for school principals in the implementation of schools for all children. Since the analysis is furthermore not just conducted over time but also during an acute crisis like the COVID-19-pandemic, it will reveal challenges principals are facing in their leadership autonomy on long- and short-term issues. The study can finally present an important source for the education of principals and collaboration between different educational leaders.

This narrative literature review explores the interrelationship between digital exclusion, self-efficacy, and Parental Involvement (PI) in the context of home-based digital learning within European and Irish educational settings. The review critically examines extant literature, identifies gaps in knowledge, and proposes considerations for schools to increase PI in children's digital learning through Digital Technology (DT) based initiatives.

The problem addressed in this review pertains to the concept of digital exclusion, which stems from the theory of the digital divide and its consequent impact on parental involvement (PI) in children's digital learning. While the integration of DT in education has accelerated, a significant portion of parents and families face digital exclusion due to various socio-cultural, socio-demographic, and socio-economic factors. This review seeks to understand the consequences of digital exclusion, particularly on Parental Self-Efficacy (PSE) (Wittkowski et al., 2017), Computer Self-Efficacy (CSE) (Compeau & Higgins, 1995), and their influence on PI, which is crucial for student engagement and outcomes.

Accordingly, this paper addresses the following research questions: How does digital exclusion influence PSE and CSE, and subsequently affect PI in their children's home-based digital learning? What initiatives and approaches can foster digital inclusion and support increased PI in children's digital learning?

The review employs a comprehensive search for pertinent literature, followed by rigorous critical appraisal and synthesis of identified studies. The review incorporates a diverse range of perspectives, drawing on research conducted within International, European and Irish contexts. A reflexive approach is taken to critically examine the limitations of existing literature and identify gaps in knowledge. This approach allows for a coherent and nuanced understanding of the interrelationships between digital exclusion, self-efficacy, and PI. The primary data sources for this review are scholarly articles, research studies, and policy documents related to digital exclusion, digital inclusion, self-efficacy, and PI in education. The theoretical framework encompasses the concepts of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), digital exclusion (Van Dijk, 2005; Helsper, 2012), and the parental involvement process model (Hoover Dempsey et al., 2005).

This narrative literature review contributes to the theoretical understanding of digital inclusion, self-efficacy, and PI within educational settings. It explores initiatives focused on fostering digital inclusion and PI though school-based interventions while acknowledging existing barriers. The findings will provide insights into the complex relationship between digital technologies, parental involvement, and educational outcomes. The results and recommendations will inform practitioners, policymakers, and educators on strategies to foster digital inclusion the digital divide and foster an inclusive approach to DT-based education.

This review aligns with the conference theme of quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement by addressing the crucial aspects of equity, inclusion, and diversity within the context of DT integration. By exploring the interrelationship between digital exclusion, self-efficacy, and PI, this review contributes to the understanding and implementation of effective strategies for promoting equity and enhancing school effectiveness in a digitally evolving educational landscape.

The last twenty years have seen two significant strands of education-policy reform in England: an increased emphasis on the power of market forces as a strategy for school improvement and the development of new governance structures that may not be based around local areas or communities (Author, 2020). These policy moves are both positioning schools in a competitive market and loosening the links between schools and their local communities. Various forms of area-based partnerships have emerged, where schools are encouraged and enabled to work together with neighbouring schools and community partners (Author, 2018).

In this paper, we report on the Area-Based Partnerships Project (ABPP), which investigates examples of collaborative working in eight regions in England. Our case-study research is framed by the following questions: What are the conditions that facilitate the establishment and sustainability of area-based school partnerships? What are the features and benefits of these partnerships? What barriers do they face and how are these being addressed? And, what are the implications for the creation of effective forms of local coordination within education systems?

A multiple case study design was adopted encompassing eight area partnerships located in different regions in England. Data were generated through documentary analysis followed by interviews and focus-group seminars with key actors, including governors and Trust members, Chief Executive Officers, local- (district) authority representatives and school principals.

We identify key factors underpinning the purposefulness of such partnerships, including the establishment of strong professional networks, often led by experienced school leaders; the contribution of local-authority officers; a commitment to collaborative working; and a clearly-articulated statement of principles. Our findings underline the importance of contextual factors in shaping area-based cooperation. In particular, we draw attention to the historical, political, and cultural characteristics of a locality as key to understanding how and why the partnerships evolved, and whether and the extent to which they can be seen as purposeful and sustainable. We go on to argue that these are crucial factors that need to be acknowledged, understood, and accounted for in addressing social justice within education and wider society (see also Kerr et al, 2014).

This serves to highlight the importance of localised policy enactment and decision (Braun et al, 2011). Notably, these partnerships have no formal status or mandate, instead drawing their influence from soft power and the social capital of the collective capacity of local educational leaders and professionals. While the extent to which these partnerships can be seen as ‘successful’ and/or sustainable is variable between different regions, there are lessons we can draw from this project that will inform thinking around how school systems might be structured in ways that promote excellence through equity.

This paper speaks to the broader conference theme in exploring how school systems can be supported to improve. It also speaks more specifically to the final conference sub-theme surrounding the leadership of education systems that promote equity and inclusion.

Objectives. This presentation shares insights about the design of a professional learning network (PLN) for leaders in six immigrant-serving school districts across the U.S. With the growth of global migration, educational leaders’ responsibilities to support newcomers have also grown. Addressing emerging issues related to educational leadership, policy and practice, our PLN focused on building district leaders’ capacity to serve immigrant-origin students. Here, we answer the research question: How does the design of a cross-district site visit foster professional learning among district leaders about serving immigrant-origin students?

Background & Theory. We ground our work in theories of immigrant integration that highlight the salience of nested contexts of reception in shaping immigrants’ experiences (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018; Portes & Rumbaut, 2014). As key points of contact, educational institutions are central influences on the experiences of immigrant-origin youth (Brezicha & Hopkins, 2016; Lowenhaupt et al., 2021). Recently, educators have sought ways to support students coping with heightened anti-immigrant policies and discourse (Costello, 2016; Ee & Gándara, 2018; Rodriguez & Crawford, 2022). In particular, educational leaders influence the experiences of immigrant-origin youth (Lowenhaupt & Hopkins, 2020; Jaffe-Walter & Villavicencio, 2021; Mavrogordato et al., 2020). We conceptualize our partnership as a PLN connecting immigrant-serving districts and providing leadership development opportunities (Poortman, Brown & Schildkamp, 2022; Azorín, Harris & Jones, 2020). We use design-based research and draw on networked improvement tools to facilitate professional learning within and between districts (Fishman et al., 2013).

Methods. In this five-year study, we partnered with six school districts around the country to identify promising practices to support immigrant-origin youth in light of anti-immigrant policies. Each district formed a team of three representatives including superintendents, multilingual program directors, and teacher leaders. In spring 2023, we organized two cross-district site visits. Our goals were to: 1) observe promising practices, 2) reflect together on context-specific considerations, and 3) explore how observed practices might be implemented in partner districts. The research team gathered several sources of data including audio recordings and artifacts from meetings, participant notes, researcher memos, and reflections.

Findings. Our findings highlight design features that facilitated cross-district learning. First, collaborating across districts allowed educators to identify shared and context-dependent practices. Second, the site visits highlighted the value of being in person, which allowed us to speak with and observe people and practices beyond our immediate district contacts, including other educators and staff, students, and families. Third, scheduling opportunities for reflection throughout the visit helped visitors identify how the showcased practices could be applied to their own contexts. Fourth, scheduling time for caring, critical feedback at the end of each visit gave a sense of purpose to the experience.

Implications & Conclusions. Engaging in PLNs is a promising and increasingly common form of professional development and learning, particularly for educational leaders. Still, we have much to learn about how PLNs support capacity building and how their design informs learning. Our participants expressed appreciation for having space to learn about supporting immigrant-origin students and an opportunity where these commitments were shared.

Introduction

From the year 2015 to 2019, there has been a 29% decrease in enrollment in teacher education programs in Chile (OFD, 2021). Given this, a teacher shortage has been predicted. A shortage that is compounded by early attrition is estimated at about 40% within the first five years (Ávalos & Valenzuela, 2016). This situation has prompted a number of policy initiatives. Decreases in enrollment have been attributed to the legal mandate to gradually increase the admissions cut-off scores in the college entrance exam. To address potential inequities associated with this increase, two alternative admission routes were stipulated. The score on the admissions test could be replaced by a student’s high school ranking or by their participation in a special pre-college preparation program available to low-income students. Additionally, to address a lack of interest among high school graduates, universities were encouraged to develop programs specifically designed to attract them to teacher education (PAP program) (Mineduc 2020). We are conducting a study on the effects of these policies by examining policy, institutional and individual factors.

Objective and conceptual framework

The current study examines first-year preservice teachers' motivations to enrol in teacher education programs. Motivation and commitment to teaching are key factors for their educational trajectory, the construction of professional identity and commitment, therefore, they need to be considered in the design of public policies (Heinz, 2015; Wang and Houston, 2021). FIT-choice (Factors Influencing Teaching) developed by Watt and Richardson (2007) is the conceptual framework used in the current study.

Method

This quantitative study analyzes data from 1127 first-year pre-service undergraduate teacher education students from two public and two private universities. They were enrolled in 8 different teaching majors, including Special Education, Early Childhood and Elementary Education, and five secondary majors. Data were collected during the first semester of 2023, using a paper and pencil questionnaire that included FIT-Choice items (Watt & Richardson, 2007) and two other locally developed constructs. Confirmatory Factor Analysis established the validity and reliability of the constructs measured.

Selected Findings

Gender differences: women (66.5%) had higher scores than men in Social Utility motivations (p<0,001), Intrinsic career value (p<0,001), and Self-perceived abilities (p<0,01). Women showed higher Planned persistence in teaching (p<0,001).

Participation in a PAP program: participants (16.1%): showed higher scores in the perception of the influence of national Initiatives to attract students to the teaching profession (p<0,05; p<0,001) and reported a greater number of Work experiences with children and adolescents (p<0,001).

Secondary major: Mathematics Education students showed lower scores in Social Utility (p<0,001), but higher scores on Prior teaching experiences (p<0,001). English Education majors showed lower scores on Intrinsic career value (p<0,001), Self-perceived abilities (p<0,001), and Planned persistence in teaching (p<0,001).

Educational importance

Teachers' role in school effectiveness and improvement is well documented. Attracting candidates to initiate the process of formal professional preparation has become challenging in some jurisdictions. To address this challenge, it is important to understand what motivates prospective candidates, acknowledging differences among people interested in various teaching specializations.

Quality monitoring of education is preferably based on different types of information from multiple sources (Baker & Linn, 2002; Schafer, 2003). In Flanders (Northern Belgium), the following sources are used: the school inspections of the Flemish inspectorate of education, the national assessments and the international large-scale assessments in which Flanders participates. All these sources provide school performance feedback (SPF). Therefore, Flemish schools will receive SPF-reports of various sources. These sources can lead to more reliable decision making about the effectiveness of schools, if, the information from different sources is accurate and consistent (Chester, 2005; Porter et al., 2004). However, it remains unclear to what extent the results of different sources align for Flemish schools. After all, those sources have completely different designs and use different techniques for estimation and analysis.

We examine the alignment between SPF-reports in primary and secondary education at the school level. We focus on sources that address results in mathematics and reading:

• National assessment for reading 2018 (primary education);

• National assessment for mathematics 2021 (primary education);

• National assessment for mathematics 2018 for the general track in the second year of secondary education;

• National assessment for mathematics 2019 for the vocational track in the second year of secondary education;

• PIRLS 2016;

• TIMSS 2019;

• PISA 2018;

• Inspections for mathematics and Dutch in school year 2018-2019 and 2019-2020.

For each school, school effects were first estimated for all national and international assessments the school participated in, using type 0, type A and type B contextualised achievement models (Leckie & Prior, 2022). Based on these estimated school effects, every school was categorised multiple times as below average, average or above average. As such, a school could be categorised as below average for PISA, but average for the national assessment. Note that schools are already classified in four categories by the inspectorate: below expectation, approaches expectation, meets expectation and exceeds expectation. Secondly, we linked the results (i.e. the estimated school effects and/or the categorisation by the inspectorate) of every school by considering the administrative code of each school. In this way, we can compare – for instance – the results of a school on TIMSS 2019 with the SPF from the inspection for mathematics.

Our results indicate that the SPF of different sources align for the majority of the Flemish schools, especially when controlling for background characteristics of students and schools by using a type B model. We find the lowest alignment when comparing different sources based on type 0 school effects. However, for a limit number of schools, the results of multiple sources are different and sometimes even contradictory. Notice that these contradictory results can have a substantial impact on schools, for instance when the results on one particular source determine the attribution of specific consequences (e.g. an additional school audit by the inspectorate).

This paper proposal is most closely related to the MoREi network and the subtheme ‘Leveraging research and data for inquiry, insight, innovation and professional learning’.

During the past two decades, extensive research has demonstrated the importance of a rich and comprehensive home literacy environment (HLE) in students’ reading comprehension development (Dong et al., 2020). Because most of these studies solely assumed a direct association, the underlying mechanisms - including potential mediating factors - remain unclear (Wiescholek et al., 2018). The investigation of mediating factors is nevertheless of crucial importance to gain a deeper understanding through which specific pathways HLE affects students’ reading comprehension skills.

We propose a model that includes both a direct path between HLE and students’ reading comprehension skills and multiple paths that run via two mediating factors, being students’ reading enjoyment and motivation as well as their reading frequency. These factors are likely to influence the relationship between HLE and reading comprehension, as previous research has shown that students’ reading enjoyment, motivation and frequency are, on the one hand, affected by HLE (Baker et al., 1997; Arzubiaga et al., 2002; Altun, 2022) and, on the other hand, might contribute to the reading comprehension ability of students (Becker et al., 2010; Soemer & Schiefele, 2018; Stutz et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2018). Additionally, we considered HLE as a complex, comprehensive construct reflecting various components in students’ home environment that might contribute to their language and literacy development. In line with Burgess and colleagues (2002), we distinguished HLE as either active (e.g. literacy-related activities parents do with their child) or passive (e.g. parents’ reading enjoyment, the number of books at home). These specific aspects were separately included in our model, allowing us to examine their individual contribution on students’ reading comprehension. This study aimed to assess whether students’ reading enjoyment, motivation and frequency influenced the association between various aspects of the active as well as passive HLE and Grade 4 students’ reading comprehension.

