Conference Agenda

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.

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:

Data is the lens through which we increasingly view our world. Yet, understanding how to engage with data can be challenging. There is a need to provide students with authentic experiences to investigate their own science questions using a variety of datasets (NASEM, 2016, p. 2). Researchers in Puerto Rico have been developing a professional learning network of teachers, scientists, and learning scientists to support teachers in implementing the Data Jam model (Bestelmeyer et al., 2015) in which students use long-term ecological data about the El Yunque national forest in Puerto Rico to develop their own investigations and use data as evidence for a scientific argument. The objective of this session is to introduce participants to the outcomes of the professional learning network and engage the participants in a sample professional learning network activity centered around a data-based investigation of an environmental phenomenon in Puerto Rico.

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

The guiding theory for our work engaging students in authentic scientific practice is legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Lave and Wenger define all learning as movement from the periphery of a community to centrality within the community. Their framework reveals several key characteristics engaging students in communities of practice in formal education settings: (a) engaging students in scientific practices, (b) using scientific tools, (c) learning the language of science though building social bonds with other members of the community, (d) developing learning sequences in which students learn scientific practices in the opposite order than how they are completed in practice, and (e) supporting development of scientific identity.

Teaching is a profession where teachers are isolated from the communities that they are teaching about. This work extends the notions of professional learning networks to include not only a peer network but also practicing scientists and learning scientists. To support teachers in shifting their practice towards authentic scientific practice, we first engaged teachers in authentic scientific practices through professional development and then embedded teachers within a professional learning network with other teachers, practicing scientists and learning scientists. As teachers implement Data Jam in their classroom, they bring samples of students’ ongoing work and data analyses to monthly Virtual Lab Meetings to discuss issues related to their teaching practice and students’ scientific investigations. Through structured protocols, teachers receive input from their peers, scientists, and educational researchers. Our findings reveal that exposure to authentic practices through student investigations and interactions with scientists develops teachers' scientific identity and capacity to support student investigations.

The format and approach(es)

We will provide a short presentation on the theoretical background, Data Jam model, and teacher outcomes. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in a simulated virtual lab meeting with student artifacts to gain experience with the professional learning network model to support legitimate peripheral participation.

Connection to the conference theme

This presentation fits within the Professional Learning Networks Network and addresses the overall conference theme of providing a model of professional education to support school improvement in data science.

The Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education (NOIIE) started in 2000 as a school-to-school network in British Columbia focused on changing the outcomes of learners through formative assessment. Twenty-three years later, our focus has expanded to changing the experiences for all learners by using a shared framework, the Spiral of Inquiry. Central to this work is our shared commitment to equity, quality and social justice that is reflected in one of our three main goals: Every learner will cross the stage with dignity, purpose and options.

The Network has grown to include schools in several international jurisdictions. Our joint mission is closely connected to the Congress theme of quality professional education for enhanced school effectiveness and improvement and, in particular, to the sub theme of leading improvement collaboratively and sustainably.

Increasingly we are witnessing a phenomenon across the networks that we describe as catalytic affiliation. Catalytic affiliation is a conceptual idea that can unpack the complexity of relational ties that thrive in inquiry networks. It also helps explore how social practices such as kindredness, authenticity, relational agency and reciprocal aligned beliefs work in tandem to deepen and accelerate systemwide improvement and innovation. Catalytic affiliation is more than a practice of individual leaders; it is a characteristic of networked learning spaces deeply anchored in shared repertories of learning, action and commitment, attracting and broadening professional engagement.

The purpose of this innovate session is to illustrate the ways in which the phenomenon of catalytic affiliation is evident in the experience of network leaders through imagery and metaphor. In the process, we invite others to explore the concept of catalytic affiliation and the implications that this has for high quality professional learning in very different policy environments

We live in a time of rapid and complex social, economic and political change. Compounding challenges such as technological advances, population growth and sustainability require new ways of thinking and working. Many students will go on to work in jobs that don’t yet exist. Creativity, communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and teamwork are already recognised as key attributes. There is a disconnect between the current educational experience for many students and what they need to thrive in this increasingly uncertain world. What and how student learn needs to be re-designed in many instances.