We reported on Flemish data (Belgium) of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2021. Participants were 5114 students from 141 schools and their parents. A parallel mediation analysis using structural equation modelling is tested to simultaneously assess relations between the variables under investigation. We demonstrated differential associations between specific aspects of HLE and fourth graders’ reading comprehension. Both an active reading climate (β = .178, p < .001) and the amount of books at home (β = .252, p < .001) were found to be positively associated with students’ reading comprehension. We found no contributions of parents’ reading enjoyment (β = -.006, p > .05), and their reading frequency (β = -.026, p > .05) on students’ reading comprehension. Regarding the investigation of mediating factors in the relation between aspects of HLE and students’ reading comprehension, we only found evidence for a mediating role of students’ reading frequency in the association between the amount of books at home and students’ reading comprehension abilities (β = .006, p < .01).

Our findings confirmed the importance of conceptualizing HLE as a broad, multi-componential construct as well as pointed out the inevitable role of parents in students’ reading comprehension development.

Conceptual framework and context.

School inspections are widespread accountability and educational quality improvement practices implemented worldwide. They involve external evaluation of schools based on standards and site visits, resulting in judgments. Comparative studies have been conducted in Anglo-Saxon and European countries (Ehren et al., 2015; Jones et al., 2017). In general terms, there are different effects found in school inspections: conceptual effect (a significant change in the comprehension about the school), symbolic effect (reinforcement of previous ideas) and instrumental effect (decisions based on inspection’s results) (Penninckx et al., 2016). However, evidence about their impact on school improvement is noticeably mixed. Moreover, educational settings in the global south face different systemic challenges and their school inspections are scarcely researched (Bravo, 2019; Díaz & Rodríguez, 2020).

Aim and research questions.

This study aimed to understand schools’ experiences with inspections in Chile. The issues explored in the research were ‘How do school leaders and teachers experience inspections?’ and ‘What kind of effects are produced by inspections?’.

Methodology.

A mixed-methods approach was developed to answer the research questions. A combination of interviews and non-participant observations were conducted three times during the inspections cycle and 8-12 weeks after. This approach allowed a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and experiences of school actors (Cresswell & Poth, 2017). 21 schools (public and private subsidized) participated in the study Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed (Braun & Clarke, 2021).

Results, findings, learning.

School actors perceive school inspections in Chile as valuable. They experience some initial stress and anxiety; however, this emotional effect dissipates quickly during the inspection. Inspectors emphasize the formative dimension and orientation. Compared with findings in high-stakes systems, this study shows less resistance to feedback and more acceptance. Moreover, school actors value the external perspective and the opportunity to examine their practices and receive expert feedback. The inspections’ results are generally consistent with the diagnosis held by school leaders. The challenge is that the feedback provided little new information, and the chance to prompt new insights about the school is somewhat limited.

Consequently, the effect is short-term and adjustment to previously planned actions, and less substantial on the institutional capacities. Since feedback frequently reinforces schools’ analysis, these results suggest a noticeable symbolic effect (McCrone et al., 2007). Only in a few cases was observed a conceptual effect when feedback allowed schools to identify blind spots and recognize overlooked management aspects (Penninckx et al., 2016).

The use of information for decision-making and the articulation among educational public agencies are critical dimensions to transform lessons from the inspections into sustainable changes. The potential effect inspections can have on systemic improvement seems limited by insufficient local administrators' and ministerial advisors' involvement and minimal articulation with improvement policies.

Connection to the conference theme.

These findings offer a salient opportunity to understand diverse forms of evaluation and shed light on the role of inspections in professional learning and capacity building.This research is closely connected with the sub-theme "Leveraging research and data for inquiry, insight, innovation and professional learning".

Framing

In school improvement projects, where schools collaborate with university researchers, it is crucial to establish a solid foundation for the collaboration (Barnett et al., 2010; Frerichs et al., 2017; Solvason et al., 2018). Establishing trusting collaborations is seen as essential for integrating research and practice (Kirschenbaum & Reagan, 2001; OECD, 2022). In my project, the collaboration is beneficial for the school leader teams, as the researchers provides them with support in managing their school improvement projects. For us researchers, the collaboration provides access and insights into the school's development processes. In such collaborations, trust plays an important role in securing the quality of the data collected and the validity of the research findings (Cunliffe & Alcadipani, 2016). The establishment of a trusting and open collaboration is, however, a demanding process. It takes time and energy from both parties.

Research questions

Which aspects are of importance when establishing trusting collaborations in school-university partnerships?

Context

The study builds on experiences from a project in which eight school-university collaborations have been established. The aim of the collaborations is to enhance the sustainability of the school improvement projects led by school- and project leader teams as well as to gain insight into the factors important for sustainable school improvement. The interest in writing this paper is not directly connected to the aim of the collaborations. Instead, the interest stems from the experiences gained through the demanding process of establishing them.

Methods and data material

The study is inspired by action research methods, which involve intervening in the practice that we are simultaneously researching (McIntosh, 2010).

This empirical case study draws on interviews, communication data and meeting observations and analyses how trusting collaborations were built between the research team and the school leader teams within the first year of the project.

Findings

The study finds the following three crucial aspects of building trusting collaborations between school leader teams and university researchers: (1) alignment of expectations, (2) the level of demands from researchers to practitioners, and (3) the choice of communication connected to translating theory into practice.

Educational importance

The findings are applicable to the practice of academic researchers or consultants who are to work with school practitioners. Working with a focus on the three aspects contributes to building trusting collaborations in Research and Development projects. The study may be of interest to other conference participants involved in school-university partnerships, regardless the theme and aim of their study, as this study is primarily a methodological contribution.

Connection to the conference theme

The study is related to the parts of the conference theme concerned with engaged and purposeful dialogue between academic researchers and school communities.

Abstract:

The Malaysian education system is in a transition from face-to-face classroom learning to e- learning. E-learning is fast becoming a common method of acquiring knowledge in a local and global environment. Nevertheless, given the inherent complexity of schools, instability during this on-going Covid-19 pandemic and increasing demands on students’ thinking skills, there is a growing importance attached to embed the e-learning in schools. As the frontliners during the recent Covid-19 pandemic the aspiration to arm the students with the 21st-century learning skills thereupon the systems aspirations in the Malaysia Education Blueprint (MEB) could be materialised became more prominent. Global research suggests that current Covid-19 crisis would change the relationship between teachers and their students within the e-learning platform. Current research, however, are largely focused on the expansion of higher order thinking skills and to-date, studies on the relationship of teachers' instructional leadership practices, students’ thinking skills and their attitude to e-learning are scarce. Thus, this study investigates the levels of students’ thinking styles and their attitudes towards e-learning. In this survey study, the data of this non- experimental design’s study will be collected by using three on-line questionnaires. The instruments use in this research are: (1) Teachers' Instructional Measurement Rating Scale (TIMRS) adapted from PIMRS (2) The Yan Piaw Creative Critical Styles Test (also known as YCREATIVE-CRITICALS) for measuring students’ creative and tcritical thinking skills and the last instrument is (3) Students’ Attitude Towards E-learning (SeTeL) to ascertain students’ attitude towards e- learning. Data will be analysed quantitatively using structural equation Modelling (SEM). The findings of the study will serve as an indicator for teachers in secondary schools to determine if instructional leadership is the best leadership style in increasing students' thinking styles and attitude toward e-learning. The study's findings would be useful for related educational institutions and bodies in developing teachers' leadership by encouraging the development of a more structured leadership curriculum for school teachers in general and sharing the implementation with other secondary schools across the country.

Besides, the expected outcome of this is study, which is to capture the instructional leadership practices among teachers in particular, that would contribute to school improvements. In other words, the findings would contribute to upskilling educational leaders who, at their best, would shape a wholistic future thinkers and leaders. The significance of the study is the contribution to instructional leadership practices enacted by the secondary school teachers and its contribution to the implementation of Higher Order Thinking Skills and e-learning among students in educational organisation within the purview of the Ministry Of Education. Finally, the findings of the study can be used as a reference in enhancing Malaysian secondary students’ thinking styles and their attitude towards e-learning for school effectiveness and improvement.

Keywords: Teachers' Instructional Leadership,Thinking styles, Attitude towards e-Learning, School Effectiveness and Improvement, Covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic had a far-reaching effect on how children, young people, parents and teachers experience, and engage with, teaching, learning, schools and the education system. Many argue that the pandemic’s effects, which compounded the already present impacts of the 2008/09 financial crisis, climate change, the fourth industrial revolution and widespread polarisation, will be felt by young people well beyond the immediate crisis. Any exploration of the future of teaching, learning and education must factor in the interconnected challenges that these learning communities navigate if “the disconnect between decision making in complex systems and the lived experiences of people affected by those decisions” is to be closed (Scharmer 2018, p.140). Against this backdrop, this paper explores how a diversity of perspectives may be engaged through research-practice collaboration in reimagining the future of education.  

Nine out of ten young people in the world live in low- and middle-resource countries. This paper focuses on the experiences of young people, as well as the school communities they are part of, in the South African context, particularly in the Western Cape province and outlines aspects of an emergent, multi-level research-practice collaboration with four ordinary, fee-paying, public schools, two primary and two secondary schools, in the Metro East District of the Western Cape Education Department in the first half of the 2023 school year (January – June). 

The mode of delivery of the intervention at the core of the collaboration varied across the schools as the approach was adapted to fit each site’s contextual constraints and opportunities. However, a shared objective across the schools was to ensure that the intervention was offered to as many English-speaking Grade 7 or 9 students as possible and that the mode of delivery was organised to be as inclusive as possible.  

The intervention was developed as an embedded activity, with all schools opting to have it run during the school day, and as such the school leaders and staff were essential collaborators. The groups that participated in the intervention were guided through a series of exercises and activities that prompt individual, and collaborative reflection on their identity, how they see themselves as learners, their experiences of learning and the ways they make sense of, and engage with, learning spaces. 

Beyond merely recounting the narrative of a social researcher’s collaboration with two primary and two secondary schools this paper highlights key reflections about the potential of multi-level research-practice collaborations to foster enabling spaces for collaborative knowledge and value creation within schools, with a particular focus on the potential of collaboration with young people.

There has been an increase in the past few decades in the number of international migrants worldwide. Critical crises such as political instability, economic uncertainty, and safety contribute, as seen in recent events in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, and in the Americas. Migration politics remains contentious in the United States, especially with undocumented immigrants. There are over 10.5 million undocumented immigrants (Krogstad et al, 2019). This population has remained steady since 2008 with the majority from Mexico, however, there is an increasing number from Asian and Central American countries (Capps et al, 2020).

The politics of the US has shaped educational policies, practices, experiences, and post-secondary trajectories of undocumented students. These children have the right to attend a public school in the U.S. until twelfth grade, so schools have the responsibility to provide protected spaces for them (Gonzales, 2011). Fear of deportation, family separation and immigration raids on communities also impact schooling (Ee & Gándara, 2019). Research indicates that undocumented status of children and/or their parent is associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression during adolescence and fewer years of schooling (Yoshikawa et al, 2013), decreases in academic achievement, and bullying (Bellows, 2019; Nienhusser & Oshio, 2019). School leaders, administrators, and educators must understand immigration policies and its impact on students’ lives (Dabach, 2015), families and communities, and develop an awareness for advocacy (Mangual Figueroa, 2017).

Principals’ awareness of the impact legal status has on children and families may lead to decision making processes and practices that create cultures of belonging and care in schools (Jaffe-Walter et al, 2019) and assist with access to resources such as for university or legal counsel (Jefferies, 2014). Without administrative supports, students may feel worried and unsafe to discuss immigration status (Kam, et. al, 2018). Therefore, necessitated is collective leadership that consists of various personnel, including educators and parents, with relevant expertise for problem solving and collaboration (Leithwood & Mascall, 2008).

This study explored the lived and educational experiences of undocumented students at the intersection of public education and immigration policy. The research questions were: 1. How do undocumented students address challenges in educational contexts? 2. What are the contextual dynamics that contribute to the barriers experienced and how are these addressed? In this qualitative study, participants were recent high school graduates who are undocumented and/or lived in mixed status families. Information was garnered from these data sources: recorded semi-structured interviews, content analysis of related documents, and journal reflections. Thematic analysis yielded the following themes, 1. Relations of power and trust, 2. Mechanisms of equity and inclusion 3. Empowerment of educators and students. Each of these themes were discussed within the extant research and through the frameworks of collective leadership and culturally responsive and sustaining practices. It is important to understand how politics, policies and practices shape the experiences and postsecondary trajectories of undocumented students. This multifaceted analysis at the intersection of immigration policy and education praxis unearths inquiries to be addressed for educational research in relation to interrogation of systems and structures whereupon injustice functions.

Objectives

The work of principals across the globe has become increasingly challenging and complex, as they are expected to lead school improvement, manage a host of competing demands, and attend to the needs of diverse stakeholders. Using life history and narrative methods, this paper examines how women principals construct their life histories in relation to educational reform, highlighting their orientations toward leadership practice and development as influenced by multiple contexts and identities.

Perspective

Understanding the complexity of leaders’ professional lives of educators in the context of reform is enhanced by methodologies that capture the dynamics of educational change and center lived experiences and narratives. Life history methods provide a way to understand the co-construction of reform and offer insights on how leaders enact reform as individuals embedded in broader contexts (Clandinin & Connelly, 1998; Optlka, 2010; Scalan, 2012). This is especially important when studying the experiences of women principals, whose experience is shaped by gendered (and in some cases, racialized) identities (Lomotey, 2019; Santamaria et al., 2019). We build upon Smulyan’s (2000) theoretical framework, examining the interaction between agentic individuals, social-cultural systems, institutional contexts, and educational change in how women principals construct their leadership practice.

Methods

Using life history and narrative methods (Berger, 2008; Clandinin & Connelly, 1998; McAdams, 2008; Optlka, 2010; Scalan, 2012), this paper draws upon data from 16 semi-structured interviews with 8 women public school principals from the U.S., conducted during 2022-23. Adapting McAdam’s (2008) life history interview protocol, we focused on participants’ life histories in relation to educational reform and leadership experiences. Each interviewee participated in two 60-90 minutes semi-structured interviews. We used narrative analysis to understand principals’ significant professional moments, educational change memories, the role of identities, and perceptions of future work.

Results

Women principals’ leadership experiences were inextricably linked to institutional change that drove large reform movements as well as their community and school contexts. For example, shifts in curricular reform occurred simultaneously with shifts in broader contexts as evident in the new emphasis on social emotional learning and use of technology for teaching and learning due to the pandemic. The women principals negotiated multiple and sometimes conflicting demands within the educational system, as well as between their professional, personal, intersectional identities. They constructed their leadership practice by drawing on their most salient identities, which varied in emphasis along gender, race/ethnicity, class, and religious faith. Principals’ narratives carried strong themes of agency, with leadership orientations that highlighted their caring and collaborative and social justice orientations.

Significance

The findings have the potential to inform the field about how principals construct stories of their lives and work, and make decisions about school improvement through multiple periods of reform. The findings also have implications for supporting principal sustainability in the profession.

Connection to Conference Theme

The paper dovetails with the ICSEI sub-theme on leadership development (i.e., exploring the evolving research and evidence base for leadership education and capacity building) as well as the theme on ongoing system and school implications arising from the pandemic.

There is a growing consensus among scholars and practitioners that newly appointed headteachers can be considered a »vulnerable« group of headteachers due to their lack of experience and feeling of isolation (compare e.g. Catagay & Gumus 2021, Lokman et al 2017). Also, many of them have not yet become members of the (in)formal networks which could help them reduce stress and build leadership capacity. In addition, research on the effectiveness of diverse approaches on the professional and career development of headteachers shows that traditional (mass, frontal) forms can no longer meet the needs of the individual in a rapidly changing time and environment and that individual, group and team forms of headteacher support need to be strengthened (compare, for example, Earley 2020, Bainbridge et al 2019). Recently, coaching has been suggested by many scholars to be a viable form of support for novice headteachers as it (amongst other things) strengthens mental resilience and improve their well-being (see van Nieuwerburgh et al 2020, Lofthouse & Whiteside 2019, Forde et al 2012). The contribution focuses on the inquiry of coaching for newly-appointed headteachers, which was first implemented by the Slovenian National School for Leadership in Education (NSLE) at the National Education Institute during the covid-19 epidemic and has so far involved more than 50 headteachers. The coaching »packages« in a form of 5 or 7 one-hour coaching sessions in a row once or every second week are regularly (each year) undertaken by two trained and licenced coaches employed at the Slovenian NSLE. The paper outlines the implementation of coaching and presents the effects and impacts on leadership that we have monitored and evaluated over the years. The coaching experience was researched using a questionnaire for the coachees and an evaluative discussion (focus group) with the coaches. The article focuses on the presentation of the execution of the coaching process, the emerging themes/challenges of the coachees, perceived benefits, valuable aspects and impact of the coaching experience, beliefs regarding the most beneficial attributes of a coach and potential solutions related to future regular headteachers' coaching support at the Slovenian NSLE. The research found that the themes/challenges discussed by the headteachers with the coachees can be organized in 6 main areas, i.e. human resource management, organisation of work, pedagogical leadership, well-being, cooperation with various stakeholders and general management. The perceived benefits were identified and grouped into effects related to headteachers' well-being and personal growth (e.g. building resilience, figthting workload, more energy, personal satisfaction, sense of control, gained self-confidence) and enhanced leadership practice and skills (e.g. better decision making, clarity in direction, better delegation of tasks, new ideas, bigger picute, development of listening skills). Based on the research data, it can be argued that this form of support is highly useful to headteachers, improves the quality of leadership, and also has a significant impact on the resilience of headteachers. In the future, it would be beneficial to consider this kind of support to be offered to experienced headteachers as well.

The role of district leaders across contexts is to provide multi-dimensional support for teaching and learning. One of the dimensions through which the support is transmitted is the circuit managers, whose role as principal supervisors is to work collaboratively with principals and educators in schools to give management and professional support and help schools achieve excellence in learning and teaching, among other things. These district leaders are recently realised as “anchors and drivers of district-wide transformation” (Honig & Rainey, 2019, p. 17).

Recent studies have highlighted the significance of circuit managers in school improvement (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018; Mthembu, 2018). Moreover, although good evidence exists on the value of instructional leadership at the school level (for example, see Leithwood & Seashore-Louis, 2012), there needs to be more coherent evidence on instructional leaders at the circuit managers and advances in their practice. This is despite recent evidence confirming that these professionals are essential for effective system leadership and reform and play a key role in taking effective education interventions to scale (see, for example, Honig & Rainey, 2019). While this is the case, South African studies suggest they are the weakest link (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018).

The paper reports findings from an ongoing project that examines district leadership’s capacity to support principals in effectively leading teaching and learning. The paper focuses on the circuit management sub-directorate in a thriving rural district in KwaZulu-Natal to understand the influence of this sub-directorate on learner performance in schools.

We (authors) positioned ourselves within the interpretivism paradigm to engage with the first-hand experiences of circuit managers. In keeping with this paradigmatic positioning, the narrative inquiry, a research methodology that allows researchers to engage narratively with people’s lived experiences, was adopted to engage circuit managers in this study. Also, narrative ways of generating and analysing data were used.

The study revealed that circuit management has a strong influence on improving performance in schools. Four significant practices through which the participating circuit managers influence learner practices. Firstly, they direct intervention initiatives to all grades while not losing sight of grade 12. Secondly, they have direct involvement in monitoring learners’ work. Thirdly, they expose principals to learning opportunities. Lastly, they recognise and reward good performance. Considering these findings, we conclude that the participating circuit managers adopted an approach of working through and with principals to influence learner performance in schools.

This session considers views in relation to entry requirements for individuals with ambitions to become teachers before they enter professional education for the achievement of a teaching qualification.

The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC Scotland) is the teaching profession’s independent registration and regulation body in Scotland. The work of GTC Scotland is set out in legislation, with article 29 of The Public Services Reform (General Teaching Council for Scotland) Order 2011 detailing GTC Scotland’s responsibilities in relation to programmes of teacher education. GTC Scotland is required by the Order to determine provisions about the admission of individuals to courses resulting in a recognised teaching qualification for teachers of school education.

The Memorandum on Entry Requirements to Programmes of Initial Teacher Education (2019) outlines the minimum standards of qualification required by candidates wishing to apply to programmes of ITE in Scotland. The current Memorandum relates to teacher education programmes starting in academic year 2020 and beyond, until such time as a new memorandum is published. The content of the memorandum is periodically reviewed, and this is achieved through strong partnership working between GTC Scotland, partners in ITE, and other stakeholders who have an interest in the qualifications required for the admission of individuals to programmes of ITE. This review operates on a five-year cycle with the intent of aligning with the review of professional standards for teachers.

A current review of the Memorandum is underway involving targeted engagement with stakeholders and there is a growing expectation for change set within a broader context of national education reform (Scottish Government, 2023). Expectations from partners vary about what constitutes effective means for determining candidate suitability for entering a programme of education leading to the achievement of a professional standard and award of a teaching qualification.

These various views will be summarised along with the process of the review of arrangements with the aim of generating participant considerations of what it means to enter the teaching profession and the implications for high quality initial teacher education and teaching standards.

During the practicum element of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Ireland, pre-service teachers work alongside one or more co-operating teachers. According to the Teaching Council of Ireland, the role of the cooperating teacher (CT) encompasses many different elements supporting the pre-service teacher (PST) to plan for teaching and learning appropriate to the pupils’ needs. In practice, the role of the cooperating teacher remains ambiguous with little practical support to guide the teacher enact the true potential of the relationship. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to explore the potential of a collaborative inquiry approach to the development of pedagogical content knowledge, specifically in the post-primary Mathematics classroom. The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How can a collaborative inquiry model support the development of pedagogical content knowledge for a PST in the Mathematics classroom?

2. How can a collaborative inquiry model support the enhancement of pedagogical content knowledge for a CT in the Mathematics classroom?

3. How can a structured, collaborative inquiry support model promote a dialogic reciprocal relationship between both PST and CT?

The overarching concept underpinning this research is the idea of collaborative professionalism. Collaborative professionalism is, essentially, when two or more teachers work together to improve teaching and learning. Hargreaves and O’Connor clearly differentiate between professional collaboration and collaborative professionalism by stating that the latter is “organized in an evidence-informed, but not data-driven, way through rigorous planning, deep and sometimes demanding dialogue, candid but constructive feedback and continuous collaborative inquiry.” (2018, p. 4) The contention in this paper is that both PST and CT have an opportunity to learn in partnership, in a model of collaborative or co-inquiry. A key element of this research, therefore, is a co-constructed intervention to scaffold and support dialogic professional conversations.

Educational Design research or design-based research is the chosen methodology in this research study which is situated in a Higher Education Institution in Ireland, during the practicum element of an Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programme. The population under consideration is a cohort of students studying for the Professional Master of Education (PME), with subject methodology in Mathematics, alongside the Co-operating Teacher assigned to them in their placement school. A multi-methods approach will be used in this study, where the quantitative data collected first, will explore that ‘what’ in terms of participants experience and practice. The qualitative data will then examine ‘how’ those practices play out in the specific classroom contexts.

The benefits of this research are that it will add to the insights on the PST-CT collaborative relationship. It is hoped that a dialogic model for future use will emerge from this research which would support reciprocity further in the PST-CT professional relationship, as well as enhance the partnership model between universities and the sites of practice for the practicum element.

Building collaborative relationships between PSTs and their CTs, as well as strengthening partnerships between schools and HEIs, is clearly linked to the conference theme of “Quality Professional Education for Enhanced School Effectiveness and Improvement.”.

Harris and Jones made an urgent plea for research into Welsh all-age school leadership, stating that "targeted development, support, and training are currently missing for those who lead All-Through schools or aspire to this school leadership role" (2022, p. 233). This doctoral research examines the claims made about the leadership benefits of the all-age school model through the question “What are practitioners' perspectives on the leadership approaches, attributes and competencies required to lead an all-age school in Wales?”.

All-age schools in Wales cater to pupils aged three to 16 or three to 18 (Lloyd, 2023). The research has been conducted in Welsh all-age schools between 2022 and 2023. There are 1,470 maintained schools in Wales including 1,217 Primary schools, 182 Secondary schools, and 26 all-age schools (StatsWales, 2022). The research participants were 10 all-age school headteachers and the Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) from five all-age schools.

The Welsh government is commited to improving pupil outcomes in Wales (Welsh government, 2020) following years of poor pupil outcomes (OECD, 2020). System changes include a new curriculum, new teaching and leadership standards, research based ITE provision, and a national professional learning strategy. Semi-structured interviews with participants captured their perceptions (Munhall, 2008) of the leadership approaches, attributes, and competencies required to lead an all-age school. This included their professional learning journey and its contribution to their leadership practice.

Adopting an interpretative ontological lens with a social constructionist epistemological perspective, this research employs a case study methodology with five individual schools as cases (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2018; Thomas, 2021). Qualitative data was collected using an online questionnaire, 10 semi-structured interviews with headteachers, and five focus group interviews with SLT members. Thematic analysis was applied to the research data to identify known and emerging themes from the interviews and questionnaires.

Leading an all-age school involves navigating complex relationships with national and local governments, communities, staff, pupils, and parents. The successful establishment of new all-age schools can be hindered by community resistance (Reynolds et al., 2018). Additionally, expectations of improved cross-phase teaching may sometimes be exaggerated (Estyn, 2022). The implementation of the new curriculum necessitates collaboration between generalist primary phase teachers and subject specialist secondary phase teachers. Furthermore, the language used by school staff and the physical layout of the school significantly influences how leaders integrate the primary and secondary phases. Leadership professional learning support for all-age school leaders is currently inconsistent, as existing structures are primarily designed for either primary or secondary school leaders.

The introduction of the New Curriculum for Wales offers policymakers an opportunity to re-evaluate traditional schooling models. The research provides insights into effective strategies for establishing all-age schools, fostering a shared understanding of leadership experiences, and supporting professional learning strategies to maximise the benefits and minimise the disadvantages of all-age schooling. The initial findings of this research align with the conference themes of leadership and professional learning, seeking to enhance professional learning opportunities for current and aspiring all-age school leaders, as well as improving pupil outcomes.

This contributon to a roundtable session will focus on an PhD-project about Student Voice and Student Participation. The project is in it’s early start and it would be useful to share thoughts and reflections that could have impact on design, outcome and impact of the project. The doctoral study will examine the interrelationship between leaders’ practice and students’ voices to promote student agency in the context of democratic citizenship education. The roundtable session is linked to the ICSEI congress sub-theme Leading schools and education systems that promote equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, social justice, global citizenship and/ or environmental sustainability, and it is connected to the ICSEI network Educational Leadership Network.

Background, purpose and policy focus:

The extant literature evidence that student voice and participation is a key factor for students’ motivation and belonging (well-being) at school. Successful engagement for meaningful exercise of student voice requires recognition of school leaders as cultural architects who create the culture needed for students to be involved in their own learning processes.

Main Questions:

• What are the key factors that enable student voice and participation in schools from the student’s perspective?

• How can school-leaders as cultural architects enhance student voice and participation to foster a belonging school-culture?

This project aims to find out:

• Why student voice is important (purpose)

• To map what is currently known about the facilitators and barriers to student voice (systematic review)

• To illuminate the key factors that enable student voice as seen from the students’ perspective (student voice)

• To examine how school-leaders respond, and how they perceive that they can facilitate the enhancement of student voice based on the knowledge from students' perspective? (leader voice)

Context, Scientific Content and Theoretical Framework

This project will make an important contribution to school development nationally and internationally. Several factors provide context for this work; the Norwegian new curriculum, the Future of Education and Skills OECD and UNs Sustainable Development Goal Quality Education.

The envisaged impact of this study entails:

Theoretical contribution: International perspectives on student voice and participation in democratic practice

Methodological contribution: Use of mixed methods

Policy contribution: Creation of policy to support leadership development that fosters student voice and democratic participation

Practice contribution: Education of future leaders in democratic practice and student voice

The project will examine student voice and participation through three conceptual lenses, of Trust, Psychological Safety and Belonging that impact the student and the leader. The fourth dimension focuses on the Leader as Cultural Architect and looks specifically at how leaders create, foster and influence school culture.