Quality professional education must support Educators to not just react to these fundamental challenges, but to reimagine and lead change. Teachers and school leaders need their own creative mindset so they can improve teaching & learning to support students to capitalise on the opportunities in life now and in the future. To achieve this, there needs to be a mechanism for supportive, high-quality professional education that does not just reinforce the status quo but challenges Educators to think differently about what, how and why we educate young people today.

The UCD Innovation Academy has ten years experience in delivering a Professional Certificate & Diploma in Creativity & Innovation in Education. This programme invites Educators to revisit and reimagine their education practice in an immersive, experiential environment. Specifically, they have the opportunity to develop their creative mindset, explore new approaches to teaching & learning and develop their leadership capacity for effecting change.

This programme is based on robust evidence of what makes effective professional learning for Educators. Active learning underpins the design of the programme. Educators are engaged in the same style of learning promoted for students, often going through their own transformation with regards to how they view themselves as both learner and teacher. Collaboration and community of practice is at the heart of the programme, with time to share and learn together, as well as individual reflection built in. The programme culminates in an Action Learning Project whereby Educators are supported with mentoring and coaching to contextualise and embed the learning for their setting.

This Innovate session will be a hands-on workshop. Attendees will participate in a 30 minute creativity sprint which will demonstrate some of the active-learning methodologies that we use in the Professional Certificate & Diploma in Creativity & Innovation for Educators course. Attendees will engage in creative collaboration, explore their own creative mindset and experience first-hand a range of teaching techniques that develop student attributes such as communication and critical thinking.

The significance of this course from the UCD Innovation Academy should not be underestimated. Retaining high-quality educators, who are committed to and have the capacity to lead change is essential. Educators who have completed the programme often remark that it has reignited their passion for the job, they have reconnected to their moral purpose and are now more confident in their ability to lead school improvement. Professional education is not just for the minds, it must also be for the heart.

This Innovate Presentation will examine the development of a school improvement framework for a network of 12 non-government schools in Australia. The complexity of this network is evident in that the schools operate in six different jurisdictions each with their unique regulatory and governance parameters. Central to the development of the framework is a broad understanding of governance consistent with words like networks, rules, power, authority, and its value as a central organising framework (Bevir, 2009; Stoker, 1998; Watterston & Caldwell, 2011).

In just three years the commitment and energy of visionary executive leadership and principals has enabled the enhancement of the capacity of school principals in developing whole system school alignment. The introduction of the resource, “School Improvement – A Learning Conversation”, has animated principals and executive leaders to consider how to link strategic intent to ensure improved learning outcomes for students. This process has been supported using the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER) School Improvement Tool (2023) which describes the practices of highly effective schools and school leaders.

As the recently appointed Director of School Improvement for Marist Schools Australia (MSA), I have been charged with developing the initial strategic thinking of school principals and executive leadership for the implementation of new school improvement framework. The presentation will highlight the growing efficacy of school principals in the co-construction of a school improvement framework. This includes the development of metrics to judge the nature and efficacy of pedagogy, integrated reporting of specific data, its impact on leadership, strategic directions, decision making, and student feedback to enhance learning outcomes. Critical to success will be the efficacy and ultimately aligned professional learning for leaders and teachers to that end.

Two key questions have guided the meta-strategic processes used to develop whole school improvement and alignment:

How do we create an ongoing school improvement framework that celebrates and demonstrates the effectiveness of a school’s long term strategic growth in learning?; and

How can a school improvement framework and process be distributed, accessible, meaningful, and owned by all stakeholders?

This session will invite participants to engage in conversation in response to these questions. It is anticipated that participants will reflect on their own approach to school improvement to provide insight and further exploration of practice and policy in this critical area of leadership.

Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE) is a large, multi-school system responsible for the education of 78000 primary and secondary school students in Australia that was faced with underperforming National Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Program (NAPLAN) data among its students. Determined to make a positive impact on learning and teaching outcomes, BCE initiated a system-wide review of each of its 146 schools using the National School Improvement Tool developed by the Australian Council of Educational Research (ACER).

This momentous decision was a catalyst for change. BCE underwent structural transformation, establishing a School Improvement unit and reorganizing its Learning Services directorate for targeted school support. Each school was coached in the development of its own Explicit Improvement Agenda, drawing on insights and guidance from the National School Improvement Tool.