Research design

This PhD project will employ mixed methods; a systemic review, semi-structured interviews of students from Ireland and Norway and a quantitative survey with school leaders in both countries.

Questions for the roundtable session

• How do you think this PhD-project can be of interest globally?

• What is missing, what would you add or confirm that is of interest for the congress sub theme?

A two-year, government-grant funded pilot project has been launched providing robust professional social and emotional learning (SEL) and support for teachers and students equipping them with the knowledge and tools needed to regulate emotions, support executive functioning needs and manage stress, as an on-going response to COVID-19. As part of our multi-stakeholder approach to SEL, we are supporting parents by designing and sharing resources with the goal of enveloping students with wrap-around support from home in addition to school. It is our aim to use this data from the two year project to support similar projects in all schools and communities, helping all students to be socially and emotionally healthy and ready to learn. Our project adheres to six key conditions in supporting mental health in schools which are to enhance academic achievement and school attendance, to increase academic confidence and engagement in learning and in community life, to reduce high-risk behaviors of children and youth, to increase community involvement and citizenship, to enhance respect and appreciation for diversity and individual differences, and to create a welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment. A Wellness Task Force has been created comprised of teachers, instructional design leads, school mental health leads, researcher leads and assistants and a Wellness Specialist. This Task Force facilitates enhanced social emotional programming, using the CASEL approved MindUp program for grades K-8. In addition, this task force facilitates the development of free, online micromodules on social-emotional wellness for teachers, parents and members of the community. Several teachers and support staff are trained and certified in MindUp, who then facilitate and support all teachers with the program implementation in classrooms, increasing teacher, school and system capacity. Effective implementation is optimized by providing assessment and feedback in an iterative process, pre-, during and post- program implementation on an ongoing basis. The Wellness Task Force serves as the mentoring and coaching unit who helps to build professional learning networks in the school and ensuring SEL is infused into daily practice. These networks, along with our university partnerships allow for “knowledge mobilization, collaborative school improvement planning and evidence informed policy that respects and promotes teacher professionalism (ICSEI, 2024)”. Mind up is an evidence-based program that has been shown to increase pro-social actions, decrease aggressive behaviors and improve academic achievement, especially in math and language arts. In addition to positive effects for students, educators have benefitted from these trauma-informed training practices and the implementation of these programs in classrooms. This is evidenced by lower levels of burnout, greater improvements in sense of personal accomplishment, self-efficacy and self-care and a reduction has been shown in emotional exhaustion compared to educators who were not trained or did not teach these wellness programs in their classroom.

Research indicates that leadership development programs often have disappointing results in terms of the application of ideas, leading to changes in practice and subsequent impact. Indeed, in their meta-analysis, Lacarenza and colleagues (2017) reported that only a small minority of organisations believed that their leadership development programs are effective. In this session, we will explore a leadership development program that has obtained highly promising results in the two years of its implementation with over 100 participants from a wide range of leaders from various primary, secondary, co-ed and single-sex schools, located within the Melbourne Archdiocese (MACS).

The ‘Igniting Leadership Potential Program‘, based on Five Ways of Being (Danvers, De Blasio, Grift, 2020), has been demonstrated to have a significant impact on not only the knowledge but the practices of participating leaders. And ironically, perhaps, through its primary focus on ‘being’, it has bridged the knowing/doing gap, perhaps supplying a hitherto missing link in leadership development programs.

The purpose of this session is to provide participants with increased knowledge and understanding of the specific design and delivery features that have led to the success of this agile and research-informed leadership development program. These features include, but are not limited to:

- The extended nature of the program (over 5 months), spaced training sessions, regular check-ins between participants and facilitators, needs analysis, regular and ongoing feedback, attendance policy, deliverables expected of participants, regular small group coaching sessions;

- Evaluation (ongoing and iterative), immediate feedback and agile capacity to respond and adapt in the moment and from one session to the next;

- Inbuilt and ongoing accountability and commitment measures and requirements;

- Co-constructed design-– delivering a bespoke leadership program

- Going beyond competency checklists to focus on who we need to ‘be’ and ‘become’ and the consistent and intentional embodiment of our leadership identity/ies;

- Focusing on the compelling why: connecting participants to meaningful work and contribution.

This paper shines a light on the issues related to leadership development programs, in particular, the implementation gap: the gap between 'knowing' (what I know and have learned) and doing (how I am applying that learning in my leadership practice) and impact (how I know that my leadership is having an impact). In so doing, it offers a model that can potentially be applied to improve the impact of existing and or new leadership development programs: a model that with its celebration of being human also offers hope to extinguish the flames of disillusionment and despondency that can afflict and engulf leaders in our challenging times.

Program lead and co-author, Heather De Blasio, will engage participants in a direct experience of some of the strategies and protocols of the Five Ways of Being Igniting Leadership Potential program, as well as exploration of the evaluative data.

Objectives

Extend and expand upon our ICSEI 2023 session by:

1.Discussing key elements of an innovative inquiry approach to nurturing the thinking and practice of school leaders.

2. Sharing themes from our data to describe:

a) the competencies that school leaders self-identify as important to developing their inquiry-based thinking,

b) the contexts and processes which invited, supported the development of those competencies.

3. Sharing research findings and stories from participating leaders related to the key features and approaches taken within facilitated inquiry groups that led to significant impact on their leadership thinking and practice.

Educational Importance

Leithwood (2020) has affirmed that strong leadership had the strongest effect on positive outcomes for administrators participating in network learning. Seven Oaks School Division in Manitoba, Canada and Superior Greenstone District School Board in northern Ontario, Canada have adopted a powerful approach to supporting school leaders that nurtures an inquiry habit of mind as they explore their challenges and learn the power of interrogating their own practice.

Louis and Robinson (2012) affirm that professional learning opportunities need to develop in principals the capabilities required to engage in effective instructional leadership. These include the capacity to challenge, support, reflect on, and change their professional practice (Robertson, 2010). Robertson (2010) calls for deep leadership learning that will “facilitate the self-awareness to create the disposition to change one’s practice” (p. 223).

In both districts, various opportunities were created for authentic inquiry including Leadership Inquiry Groups, Critical Friends sessions and 1:1 coaching. Each provided sustained opportunities for school leaders to think collaboratively with colleagues about their leadership moves. Small groups allowed for building a climate conducive to critical inquiry, responsive coaching and meaningfully connecting with colleagues.

Our initial data is revealing that participants strongly value the structures and opportunities for facilitated critical inquiry into their practice. As facilitators of professional learning of school leaders, we seek to identify the key features and approaches taken within learning opportunities that led to significant impact on their leadership thinking and practice.

Format and Approach

In this interactive Innovate session, we will share our key learnings with respect to processes and contexts that administrators report has had a significant positive impact on their leadership development and practice. We will engage session participants by inviting their own personal reflection and facilitate a discussion on how the critical inquiry approach supports school leaders.

Connection to the Conference Theme

We connect to the subthemes:

“Exploring the evolving research and evidence base for leadership education and capacity building” and “Policy and practice learning to support teacher and school leader development”.

Objectives or purposes of the session

The field of professional learning networks (PLNs) is heavily populated by theory and research. While this evidence-base is critical, this session seeks to complement the research with lived experience. Reflecting on their collective experience from over 80 collective years of leading networks in Africa, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, the 5 presenters will share their stories of challenges and opportunities in leading large-scale PLNs. During this session the presenters will explore the following issues:

• Practical experience with the nuances of leading networks

• How to navigate and actively create conditions to support a “living” network for effective change

• Similarities and differences among a wide geographical range of PLNs across Australia, Africa, USA, UK and Canada; and

• Inherent tensions to manage at different stages of PLN development, growth, and change

Educational importance for theory, policy, research, and/or practice

There is an acceleration of what is being published on PLN theory, research methods, design principles and elements, and effectiveness, but far less about what is happening on the ground for network leaders. This session addresses this gap by focusing on the experience of 5 women educational network leaders from different countries and continents as they navigate and respond to a variety of policy and practice challenges.

The format and approach(es) that will be used in the session to engage participants in the exploration of the area of practice

This presentation will be highly interactive, dynamic and responsive with a focus on collective sensemaking by the presenters and the audience. The audience will be invited to be a part of the collective storytelling experience by adding words to the “Pandora’s Box” and responding to the reflections by the presenters.

The session will engage the participants through four stages.

1. The Pandora’s Box. Presenters and audience will sit in a circle with a ‘Pandora’s Box’ in the centre. Audience members will be provided with blank cards and invited to write words that come to mind when they think of network leadership. The presenters will have already provided a collection of words (e.g. disruptive, opportunistic, fortuitous, engagement, juggling, abstractness, humour).

2. Individual wisdom – One by one, the presenters will pull a word from the ‘Pandora’s Box’ at random and use the word drawn as a stimulus to share their experience of leading networks in their context. Each word chosen will then be placed in the middle of the circle.

3. Collective sense-making – As the words in the middle of the circle increase, the presenters and audience will be invited to categorize the words chosen and include reflections and/or responses to create a collective and living story of network leadership.

4. Collective wisdom – the presenters will lead the audience in drawing out insights and key take-aways to support ongoing conversations.

This study examines the impact on cultivating professional capital and culture of teachers and schools raised by the initiatives of Professional Graduate Projects (PGP) of University of Fukui, Japan. The design of Fukui PGP stands out as it adopts the idea that teachers are reflective practitioners whose learning comes by doing (e.g., Dewey, 1910; Schön, 1983). This initiative adapts the continuous reflective mode of Lesson Study (Kimura & Kishino, 2019) at its core structure to allow for collaborative inquiry-based action research with teachers and schools.

Our graduate students who are pre-service and in-service teachers engage into reflective practicum and conduct action research at partner schools. Especially, in-service teachers’ practicum and research are conducted at their working places (schools). Finally, they write the Longitudinal Reflective Practice Record to keep track of their practices, which can serve as an evidentiary basis for identifying the quality of learning at each phase and how the level of learning has evolved throughout the Lesson Study. Based on this context, the study aims to address the following research question: how did the Fukui PGP influence teachers at different career stages and support their professional capital development, advance Lesson Study practice at their workplaces, and involvement in professional learning communities and culture?

This study uses qualitative data collected from the Longitudinal Reflective Practice Records written by three graduate students enrolled as: new entrance teachers, in-service teachers, and school leaders to evaluate the Fukui PGP’s impact on teachers and schools. To clarify research questions, this study uses the concept of professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012) as the analytical framework. Professional capital broadens the idea of teacher expertise from the individual to the organizational level and the idea of teaching skills and knowledge to a whole range of qualitative abilities, including social relationships. These aspects will clarify the impact on cultivating professional capital and culture raised by Fukui PGP. As case study, three records were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach that focuse on interpreting and understanding the subjects’ agency attainment and professional development through episode narratives. To be more specific, episodes relating to critical moments such as “turning point”, “change”, and “development” were extracted from their practice reports and displayed in timelines to compare and interpret the characteristics of their respective professional developmental journeys based on the concept of professional capital.

As results, the collaborative inquiry School-University partnerships in Fukui PGP, including the systematic curriculum and activities designed for facilitating teachers’ collaborative inquiries as social capital at schools and universities, turns out to be critical in attributing to teachers’ agentic enactments as human and decisional capital leading to school reforms through data analysis. The analyzed Longitudinal Reflective Practice Records featured three common dimensions aligned to narratives and episodes found in the reflective writings. Expressions to identify pivotal moments in their learning included; “experience of change”, “motivation for professional growth”, and “concrete sense of development”.

These findings show that high quality teaching and learning of teachers can be supported by collaborative inquiry school-university partnerships.

Despite nearly two decades of study, there remains a lack of empirical investigations of KMb efforts (Powell et al., 2018), which is especially pronounced for approaches that rely on sustained interactions among research producers, intermediaries, and research users (Beckett et al., 2018; Oliver et al., 2019). A key factor contributing to this knowledge gap is the paucity of evaluation tools with strong psychometric and pragmatic properties that could enable comparisons across contexts, support informed decision making for increasing the effectiveness and sustainability of interactions, and provide evidence for the outcomes and impacts of mobilizing knowledge among diverse research actors (Davies et al., 2015; Durose et al., 2018; Hoekstra et al., 2020). This purpose of this paper is to build out the argument that research impact assessment in education could make rapid strides with modest changes to current practice.

The methods in this paper build upon an earlier review of impact assessment tools designed for collaborative research approaches (Author, 2021). Due to the volume of primary studies focused on collaborative research, particularly over the last 10 years, the review was structured as an overview. Analogous to systematic and scoping reviews of individual studies, overviews provide a way of “bringing together reviews in a transparent and systematic way and aiding informed decision making by gathering, appraising and systematically analysing this evidence” (Hunt et al., 2018, p. 2). In total, after screening an initial set of 1,223 abstracts followed by 141 full-text articles, eight reviews were analyzed (Boivin et al., 2018; Buchanan et al., 2016; Granner & Sharpe, 2004; Hamzeh et al., 2019; Lawlor et al., 2019; Lewis et al., 2015; Sandoval et al., 2012; Squires et al., 2011). I extend the overview’s analysis of these eight articles by focusing on tools that meet the following criteria: (a) developed or applied within the past five years, (b) intended for use in K-12 education settings with multiple audiences (e.g., researchers, practitioners, policymakers), and (c) strong psychometric and pragmatic properties.

While the analysis phase of this work is still underway, five instruments will be examined and compared, followed by a discussion of enduring challenges for assessing impact. Those five tools are the following: (1) Brown et al.’s (2022) Research-Use Benefits, Costs, and Signification Survey; (2) Brennan et al.’s (2017) Seeking, Engaging with and Evaluating Research; (3) Neal et al.’s (2020) Archival Search of Use of Research Evidence; (4) Penuel et al.’s (2016) Survey of Practitioners’ Use of Research; (5) Farley-Ripple’s (2017) Survey of Evidence in Education for Schools.

Current quantitative approaches to measuring the impacts of research collaborations in education are failing to do so in ways that are meaningful, consistent, rigorous, reproducible, and equitable. This paper makes a first step in addressing this issue by exploring promising impact assessment tools from fields of study with conceptual similarities to research collaboration.

This paper proposal presents results from a study on experienced Swiss teachers’ workplace learning triggered by continuous professional development. It addresses the question of how teacher workplace learning takes place in the specific contexts.

Workplace learning of teachers is seen as embedded in daily classroom activities: Both, formal and informal workplace learning are considered (Hallinger & Kulophas, 2020). Research on workplace learn-ing has expanded considerably in the last years and can nowadays be considered a broad and interdis-ciplinary sub-discipline. A central aspect of the scholarly debate is the question of sustaining teachers' professional competences, with much attention being paid to the link between formal and informal learn-ing (Geeraerts et al., 2018).

The context of the study refers to a professional development procedure called STEEV (simultaneously teaching and evaluation that is effective and visible; in German: LUUISE) (Beywl et al., 2023). STEEV draws on research on teaching (e.g., Helmke & Weinert, 2021) and further education (e.g., Lipowsky & Rzejak, 2021). In addition, it fosters "evaluative thinking" (Dunn & Hattie, 2021, Hattie, 2023: teachers plan ahead, thinking about how they can assess and also promote the success of their teaching by means of collecting relevant data in a way that is integrated into existing classroom practices. The change of perspective, "seeing through the eyes of the learners" (Hattie, 2009), is crucial. This process strengthens the expertise of teachers by supporting them to address pedagogical challenges effectively and to achieve high teaching goals. Specific features of the program are a high practical orientation with close support of the participants by coaches during the planning of a data-based teaching intervention, the implementation in the classroom, which usually lasts several weeks, and the collegial reflection.

Methodologically, a grounded theory research approach was adopted corresponding to the pragmatistic line of Strauss & Corbin (1990). Through narrative and focused interviews STEEV-experienced teachers are asked about their experiences. Applying theoretical sampling and theoretical sensitivity, the inter-view data was analysed to develop concepts and then elaborated into categories. Finally, a learning model was developed. It suggests the importance of the connection between learning-oriented action and reflection by the teacher. This is similar to the experiential learning cycle of professional develop-ment (Kolb, 1984). The results of the study indicate on the one hand the effect of work-based learning and on the other hand effects on effective teaching.

Findings from this study can inform research and practical interventions in various contexts as the un-derlying theoretical assumptions are based on international evidence (e.g., Hattie 2023). It makes teacher workplace learning tangible (in the specific context) and points to the benefit of teacher (con-tinuing) education process involved for quality professional education as well as school effectiveness and improvement. Moreover, attempts can be identified how teacher workplace learning can be support-ed externally. Furthermore, it contributes to the expansion of scientific work in still young academic field of teacher workplace learning.

Contemporary education is moving towards a stronger connection with research, driven by policy and the recognition of the positive influence of research-informed educational practice (RIEP) on teachers' professional development. However, the practical integration of research into everyday school life is still in progress across many contexts. This paper examines the participation of teachers and school leaders in RIEPs that support inclusive education.

We take RIEP to refer to the utilisation of academic research by teachers and school leaders to inform their teaching methodologies, decision-making processes, leadership approaches, and ongoing professional development (Brown, et al, 2022).

We issued a survey to a total of 534 teachers and school leaders from Catalonia (N=343), Poland (N=112), and England (N=79). We have adopted Baudrillard's (1968) theoretical framework as a deductive lens. Firstly, we examined the benefits that the teachers and school leaders perceived as associated with using research in their professional practice, particularly in terms of: improvements in teaching, pedagogical understanding, and inspiration for using innovative approaches. Secondly, we explored the costs that the teachers and school leaders perceived as linked to using academic research in their professional practice, including: limited financial and logistical resources and teachers’ lack of preparedness in using research. Lastly, we examined the teachers’ and school leaders’ own sense of aspiration to use academic research in their professional practice, involving factors such as a perceived prestige or sense of professional identity associated with using research.

The findings of the study indicate that in terms of the benefits of using RIEPs, the items that received higher scores are associated with: the practical utility of research in guiding the development of new practices (M=4.09 – up to 5), enhancing the learning experience of students (M=4.14), and providing teachers with new and innovative ideas (M=4.9). Additionally, respondents expressed that there was a greater likelihood of them utilising research when it aligns with the objectives of the school and the specific needs of their students.

Regarding the costs associated with research use, respondents acknowledged the challenges they face in effectively translating research findings into practitioner-friendly language (M=3.90) and integrating those findings with their practical knowledge as educators (M=3.92).

Furthermore, respondents perceived research evidence to be significant primarily when its utilization aligns with the expectations of school leaders and the improvement priorities of the school itself. They viewed RIEPs as a ‘hallmark of an effective profession’ (M=3.76), contributing to the enhancement of their ‘school’s reputation and attractiveness as a place for both professional growth and learning’ (M=3.88).

The study findings highlight both the positive and critical attitudes the teachers have towards employing RIEPs in their professional practice. On the one hand, they recognized research and the potential positive impact research can have on teaching practices and school development. On the other hand, they articulated the challenges and considerations that teachers face if incorporating research into their professional activity. This study draws recommendations from the respondents’ contributions, offering them up for adaptation and practical application in the ongoing bid to nurture more inclusive education systems.

International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) receive considerable attention from the media and policymakers globally. Critiques of these studies and their influence on policy have been widely discussed (e.g. Gorur, 2016), though some see potential synergies between ILSAs and other methodological orientations to the study and pursuit of educational effectiveness and improvement (e.g. Kyriakides, Charalambous & Charalambous, 2021). This paper takes a critical perspective and draws on findings from a specific example of a recent ILSA to illustrate two not-uncommon issues arising: Troubling/puzzling findings related to teacher professionalism and professional learning, and how to constructively engage with those findings and avoid their misuse.

The Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), conducted in 5-year cycles since 2001 (Mullis et al., 2023), is an ILSA that compares overall reading achievement at approximately age 10 across about 60 participating education systems and across study cycles. Results from the 2021 cycle of PIRLS, specifically those relevant to teacher characteristics (qualifications, years of experience, job satisfaction) and their relationship to pupils’ reading achievement, are used to problematise:

1) What explains some possibly counter-intuitive or discouraging findings concerning teacher characteristics; and

2) How multiple stakeholders (academic researchers, government funders, policymakers, politicians, school leaders and teachers) can play a role both in making meaningful use of these research findings and avoiding (or even actively combatting) their misuse.

While PIRLS 2021 took place across 57 participating education systems, the context for this paper is predominantly national, given the author’s research role in PIRLS 2021 in England. Data come from a nationally-representative sample of 178 teachers and 4150 pupils in 162 schools. Reading achievement is based on pupil assessments, while teacher characteristics are based on self-report questionnaires.

Initial findings in England (Author et al., 2023) showed no clear relationships between reading achievement and teacher qualifications, years of experience, emphases in formal teacher education (on language, pedagogy, and/or reading theory), participation in reading-related professional development, nor job satisfaction. This seems counter-intuitive, and conflicts with some previous research (e.g. Kini & Podolsky, 2016). Several possible causes for these null relationships include problems of measurement (categories that do not work well in context) and analysis (where alternative statistical approaches might provide different results) as well as genuine underlying issues in the education system. The final paper will discuss insights from an exploration of each of these alternatives, including activities currently in progress to engage directly with headteachers, teachers and policymakers to discuss study results, questions raised and practical implications.

The educational importance of this work lies in its contribution to lessons learned both about problems of ILSAs in relation to teacher professionalism and professional learning and the possibilities afforded by open dialogue about ILSA findings across professional boundaries. Connection to the conference theme and sub-theme of “Leveraging research and data for inquiry, insight, innovation and professional learning” is tightly bound to the active and open engagement with different stakeholders around PIRLS 2021 findings in England in an effort to make meaningful and responsible sense and use of results in policy and practice.

The purpose of this research is to shed light on collaboration and support given by the municipal education authority to schools regarding school improvement in upper secondary schools in Norway, and school owners' follow-up of the schools cf. their overall responsibility for quality work (Education Act § 13-3e). The study will provide an example of how a change in thinking can contribute to better cooperation between local school authorities and upper secondary schools. This presentation fits in with the theme of the conference: continuing professional development for school leaders. Several studies have shown the importance of support between the different levels in the education systems, such as at district and municipal level (Anderson and Young, 2018; Hargreaves and Shirley, 2020; Louis et al., 2010; Moos, Nihlfors et al., 2016), and how support from management at district level is important for schools' improvement efforts (George & Kincaid, 2008; Wilkinson et al., 2019). In the Norwegian context, through the national quality system, the local educational office has a great responsibility for quality in education (Ministry of Education, 2017). Datnow, 2012, points out that the relationships between the actors at the various levels are of decisive importance for cross-level cooperation in the education system. The research project started in 2019. Point of departure was that the leaders and advisors at municipal education office wanted to develop themselves as learning leaders. During the years 2019 to 2023, in collaboration with researchers, and based on a knowledge base of "learning leadership" and "genuine inquiry" (Argyris & Schon,1978; Emstad & Birkeland, 2021; Robinson, 2011,2020), they practiced having a “learning approach” in their in meetings with the schools. This means that they have placed emphasis on being a professional learning community (PLC), and developing their own communication. By recording conversations and meetings, analyzing and disclosing their own theories of action, they aimed to become genuine listener and being respectful towards the school's and their knowledge, but at the same time having respect for their own knowledge and their responsibility as school authorities. All the way researchers observed meetings, gave feedback and new input. The study can be described as intervention research, with continuous feedback loops where data is used both for the participants and the researchers to adjust their own course and assess necessary input in order to reach the desired goal: to be a better support for the county's schools, and to ensure good quality in the teaching. The data material consists of leaders' presentations of their own analyzes and evaluations in the PLC-meeting with the researcher, observations of meetings with the schools, timeline of activities with defined turning points (change in communication or actions), feedback notes from the researchers and school leaders, reflection notes). In 2023 principals and middle leaders were asked to send in reflection notes on their experience of change – if any. What was particularly emphasized was that the meetings between the local authorities and the schools' leadership groups have become more characterized by trust than by supervision and control.

School self-evaluation (SSE) is considered a key lever to promote bottom-up school improvement (Chapman & Sammons, 2013; Jacobsen et al., 2003). In recent years, many countries have promoted centrally mandated SSE aiming at school improvement in official discourse, even though accountability and economic logics in top-down models for SSE are in place (McNamara et al., 2022).

In the Italian context, the National Evaluation System requires schools to draw up SSE reports and school development plans, according to a common theoretical framework. A centralized professional development programme (PDP) with five online courses has been designed by the National Institute for School Evaluation. The program was aimed both at supporting the implementation of the aforementioned system mandated SSE and at providing opportunities to make sense of the SSE process. The main contents were: SSE, school improvement, accountability and reporting, external evaluation, students’ assessment, evaluation theory, social research methodology, data use, communication and collaboration skills. In SY 2021-22 attended the program 320 teachers and 73 school principals.

This explorative study aims at understanding how the PDP intercepts participants’ needs, as well as how it can support them to implement SSE.

Four online focus groups with a merit sample of PDP’s participants were carried out in July 2022. The sample consisted of 25 teachers and 5 principals. According to a common protocol, one moderator, one co-host assistant and one co-host observer were present (Authors, 2023). The audio recordings were transcribed and the transcripts underwent an abductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Thompson, 2022). The analysis combined an inductive approach (descriptive codes emerging from the reading of the text) with a deductive approach (interpretative categories grouping codes thematically related) (Authors, 2022).

As for the relationship between PDP and participants’ needs, the contents were widely appreciated for their comprehensiveness, richness, and theoretical soundness. In all focus groups some participants perceived the asynchronous modality as a crucial affordance to enhance their self-paced learning. Furthermore, teachers highlighted the usefulness of the practice-oriented e-tivities. On the other hand, some teachers lamented the scarcity of operational tools and individual feedback to carry out SSE and students’ assessment. Finally, several teachers and principals struggled to cope with the instructional pace, perceived as too stringent.

Moving to the impact of the PDP in real contexts, the reluctance or the unpreparedness of most teachers to work cooperatively on SSE were indicated as the main obstacles to school improvement. The lack of support at national and local level to guide SSE resulted in a further constraint for the implementation of evaluation competences. Nevertheless, the PDP provided participants with valuable opportunities to reflect on their evaluation practices. In this respect, two significant insights correspond to the rethinking of working practices to involve new colleagues in SSE and the inclusive re-design of the assessment and evaluation strategies.

Such preliminary results suggest that the PDP was functional to consolidate individual knowledge rather than to implement a cooperative SSE. Indeed, this latter appears as a system constraint that needs further attention both at policy and research level.

This paper critically examines the complex interplay between centralised/de-centralised governance structures, mechanisms and infrastructures to diffuse educational improvements across a system, and partnership configurations that facilitate or challenge system improvement, intentional or otherwise. Drawing on Mary Douglas’s Cultural Theory (1992,1996) and recent Learning Sciences’ theories on infrastructuring (Penuel,2019;Bielaczyc,2006), we focus on Singapore’s translational and mobilisation efforts for research innovations that occur at both system and school levels to highlight the relationships between power dynamics and diffusion processes in an education system driven by strong-state principles (Gopinathan,1994).

Research translation and mobilisation have become a global educational imperative for education research (Coope,2014), with research funding creating new system structures to scale up school innovations or university-school partnerships to drive improvements. Singapore’s two decades of governmental research funding has evolved to a stage where translation and mobilisation has become a central pillar of accountability, creating opportunities and challenges for school- and system-based solutions to problems of practice and policy.

Set in this context, three case studies of government-funded research studies are presented along with analysis of the governance structures that aim to exploit and explore system resources for translation/mobilisation in Singapore. We argue that these case studies signify different ways of organizing and perceiving social relations distinguished by Cultural Theory: hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, fatalism. Cultural Theory argues that these four ‘ways of life’ are underpinned by two dimensions of sociality – grid (status differentiation) and group (collectivity) (eg,Cornford, Baines & Wilson used cultural theory for network governance). Concomitantly, recent work into Research-Practice Partnerships have begun to shift attention away from educational infrastructures that are developed to support partnership processes, towards infrastructuring (i.e.,how practices shape infrastructures). Infrastructuring takes on a relational and praxeological perspective on infrastructures as cooperative activities and socio-cultural-technical arrangements that create “conditions that support educators in making innovations into working infrastructures for organizing learning activities” (Penuel,2019,p.660). Seen this way, both infrastructuring and Cultural Theory can be mobilised to better understand how social-cultural-political configurations, such as partnerships and governance structures, may generate different nuanced translational pathways and solutions that disrupts the long-standing linear perception of research translation drawn from the health sciences.