The journey was far from easy, but BCE persevered. Over the past three years, BCE has experienced tensions, discoveries, and necessary pivots. The presentation will provide an honest account of the highs and lows of this period of change, with insights that will be relevant to school leaders and policymakers around the world.

In recent years, BCE has transitioned from intervention to inquiry. The focus has shifted towards equipping schools with the tools to own their improvement agenda to lift system performance. This recent phase has witnessed a maturation in BCE's approach, fostering agency among principals and school leadership teams. Lessons have been learned about authentic collaborative work between BCE and its schools and the importance of peer accountability to enhance professional practice.

A key outcome of this improvement agenda focus has been the imperative of cultivating partnerships in the design of learning and teaching methodologies. These understandings have informed BCE's next steps, which look to the future with renewed purpose in delivering high performance across the system to maximize student achievement.

This presentation will be of interest to anyone who is passionate about improving student achievement. It will provide insights into the challenges and opportunities of system-wide change, and the importance of building leadership and teacher capability to drive improvement.

Objectives or purposes of the session:

We will present a program for leadership training for leaders and leadership groups. The purpose of this session is to challenge how educational leadership programs usually are conducted and to engage the participants in the session, helping us with coherent thinking, active support, feedback, and involvement to innovate future prototypes on leadership training.

Educational importance:

Educational research tells us that educational leadership is important to increase the students’ learning, and recent findings shows that there is a need of more practical training on leadership skills to accomplish this.

The format:

We will facilitate a process where the participants contribute by exploring what we have done so far, and what we should further address. Municipality leaders will present their use of this collective leadership development that have included their school leaders who have taken part in this development. School leaders will present their use of the program and we will present the objectives and goal for the program.

Our submission is connected the conference sub-theme “Policy and practice learning to support teacher and school leader development”. We will present our work through an involving method as an innovate session. The network this session will connect with is Educational Leadership Network.

Part 1: Practical, International Leadership Development (PILD)

The purpose of PILD is to develop leadership that provides leaders with efficacy and skills to achieve more equity and inclusiveness in their education systems. We do this to develop personal and professional competences in the leadership role. Together with the researchers we provide practical exercises to develop leadership skills on different theme. The participants get access to direct dialogue and sparring with the researchers regarding the municipality's/county municipality's, early childhood centers or schools’ challenges and initiatives.

Part 2: How municipality leaders use the program to develop collective leadership

In this part of the session municipality leaders/district leaders, will present how they have worked with the school leaders within their municipality to improve their leadership skills, both individually and as a group. The municipality leaders will demonstrate how they have been on a personal and professional journey exploring new ways of conducting their leadership, and how they have worked on developing the professional learning communities for their school leaders.

Part 3: How school leaders use the program to develop schools

In this section, school leaders will present how they have used their expertise to lead their own schools’ development. During the session they will demonstrate some of the tools they have used in their schools and present the way they have seen change among their teachers and discuss the next step for their development.

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

During the innovate session we will engage the audience in various activities to demonstrate and to explore new ways of developing leadership training in education.

Currently, within the education system in Wales, professional learning and system leadership remain at the epicentre of contemporary education policy. This paper builds on an initial, conceptual paper, presented at ICSEI 2020, to outline the inception, development and implementation of the National MA Education (Wales) that has been co-constructed and co-delivered by seven Welsh Universities working in partnership. The main intention of the paper is to outline the way in which the National MA Education (Wales) is internationally ground-breaking in design and delivery through offering accredited professional learning at scale. The National MA Wales is a new system-wide, post-graduate qualification that is intellectually rigorous but also close to practice with the core intention of building professional capacity and capital throughout the system. The paper will highlight how the National MA Education (Wales) is of international importance in its design, delivery, and impact. The paper will highlight how the National MA Education (Wales) has positively redefined and reshaped the accredited professional learning offer in Wales. The implications for research, practice and policy will be considered along with a commentary and analysis of professional learning at scale.

This paper explores a phenomenon we have traced in our research with educational professionals involved in inquiry in professional learning networks. Described as 'catalytic affiliation' we identified features of network and leader practices that enabled an acceleration of commitment to inquiry-based professional learning and a growth in network participation. We see this work as primarily relational - as Daly and Stoll (2017) have argued, relational links through which change moves are understudied and require a deeper exploration of the quality of networked, relational ties.