The three case studies are unique in scale and partnership models, lending themselves to analysis using our theoretical framing. Case study methodology along with interviews with key actors in the cases and document analysis are used to critically examine and map them to Cultural Theory/infrastructuring. The first is a large-scale longitudinal classroom-based study into teaching and learning in Singapore schools, with a hierarchical partnership model driven by top-down needs from the centralised government. The second is a self-sustaining Research-Practice Partnership that thrives through bottom-up school needs. The third draws on different partnership processes to spread school innovations. Each maps onto 3 of Cultural Theory’s dimensions, with implications for how they engage in infrastructuring processes. In examining these cases, we will discuss how systems can encourage broader partnership approaches that can lead to wider translations and meaningful impact across the system.

Objectives

Educating multilingual learners (MLs) is a pressing issue across the globe, particularly given increasing immigration. Europe and Asia are currently the largest destinations for international migrants, with approximately 86 million migrants in each region (Nataranjan et al., 2022). Many migrants speak languages other than the language of the host country, increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in schools (European Education and Culture Executive Agency, 2019). In the US, MLs represent an increasing demographic, with 10.4% of students classified as English Learners (Office of English Language Acquisition, 2020). MLs in the US face a myriad of educational challenges, including inadequate school resources, low expectations, and poor home-school communication (Garver & Hopkins, 2020). School and district leaders are tasked with the urgent need to promote equity-informed policies and practices that prioritize ML educational outcomes. Therefore, this paper asks: how do school and district leaders promote educational equity for multilingual learners?

Framework

This study builds upon Ishimaru and Galloway’s (2014) framework of equitable leadership practice. Using an asset-based orientation, Ishimaru and Galloway (2014) identify “high leverage” leadership practices including enacting an equity vision, supervising for equitable teaching and learning, fostering an equitable school culture, allocating resources and personnel, and family collaboration. While this framework is primarily focused on school leaders, we extend its application to examining district leadership as well. Existing research reinforces that district and school leaders are critical in supporting educational improvement for MLs. Leaders can foster equity for MLs by “recognizing that their language and culture should be considered a resource and right” (Cruze et al., 2021, p.113). Leaders also support MLs through teacher capacity building (Garver & Hopkins, 2020) and fostering critical consciousness about inequities (Callahan et al., 2023). How leaders work together systemically to accomplish these goals is less understood.

Methods

This qualitative study draws from a Research-Practice Partnership involving a US school district serving approximately 20,000 students, 3,100 of whom are multilingual, mostly Hispanic and from low-income families. We have collaborated with the district for 6 years, gathering multiple forms of data. In this phase, we are conducting semi-structured interviews with school and district administrators (N=16). Interviews were recorded and are being coded using MAXQDA software to examine leadership practices and policies supporting the improvement of education for MLs.

Results

An analysis of the data reveals several distributed leadership practices to systemically advance educational equity for MLs. Leaders (1) adapted an asset-based approach towards MLs, as reflected on an organizational level, (2) elevated ML community voices to inform priorities, (3) fostered collaboration to ensure a shared responsibility for MLs, and (4) promoted collective uptake of research-based approaches for educating MLs. These findings have important implications for how district and school leaders work across contexts to support MLs.

Connection to Theme

This paper is relevant to the ICSEI theme of “quality professional development” as the leadership findings can inform principal preparation and training for school and district leaders. This will ensure leaders are ready to support the growing demographic of MLs and challenge existing inequities.

Educational leaders play a vital role in improving student outcomes (Harris et al., 2021; Leithwood et al., 2020). Yet, many systems internationally struggle to attract, develop, and retain effective school and system leaders (Drysdale & Gurr, 2021). Recognising the importance of building individual and collective capacity and capability (OECD, 2019), research increasingly highlights the value of educational leadership frameworks (Drysdale & Gurr, 2021; Jensen et al., 2017). Ground-breaking work aligning teacher career pathways and professional frameworks is emerging (e.g., ET2020 Working Group Schools, 2020). However, leadership-specific research is relatively underdeveloped. Further, the nature and implementation of leadership frameworks vary considerably internationally. Frameworks ideally span from early identification of potential future leaders—requiring articulation with teacher career progression—to supporting ongoing professional growth of school and system leaders, regardless of career stage.

This paper critically examines contemporary international leadership research, policy, and practice in high-performing systems, and presents case studies to illustrate promising leadership framework applications. Cases involve partnerships with state and national education bodies in two different regions. The first focused on the development and implementation of a capability framework, the second on a leadership meta-framework and career progression model. Specifically, we consider leadership frameworks that speak to individual and collective capability, capacity, and practices. Capacity speaks to the number of individuals undertaking school or system leadership responsibilities, whereas capability speaks to what these leaders know, can do, and are like (Taylor-Guy et al., 2022). Practices concern the context-specific goal-oriented activities or behaviours of leaders or teams (Leithwood, 2017). Our analytical lens was the OECD (2019) frame, which brings together (1) HR policies and working environments, (2) individual and collective capacity and capability building, and (3) effective leadership, teaching and learning.

Findings corroborate the value of growth-oriented capability frameworks to support ongoing professional growth. We highlight the importance of articulating how different frameworks complement one another to drive the system’s vision for leadership. Another critical point is the need for frameworks to target the collective by considering interactions across staff functions and articulating expectations for identifying and nurturing potential future leaders. Development and implementation of frameworks requires frequent and intensive consultation and/or co-construction with a wide range of stakeholders, supported by tailored professional learning. The career progression model provides a world-class example of how leadership frameworks can be integrated to drive ongoing professional learning and growth. Through educational and HR policies and processes, it integrates the evidence-based components of (a) opportunity, (b) capability, and (c) motivation (ET2020 Working Group Schools, 2020; OECD, 2019.) Specifically, the career progression model aligns career pathways, a competence framework, professional learning opportunities, and rewards to attract, develop and retain leaders.

This paper addresses the conference theme by drawing synergies between school and system foci in relation to frameworks, to holistically support ongoing leader professional learning. It makes an important conceptual contribution by disentangling the nature of leadership frameworks as they relate to individual and collective capacity and capability building. Seminal case studies provide valuable insights for advancing research, policy, and practice internationally.

OBJECTIVE, RESEARCH QUESTIONS and CONTEXT

This paper presents the results of a research that seeks to understand how school leaders "make sense" during the initial phase of a large-scale reform that has begun to be implemented in Chile, called the New Public Education. The research questions were: i) What is the sense that school leaders assign to this reform, ii) How does this sense-making evolve during the first years of implementation of the change, and iii) What are the factors that influence this sense-making process?

This study is developed in the context of the public education reform in Chile, which transfers the responsibility of managing public schools from municipalities to a new institutional framework: the Local Public Education Services (SLEP). The objective of this reform is to accumulate, develop and institutionalize professional and technical capacities in each territory, so that intermediate levels drive the continuous improvement of schools (Bellei & Munoz, 2023).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

One of the relevant conceptual perspectives to account for the way in which actors relate to educational policies or reforms is that of sense-making, the ongoing process through which people work to understand issues or events that modify their routine and generate a new scenario or context (Maitlis and Christianson, 2014). School leaders would be one of the main "sense-makers" of educational systems, by implementing an interpretation of policies according to local interests, which affects the way in which reforms are implemented (Bridwell-Mitchell, 2015; Ganon-Shilon and Schechter, 2017).

METHODS AND EVIDENCE

Qualitative research was developed based on four case studies. In each of them we interviewed (at three points in time, in the years 2021, 2022 and 2023) their principals, and at an intermediate milestone (2022) the management team and a sample of teachers, through group interviews. A transcription of each of the interviews was made, which allowed an open coding of the interviews and later a cross-sectional analysis of the data obtained.

RESULTS

- Three predominant types of meaning associated with this reform were identified: "paradigm change" "pedagogical change" and "bureaucratic change"

- Three types of variables or factors are involved in the sense-making process: i) individual dispositions, previous experience, and characteristics of the leaders, ii) the characteristics of the policy and its implementation, and iii) the school context in which the whole process takes place.

- The meaning assigned to the public education reform evolves marginally as implementation progresses, since an important part of the meaning and adherence to this policy was generated in the first steps of its application.

EDUCATIONAL IMPORTANCE AND CONNECTION TO THE CONFERENCE THEME

The research highlights the value of considering the involvement of school leaders as a priority of any reform to generate a shared sense of the change that these reforms propose at the level of principals (Ganon-Shilon and Schechter, 2017; Henriksen, 2018). The research connects with the theme of the congress because it highlights the role of school leaders in systemic educational improvement, for which it is essential to enhance professional development processes.

The Purpose

This presentation is based on a study aimed at contributing to how school leaders can be prepared to work effectively with newcomers (immigrants and refugees) who are culturally and linguistically diverse. It focuses on data that were gathered from school principals and newcomer families, including the role of a school division’s central office in strengthening leadership supports for newcomers.

Research Questions :

The research was guided by questions that (i) explored the experience of principals and newcomer families with school leadership in Saskatoon and (ii) used the essence of the experience to establish how both principals and newcomer families can be supported to ensure newcomer students’ success.

Perspectives :

Studies have shown that when a parent or guardian is engaged in a meaningful way in their child’s learning, teachers and school leaders receive the support they need from families, students do better, and everybody benefits (Epstein, 2010; Izzo et al., 1999; Leithwood et al., 2010). That is why school and education system are working at finding ways to engage parents in the teaching and learning activities a meaningful way (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010). Consequently, the demographic changes that are occurring in societies due to immigration are compelling school leaders to engage with newcomer families from the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds as they facilitate the success of students (Epstein & Sander, 2006; Lopez, 2015).

Methods:

Phenomenology as an approach to qualitative (Piem, 2018; van Manen, 2014, 2015) was used to explore the experience of school leaders and parents with the assumption of a commonality in the human experience of any phenomena. The phenomenon in this study was school leadership-newcomer family interactions. Data were gathered using semi structured interviews, and focus group discussions with 24 principals representing two school divisions and newcomer 25 families. Consultative meetings were then held with leaders from the central office leadership.

Data Sources: Field notes and transcripts of audio recordings from the interviews, the focus group discussions and consultative panels.

Findings: revealed how the newcomers experience the education system as structured, bureaucratic but stable. For meaningful engagement to occur, the education system and its leadership needed to be more accountable and communicate guidance about expectations more clearly. Leadership needs to create a sense of community, be accessible , open and inclusive of diverse culture and create more opportunities for culturally diverse families to engage or be more involved and relationship building. They also need foster family learning and investing in newcomer settlement agency partnerships

Educational Importance:

The study provides insights for researching and programming for school leadership development that equips principals for work with culturally diverse newcomers. With appropriate skills, the school leader will be able to facilitate the educational success of culturally and linguistically diverse newcomer learners. Documenting and mobilizing knowledge about these experiences of school leaders and newcomer families and the associated recommendations could inform policy on effective ways of supporting Newcomers to settle and participate in society. The knowledge will enhance their ability to coordinate and provide targeted assistances services.

Objective, aims, and theoretical framework

The aim of the study is to investigate how profiles of teacher stress and teacher-student interactions (TSI) at baseline predict the quality of implementation in the INTERACT individual video-based teacher coaching intervention.

TSI can be organized into three domains: teachers’ emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support (Pianta et al. 2012). Studies of teacher stress and TSI quality indicate a negative association between the two phenomena (Corbine et al. 2019). Further, a meta-analysis documents the effects of video-based teacher coaching (Kraft et al. 2018). Still, the level of perceived stress may affect teachers’ performance in the classroom (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Consequently, there are reasons to assume that subgroups of teachers exist with different stress and TSI quality profiles. Little is known about the impact of teacher stress and TSI on the ability to implement a teacher coaching intervention with the quality needed to improve TSI.

Participants, data sources and methodology

The sample consists of 99 teachers (49 intervention group teachers) and 10 coaches participating in a cluster randomized control trial (cRCT). During the academic year, the teachers focus on emotional support, classroom organization, instructional support, and student engagement in seven coaching cycles using a strength-based approach. The intervention group teachers participated in the coaching cycles with an assigned coach about every 3rd week throughout one academic year. Each cycle consists of six steps. The coaching cycles are based on video recordings from the teacher’s own teaching and have a strength-based approach.

The intervention was implemented in the academic year 2022-2023. The current study draws on the baseline teacher reports of TSI (emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support), as well as stress (due to workload and student behavior) collected prior to randomizing teachers. Further teacher and coach reported on the quality of implementation at the end of each of the seven coaching cycles. Teachers were recruited from 12 upper secondary schools in two Norwegian counties. Teachers at both academic (25%) and vocational tracks were included.

Findings

Exploring which profiles can be identified regarding the teachers’ reports of stress and TSI, four profiles were identified using latent profile analysis (LPA) using Mplus 8.10. The profiles represented groups of teachers with qualitatively and quantitatively different profiles of stress and TSI. It is reasonable to assume that teachers with different profiles may differ in their ability to implement an intervention with high quality (Humphrey et al 2016).

Theoretical and Educational relevance, and connection to conference theme:

Knowledge of for whom and under which conditions an intervention is effective, allows teacher coaching interventions to support TSI interactions to be more targeted and indicate for whom interventions may be particularly useful. Further, findings from the study may contribute to the understanding of the complexity of the association between teacher stress, TSI, and the quality of implementation of video-based teacher coaching interventions. This knowledge may be useful for teachers and school leaders to make data-informed decisions on teachers’ professional development.

Purpose and Research Questions

This year’s ICSEI explores the role and impact of quality professional teaching and learning, which can be supported through the mobilization of knowledge. Knowledge mobilization is the process of moving knowledge (i.e., evidence derived from research, data or practical experience) to where it will be most useful (Ward, 2017). Knowledge brokers, defined as actors that trade knowledge between entities not immediately connected (Weber & Yanovitzky, 2021), are central to this deeply relational process (Rickinson & Edwards, 2021; Ward, 2017). While previous literature illustrates the importance of social networks in the dissemination of knowledge (e.g., Authors, 2022; Farley-Ripple & Yun, 2021; Poortman & Brown, 2017), less is known about how knowledge brokers could harness the power of social networks to mobilize knowledge if presented with curated data and visualizations. Therefore, this study explores the following question: How do knowledge brokers harness social networks for the mobilization of their resources?

Theoretical Perspective

This study employs a social network perspective, which asserts that “relational ties among actors are primary and attributes of actors are secondary” (Wasserman & Faust, 1994, p. 8) in the study of the social environment and processes. A social network consists of actors that are connected through relationships (Wasserman & Faust, 1994).

Methods and Data

We selected six evidence-based and equity-focused organizations that are recognized as experts in their respective fields, and intentionally mobilize their resources to different levels of the education system, from K-12 schools to state-level policy contexts. We analyzed data from 41.5 hours of semi-structured interviews with these knowledge brokers. Some of these interviews were about how the participants would use the Twitter social networks that were visualized and organized around clusters in their work of mobilizing knowledge. We then coded the transcripts with an inductively developed codebook (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).

Findings

Through the social network analysis and visualization, the knowledge brokers were able to learn more about the content of what their audiences were engaging in, and how they were connected. This understanding led them to strategize and plan several uses of this knowledge for their online and offline knowledge mobilization efforts. Online applications of the presented data included (a) honing social media presence to be more targeted, (b) which users and content to amplify, (c) strategically growing their online networks, (d) understanding the reach of their resources. Offline uses that they discussed included (a) informing their content, (b) updating their editorial calendar, (c) identifying people for collaborations (e.g., conferences, special issues). They were confident that these measures would improve their knowledge mobilization outcomes.

Implications

We demonstrated how knowledge brokers could use curated social network data and visualizations to improve their knowledge mobilization efforts. By highlighting the applications in online and offline spaces, this study provides evidence that knowledge brokers work on a social continuum where the movement of knowledge between online and offline is fluid (Authors, 2019). This understanding provides another perspective and approach to supporting knowledge brokers in their profoundly relational efforts for school effectiveness and improvement.

Educational accountability systems that assess school quality through academic performance metrics are ubiquitous. Recently, systems have deployed data instruments capturing functions of schooling beyond academic achievement: Chile’s DIA measures schools’ capacity to provide for students’ socioemotional needs (Weinstein & Bravo, 2023); the EU’s NESET developed a framework for socioemotional education recommending assessments of student learning (Cefai et al., 2018); the U.S.’s ESSA “school quality” indicators spark a potential shift toward evaluating care and equitable resource distribution (e.g. ISBE 5Essentials Survey). Such data use intends to challenge systems’ sole focus on achievement, which, on an individual level, shortchanges students’ holistic development (Datnow et al., 2022); on a societal level, scholars argue this focus diminishes trust and contributes to inequalities (Au, 2016; Ozga, 2013). Yet, even in systems pushing innovations in measuring climate and curriculum, metrics remain rooted in outcomes-based standardization (Author, 2023; Espeland & Stevens, 2008). Obscuring affective and structural dimensions of schooling, outcomes-based performance metrics assume communities have similar needs, interests, and resources — a myth eliding context-specific characteristics and historically-produced inequities (Espeland & Yung, 2019; Spade, 2015; Leonardo, 2007). The incommensurability of building school cultures of care and equity and collecting data about climate and curricula through performance metrics is troubling given that climate and curricula can themselves reproduce social norms and values (Keenan, 2017; Freire, 1970; Durkheim, 1956).

This paper argues that performance metrics — even those targeting non-academic purposes of schools — are ill-equipped to execute a new, important job: the deinstitutionalization of an exclusive focus on achievement and institutionalization of care and equity (Oliver, 1992). Accordingly, this paper imagines a path forward in school effectiveness and improvement by proposing a theory of “process metrics” — distinct from performance metrics — as a mechanism to disrupt the institutionalized relationship between status quo norms and values, administrative attention, and resource distribution. Integrating queer, critical, and institutional theories, I offer process metrics as “formalized system[s] of abstraction” that can be evaluated in terms of their quality and functionality in capturing both subjectivities and systems (Stinchcombe, 2001; Colyvas, 2012). Process metrics produce qualitative data (e.g. narratives) that reflect affect through evolving, student- & community-centered protocol (Vasudevan et al., 2022; Ghaziani & Brim, 2019; Tuck & Yang, 2013); they center relations over outcomes, assume relations are ever-changing, and are adaptable across organizations.

Upon developing process metrics, we should not expect them to stick. Innovation scholarship shows implementation is fraught, especially when challenging durable systems centered around dominant groups (Klein & Sorra, 1996). This paper shares principles for measuring care-based, equity-oriented, and youth-centered educational processes but also offers propositions for their institutionalization. It holds: institutionalizing process metrics (1) is a multi-level process; it does not happen only at individual schools but is embedded in educational systems’ infrastructure (Spillane et al., 2019); (2) is a process and outcome; it varies not only in its strength (reliability) but in its breadth, reach, and range (Anderson & Colyvas, forthcoming); (3) requires sustained collaboration through coupling, bundling, and nesting modes of reproduction (Anderson & Colyvas, 2021).

Problem: Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy, practice, and research all emphasise the importance of adult-child pedagogical interactions at home and in ECEC settings for children’s development. However, separate bodies of knowledge have emerged concerning these interactions at home and in ECEC settings. Ongoing development of inductive statistical methods offer a means of bridging these bodies of knowledge. These methods provide a practical and efficient means of understanding how interactions in both locations work together to shape development. Thus, the use of these methods has the potential to yield new ECEC insights, innovations, and practice.

Research question: In what ways can adult-child pedagogical interactions in the home and preschool combine to shape the development of preschoolers’ verbal reasoning?

Context: Advancement of contemporary knowledge that informs ECEC policy and practice.

Methods: Secondary statistical analysis of a nationally representative dataset using a contemporary inductive statistical method: Mixture Regression Modelling.

Data Sources/evidence: Data from the Effective Provision of Preschool Education (EPPE) study: 2,857 children and families using 141 ECEC settings across England from ages 3 (entry to preschool) to 4 years (exit from preschool).

Results: Four distinct groups were identified when considering the contextualised associations between adult-child pedagogical interactions at home and preschool and the development of verbal reasoning from 3 to 4 years of age.

Confirming previous EPPE research, adult-child pedagogical interactions in the home mattered for all – particularly how frequently a child was read to – and irrespective of a child’s verbal reasoning at 3 years or the development of this reasoning to age 4 years.

Extending the previous EPPE findings, the four groups also differed from each other in how verbal reasoning developed from 3-4 years and how this development was related to adult-child pedagogical interactions in homes and preschools. Three (inductive) findings stood out:

First, adult-child pedagogical interactions in ECEC settings were found to matter more when there were less frequent interactions in the home, and when interactions in preschool were higher in quality. This suggests possible preschool-origin boosts to equity in preschoolers’ development of verbal reasoning.

Second, that adult-child pedagogical interactions in preschool concerning ‘language reasoning’ and ‘science and the environment’ may have a prominent role in this equity boost.

Third, that family income was only weakly related to adult-child pedagogical interactions: Both richer and poorer families could experience more/less frequent pedagogical interactions in the home and higher/lower quality of pedagogical interactions in preschool. Thus the above equity effects matter for more children.

Educational importance of this research for theory, practice, and policy: Findings from EPPE have shaped ECEC policy, practice, and research for two decades. Therefore new EPPE findings matter -- especially because the EPPE data may be more comparable to conditions in England now versus 6-7 years ago. The ongoing development of inductive statistical methods aids the identification of conditions under which ECEC can facilitate equity in child development.

Connection to the conference theme: This paper illustrates how contemporary inductive statistical methods can help researchers: innovate in education, generate new insights/inquiries, and inform professional learning.

Critical thinking in education has been much discussed for its benefits in enhancing the quality of students learning and life opportunities (OECD, 2019). Critical thinking is essential in early childhood for many reasons; for one, the ability to think critically reduces the chance of children being guided by false or misinformed information. Although critical thinking is considered a core 21st competency that could be supported at all levels of education, there is the lack of research on critical thinking at a preschool level (O'Reilly et al., 2022). This paper aims to describe and present findings from a pedagogical intervention designed as part of a PhD project to nurture critical thinking in preschool children based on oral storytelling with dialogic inquiry. For this paper we will address two research questions: (1) what critical thinking skills are observed in preschool children? and (2) what conditions draw out critical thinking in preschool children? Seventeen preschool children and two preschool practitioners volunteered to participate in this study. From a sociocultural perspective, central to this research is the idea that children are capable, competent and willing to engage in critical discourse when provided with the right conditions to nurture this type of classroom interaction. The study was conducted as a design-based research intervention; this approach is interactive and participatory (Bakker, 2018). Research instruments include classroom observations, audio-video recording and textual data. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, which allows reflection on data in context (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Results indicate that oral storytelling combined with dialogic inquiry and educator scaffolding provides the conditions for preschool children to engage in critical thinking. The elements of critical identified include; communicating with clarity and accuracy, constructing ideas, inferring, reasoning, and problem solving. The research makes a significant contribution to early childhood research, policy, and practice as the first study in the Republic to identify specific elements of critical thinking in preschool children together with a teaching strategy to nurture these skills in the early years. The results generate future research in teacher education and continued professional development for teachers and school leaders to implement strategies to nurture critical thinking in preschools at a national level. In addition, findings call for further research to explore how policy and practice could work in partnership to improve young children's opportunities to engage in critical thinking in the classroom. Ethical permission was granted in December 2020 by the Trinity College Dublin research committee. This research was funded by the Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship GOIPG/2020/19.

It is widely accepted that all schools possess a particular duty of care towards their students. However, this duty of care falls unevenly across schools, with those serving working-class communities experiencing it most acutely within the wider context of structural social inequalities (Crean et al., 2023; Moss et al., 2020; Reay, 2022). Moreover, these care-related responsibilities experienced by such so-called disadvantaged schools coexist alongside an increasing emphasis on performance in standards-based assessments, arising from neoliberal reforms targeting the effectiveness of schools in education systems across the globe (Lynch, 2022; Devine & McGillicuddy, 2016; Noddings, 2005). Previous research has conceptualised these responsibilities as competing areas of interest for schools serving working-class communities, creating the impression of a binary opposition between the two (Jeffrey et al., 2013; Martin & Amin, 2020). Distinctions have also been drawn between different forms of caring in schools (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006; Valenzuela, 1999), ranging from those which centre on children’s academic learning to those more concerned with their well-being and welfare. Others recognise the need for schools to carry out a dual role and cater for both forms of caring (Crean et al., 2023; Devine & McGillicuddy, 2016), conceptualised by Antrop-González and De Jesús (2006) as ‘hard caring.’ In this paper, we further conceptualise the nature of care in disadvantaged schools, drawing on the broader literature base to propose a ‘nurturing pedagogies typology,’ a biaxial continuum along which some of the aforementioned conceptualisations of care can be situated. The vertical axis of the typology represents the degree to which schools emphasise academic outcomes in their enactment of care, while the horizontal axis reflects the extent of affective relationships between children and teachers. While we concur with critiques of an academically instrumentalist enactment of caring in schools (Dadvand & Cuervo, 2020), we argue that hard caring, characterised by high levels of caring in both the academic and affective domains, is necessary in order to enable children to flourish in schools. In addition, this paper presents findings from the Children’s School Lives study (www.cslstudy.ie), Ireland’s first national longitudinal study of primary schooling. We draw on qualitative accounts from children, their families, and school personnel to highlight the application of the typology in practice with respect to three DEIS Band 1 primary schools, the most severe categorisation of educational disadvantage in the Irish context. Our findings point to differences between schools in relation to the nurturing pedagogies typology, with factors including school leadership, culture, and mission being particularly influential during the period of Covid-19 school closures. Further, we present findings relating to children’s varying perspectives on caring across the three schools. Cumulatively, the conceptual framing and findings presented in this paper offer valuable implications for educational policy and practice, supporting the effectiveness of schools serving working-class communities in pursuit of social justice for the children under their care. Moreover, with this paper, we aspire to stimulate purposeful discussion around the recognition of nurturing pedagogies in initial teacher education and continuing professional development for teachers and school leaders.

Purpose – In an ever-changing and complex external environment, the importance for principals to be able to adapt and change while addressing challenges becomes critical. When these challenges arise as adaptive problems or challenges, leaders and their followers must use alternative approaches to problem-solving instead of known solutions to technical problems. The protracted nature of the COVID-19 pandemic over 2020–21 created a situation where principals in Victoria, Australia, had to rapidly engage in strengthening the internal integration of their schools while sustaining continuous strategic transformation facilitated by enhanced organisational agility. During the COVID-19 crisis in Victoria, Australia, the complexity of school leadership increased greatly for school principals. Emotionally intelligent leaders recognise, understand and respect their staff's needs, values and aspirations and build stronger, healthier, self-managed teams within their institutions. Principals with high levels of emotional intelligence create strong cooperative relationships and are effective in developing transformational change within their respective schools. Emotionally intelligent leaders understand their own emotions and that of others, enhancing their thinking processes and the effectiveness of their leadership practices. This study focused on the lived experiences of mid-career principals in the independent school sector from March to November 2020. It investigates these leaders’ transformative work in leading their schools over a protracted crisis.

Design/methodology/approach – The study builds on crisis leadership, adaptive leadership, agile leadership and emotional intelligence constructs, exploring the leadership approaches undertaken by twenty mid-career principals in Victoria, Australia. The main research question of this study is, “What kinds of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches were identified in mid-career school principals during the Covid-19 global pandemic?” Using a narrative inquiry approach, across three temporal points in 2020, storied productions drawn from the findings present four emergent types of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches undertaken by these principals. These leadership approaches are presented as the commander-leader, the conductor-leader, the gardener-leader and the engineer-leader, with each approach demonstrating both organisational leadership approaches as well as individual leadership styles used by these principals as they led their schools.

Evidence – The findings have direct implications for professional development programs focusing on continuing principals with emphasis on the importance of developing and sustaining emotionally intelligent skillsets in principals for use during periods of rapid change or high crisis in schools.

Educational Importance – These findings provide insights into the kinds of emotionally intelligent leadership approaches used by mid-career school principals with implications for making use of these findings in developing elements of emotion training in teacher and principal preparation and professional development programs. The findings present insight into the support useful for mid-career principals who have completed more than five years of principalship.

Perspectives – The invisible labour of school leadership must be recognised, and existing policies and systems strengthened to help mid-career leaders during a crisis and post-crisis as they lead their schools during adaptive and agile times because the leadership styles required across each of these periods of change are different.

Connections to conference theme – This study uses a unique emotional intelligence approach to understand school leadership during and after a crisis.

Purpose – Over the three-year period of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a severe impact on global efforts to ensure all children receive a quality education. Pakistan is no exception. School closures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have directly impacted an estimated 40 million school-going learners from pre-primary to higher-secondary levels in Pakistan, where school enrolment, completion and quality of learning are already low, especially for girls. As stated in the ASER 2021 (ASER, 2021) report, “School closures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have directly impacted an estimated 40 million school-going learners from pre-primary to higher secondary levels, in a context where school enrolment, completion and quality of learning are already low, especially for girls” (p.6). Girls experienced greater learning losses than boys during the school closures. This served to halt or even reverse an increasing trend in learning outcomes for girls who had, in some cases, outdid boys. On average, about 60 per cent of children enrolled in schools spent less than an hour a day on their studies during school closures.

Research question – What has been the impact of COVID-19 Learning Loss across the Pakistani Catholic School Sector?

Context - This study aims to collect baseline data on seven Catholic diocesean schools in Pakistan as it interrogates the extent to which the pandemic has influenced this sector in both urban and rural settings. This study will select Catholic schools in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pukthunwa in its sampling. There are currently 244 schools in Pakistan across the seven dioceses with 95304 students enrolled, of which 56,557 are male students, and 38747 are female students.

Approach to inquiry – It is envisaged that using an online survey tool will assist the researchers in gauging the extent to which learning deficits and challenges are currently being faced within these schools in 2023, after having been three years through the pandemic. The survey tool will also identify viable school strategies that were used to address these challenges. This survey tool will be administered over August and September 2023 to a stratified sample of school leaders, teachers and administrative staff in this school sector.

Evidence – The baseline data collected through this study will contribute towards laying the groundwork towards establishing communities of practice across the seven dioceses. Initially, in 2023 focus will be on developing leadership capacity across the diocesan schools. From 2024 onwards, targeting the development of teacher pedagogy in Mathematics and English and/or Urdu will be made. These communities of practice will develop teaching and learning resources together within each diocese to assist with addressing the learning deficits of their students identified through the baseline data collected through this study.

Educational importance – Through the findings of this study, more targeted work for school improvement will be developed at the diocesan level, school level, subject level and individual student level.

Connection to the conference theme – The study will contribute to the ongoing system and school implications arising from the COVID-19 crisis in education within the Pakistani Catholic school sector.

Purpose: This proposed paper describes a prevention model for reducing school employee sexual misconduct and the evaluation data on the effectiveness of the model. The model was built from the results of study 1 and tested using the results of study 2. Sexual misconduct may be physical, verbal and/or visual behaviors (including technology assisted) directed toward a student. In the United States, two 2023 studies found between 11.7 and 17.4% of current students have experienced at least one incident of sexual misconduct by a school employee; that’s 6.4 to 9.4 Million students.

Research Questions. (1) Under what school conditions does school employee sexual misconduct occur? (2) Do these conditions offer suggestions for prevention? (3) Is the prevention model effective?

Methods: This paper is a report of two studies conducted by the author.

Study 1. The model of prevention described in this paper is based upon a set of data that allows an internal examination of cases of sexual abuse of students by employees Having served as an expert witness in nearly 200 cases of school employee sexual abuse over a twenty year period, I have had access to school policies, police reports, depositions of school administrators, parents, targets/victims, teachers, and abusers. For each case, I analyzed policies in place and how they were followed; documented hiring practices as well as firing practices; viewed and critiqued training; documented response to red flags of boundary crossing and sexual misconduct by school employees; and coded levels of supervision on a scale from none to appropriate. I was able to hear, in the voices of the offender, the victim/target, other school employees, other students, and administrators what happened and how it happened. I have permission from plaintiff attorneys and IRB approval for this completed study.

Study 2: Funded by the CDC, a study of 10 school districts including 50 schools and 2,500 employees that collected data pre-post the intervention of training, policy review, internal communications, hiring practices, and supervision. Pre-post surveys included a scale on appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as scales on self-efficacy, normative beliefs, and intentions to report.

Evidence/data sources. Results from study 1 informed the model of prevention which includes: school policies directing appropriate behavior between adults and students and consequences for not conforming to expected behavior; training on boundary crossing, red flags, and reporting; supervision and monitoring; preventative hiring and preventative firing; and internal communication, both vertical and horizontal.

Results from study 2 indicate that the more components of the prevention model that are in place, the fewer the reported instances of boundary crossing with students occur. In schools and districts where all staff received training, employee respondents decreased reported boundary crossing, strengthened attitudes toward prevention, indicated stronger self-efficacy to report as well as intentions to report and actual reporting.

Connection to Conference Theme: School effectiveness and improvement cannot occur in an unsafe environment. This presentation targets the obligation of schools to provide safe learning environments.

Based upon competency models of school leadership and improvement in Canada and Australia, the Diocese of Down and Connor (Northern Ireland) designed a Self-Reflective Framework to enhance the ethos and mission of faith-based schools.

Since its implementation in 2014, this Self-Reflective Framework seeks to engage school Principals and practitioners in assessing and developing their own school in embedding the following areas:

(i) School Mission

(ii) Religious Education

(iii) Catholic Leadership

(iv) Learning and Teaching

(v) Inclusion and Diversity

(vi) Social Justice and Respect for the Environment

(vii) Partnership and Community Outreach

This paper examines the effectiveness of this self-reflective framework in taking forward school development in faith-based schools.

It begins with an examination of the competency models of leadership and development that provided the foundations for the development of the Self-Reflective Framework. Particular attention is given to how this process of self-reflection compares and contrasts with earlier inspectorial models of school development in faith-based schools.

The paper continues by outlining the structures of accountability within the self-reflective framework and considers how this relational approach provides new opportunities for engagement with schools as they take personal ownership of self-identified areas for development.

This research draws upon qualitative data gathered from questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with practitioners in schools, school boards of management, educational trustees and diocesan support services to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of this new model of school improvement.

The research demonstrates how this Self-Reflective Framework not only provides a particularly useful model in taking forward school improvement and its implications for existent support structures for faith-based schools and institutions. The research also demonstrates how this self-reflective and relational approach towards staff development provides a viable and more effective alternative to inspectorial models that facilitates collaborative styles of leadership.

Objectives

Literacy coaches play leadership roles through managing literacy programs, organizing professional development activities, and helping school leaders (Ferguson, 2013). In the Chinese context, literacy coaches are called jiaoyanyuan and are considered as teacher mentors and teacher researchers (Zhang & Yuan, 2019). Diener (2009) believed that it is essential to learn about people’s work-related well-being, however, there has been a lack of research about literacy coaches’ well-being. This gap is significant because literacy coaches can contribute to teaching and school improvement significantly. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the well-being of literacy coaches in the Chinese school context.

Research questions

The main research questions of this research are:

How do Chinese literacy coaches perceive their own well-being?

What are the factors affecting these literacy coaches’ well-being?

How do Chinese literacy coaches deal with challenges to their well-being in different career stages?

Theoretical framework

Well-being has been studied through a combination of subjective theories and objective theories, which have suggested that individuals’ well-being is the objective part of subjective life experiences. In the six-factor model of psychological well-being proposed by Ryff (1989), individuals’ well-being is measured by grades in six aspects, including “autonomy,” “environmental mastery,” “personal growth,” “positive relations with others,” “purpose in life,” and “self-acceptance” (Ryff & Singer, 2006). Literacy coaches’ well-being is influenced by many internal factors like their attitude toward their job and external factors like school culture. Literacy coaches’ subjective well-being may be influenced by their goals in their jobs. The six-factor model of psychological well-being is a great model for uncovering the subjective and objective factors that may influence individuals’ well-being. This study will also take account of career stage using the four career stages scholars have outlined: exploration phase, establishment phase, maintenance phase, and disengagement phase (Savickas, 2002).

Methods and data sources

Semi-structured interviews were used to answer the research questions. Eight well-experienced literacy coaches were selected through the snowball method. Each interview lasted for 45–90 minutes. Comparative analysis was used to conduct the data analysis.

Findings

According to the data analysis, literacy coaches have three career stages including the exploration phase, establishment phase, and maintenance phase. In these three stages, happiness is the main factor that affects teacher professional development and school improvement. Working pressure, income, and social relationships were identified as the three main factors that affect the literacy coaches’ well-being. This study also identified the strategies literacy coaches use to deal with challenges to their well-being such as exercising and talking with peers.

Significance

This research may contribute to knowledge about teacher leaders’ professional growth in the workplace. In addition, studies about literacy coaches’ well-being may provide implications for district leaders, policymakers, principals, and teachers by pointing out how to effectively collaborate with literacy coaches. Moreover, research about literacy coaches’ well-being is beneficial for school improvement.

Connection to the conference theme

Through this exploration, evidence can be offered to schools and education bureaus to help literacy coaches’ have a better emotional state, which will benefit school effectiveness and improvement.

Background and Framework

Women have populated the majority of the educational workforce, yet men have assumed a disproportional amount educational leadership roles (Bailes & Guthery, 2020; Tallerico & Blount, 2004; White, 2023). Women working as educational leaders are not only under-represented, but also earn lower salaries than their male counterparts (Grissom et al., 2021; Loder, 2005; Pounder, 1988; Sanchez & Thornton, 2010). To help eliminate gender employment and salary gaps, research needs to identify factors that may be contributing to these disproportionalities.

Purpose and Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to examine individual-, school-, and district-level factors that may be related to the salaries of principals. Specific research questions examined if factors at all examined levels contributed to principal salary and the gap between men and women school leaders.

Methods and Data Sources

The data analyzed in this paper come from one state in the United States. We analyzed datasets published by the Pennsylvania Department of Education for the year 2021-2022 which included demographic and salary information for individuals identified as principals. In our hierarchical regression models, we included annual salary as the outcome variable. The first model included only individual characteristics. The second model added school-level characteristics and the third model added district-level characteristics. The final sample included only principals leading schools identified as traditional public schools.

Results

Women accounted for 42% of the sampled principals. Among the 1,112 principals who identified as female, 70% worked at the primary level. In contrast, 47% of the 1,518 principals who identified as male worked at the primary level. Approximately 14% of both women and men principals held a doctoral degree. However, women principals averaged more years of experience than their male counterparts, as well as held posts in schools with fewer students.

The results of the hierarchical regression models returned several significant and meaningful results. First, the results indicated that male principals were consistently and significantly paid more than their female counterparts. After including school and district characteristics, the gender discrepancy in principal salary increased to an average pay differential of $3,121 (p < .01). Second, results indicated a positive association between school enrollment and salary, $10.53 (p < .01). With women principals leading schools with approximately 100 fewer students than men, women would average an additional $990 less than their male counterparts. Third, the number of women principals employed by an LEA has a negative association of $931.00 (p < .01) on the average annual salary of their colleagues.

Educational Importance and Conference Theme Connection

Based on these results, educational governing bodies should advocate for more equitable hiring and compensation practices. Such practices might include more formal training on how to select school leaders, as well as increased public data reporting and monitoring. This study connects with the conference theme of ensuring quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement. The underrepresentation of female principals, as well as the pay gap, artificially limits the size and quality of the effective principal labor pool.

Introduction

This paper reports on the ways in which teaching principals in rural schools in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, Canada enact instructional leadership within the five leadership domains conceptualized by Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe (2008). Although participants suggested that they were “not where they wanted to be” in their efforts to enact instructional leadership, their actions demonstrate exemplary practice in this regard. The primary research question that guided this study was “In what ways do the dual roles of teaching principals (administration and teaching) impact the way in which teaching principals conceptualize and enact instructional leadership?” Further, we were interested in the ways that remaining engaged in teaching duties informed principals understanding of instructional leadership and in their sense of self efficacy as instructional leaders.

Methodology

This phase of our study employed the qualitative approach (Merriam, 2009) of interpretive description. We conducted school observational visits and face-to- face semi-structured interviews with 10 principals from rural schools in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Participants worked in school configurations that included elementary/middle schools, high schools, and K-12 composite schools. Enrollments ranged between 40-170 students, staffed by 4.75-9 full time teaching equivalents and 1-4 full- time support staff equivalents. The only selection criterion for participants was that the principal must have at least 20% of his/her work assignment as a teaching assignment. The respondents held teaching responsibilities between 20%-70% of their full-time load. Seven of the 10 participants were in their first three years of the role. Interviews lasted between 60 to 90 minutes, were digitally audio-recorded, and then transcribed. The transcripts of the interviews were coded for themes and categorized for conceptual patterns (Stake, 2000) related to the five leadership practice dimensions of instructional leadership (Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008).

Findings

The findings of the study are organized around teaching principals’ senses of guilt in not achieving their vision of being an instructional leader, as well as evidence in their actions of the five leadership practice dimensions: establishing goals and expectations; planning, coordinating, and evaluating teaching and the curriculum; promoting and participating in teacher learning and development; resourcing strategically; and, ensuring an orderly and supportive environment. The teaching principals in our study are highly cognizant of, and focus their efforts on, building relational trust with staff, parents, and students in their local rural communities, and they integrate their leadership knowledge to solve the complex problems found in these schools. Teaching principals have integrated these leadership capabilities in their enactment of instructional leadership in a plethora of ways—they simply have not been recognizing it as such. School districts and teachers’ associations must change the nature of the discourse around instructional leadership so that teaching principals do not measure their efficacy as instructional leaders based only on their ability to visit classrooms. The constitution of the role of the teaching principalship must be reconceptualized to make recommendations on optimal parameters within which instructional leadership expectations are realistically manageable.