This paper is based on a multi year study of the connections amongst educators involved in the Canadian based Networks of Inquiry and Indigenous Education. (https://noiie.ca/ ) This voluntary professional inquiry network has been functioning since 1999 and now includes schools in several international jurisdictions. The main goals of NOIIE are linked closely to the conference themes of equity, inclusion, diversity, social justice and sustainability. Because many of the 60 BC based network leaders are graduates of the Transformative Educational Leadership Program at UBC https://telp.educ.ubc.ca/, NOIIE also serves a function in sustained leadership development and capacity building.

We believe that catalytic affiliation is a conceptual idea that can unpack the complexity of relational ties that thrive in inquiry networks such as NOIIE. It also can help us explore how social practices such as kindredness, authenticity, relational agency and reciprocal aligned beliefs work in tandem to deepen and accelerate systemwide innovation.

Our investigation illuminates how catalytic affiliation is more than a practice of individual leaders but is a characteristic of networked learning spaces deeply anchored in shared repertoires of learning, action and commitment - attracting and broadening professional engagement. Catalytic affiliation is operationalized through enabling structures, symbols, social and cultural tools and practices that curate connections. It is a function of right relations, creating shared relational spaces through which to collaboratively and inclusively build common horizons of purpose. These ideas are developed more fulsomely in the paper that follows.

This paper aims to gain insights into the development of collaboration in school environments and asks which types of collaboration, collaborating stakeholders and effects of collaboration can be identified. From an organisational-psychological perspective collaboration is defined as “…goals or tasks to be achieved together. It is intentional, communicative, and requires trust. It presupposes a certain autonomy and is committed to the norm of reciprocity" (Spieß, 2004, p. 199). The greater independence of schools and shared goals of school development intensifies relationships not only outside, but also within the institution. It is essential for stakeholders to develop and improve collaboration to ensure sustainable school development. Management, as well as the teaching staff and the students, represent the school and thus help to strengthen the school's prestige, competitiveness and learning outcome. Promoting collaboration among the staff and the students is crucial. Previous research has shown that collaboration in schools enhances school development and learning outcomes (Huber, 2012).

While multiple studies already exist, this paper offers an in-depth qualitative approach through a large-scale longitudinal study at schools in challenging circumstances. Due to their location and the composition of their student body, these schools are exposed to difficult conditions and are particularly challenged. In example, schools in challenging circumstances have a high percentage of students from non-privileged family situations (measured in terms of the educational and financial circumstances of the parents). These poorer socio-economic circumstances are often associated with special compensatory services provided by the school to cope with low graduation rates, poorer learning outcomes and dysfunctional characteristics (Holtappels et al., 2017).

Central research questions:

1. What types of collaboration can be identified throughout the environment of schools in challenging circumstances and which stakeholders are involved?

2. How does collaboration develop between stakeholders inside the school and out-of-school contexts?

3. What effects are achieved through identified forms of collaboration?

Methodology and Method

The qualitative longitudinal study examines the development of collaboration in the context of school environments in Germany (75 Schools). A biannual collection of semi-structured interviews with principals, teachers, pedagogical staff, parents and students addresses the above-mentioned research questions through the analysis of individual cases and cross-case comparison. The schools were chosen based on their status as schools in challenging circumstances. Over a multiple-year period (since 2016) a total amount of 659 interviews have been collected. Currently, the presented research project is at an early stage of qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiger 2019). Therefore, this paper focuses on three “most diverse” cases/schools (approx. 45 interviews) which have been chosen based on the results of a quantitative co-study with the same timeframe and cohort groups.

Conclusion

Due to the early stage of the project, first, a theoretical framework will be presented that links cooperation with possible effects and school development. Second, the collaboration stakeholders in the context of school environments will be outlined. In addition, collaborators outside of the school environment will be investigated. Third, a first typification of different forms of collaboration in school environments between stakeholders will be reconstructed and discussed.

Objectives

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are emerging globally to address the disconnect between research and practice in education. RPPs “connect diverse forms of expertise and shift power relations in the research endeavor to ensure that all partners have a say” (Farrell et al., 2021, p. iv). Since RPPs aim to flatten hierarchies between researchers and practitioners, we examine discourse patterns for evidence. By conducting an international cross-cultural comparison of RPP meetings in the US and Switzerland, we ask: What do discourse patterns in RPPs reveal about issues of power between researchers and practitioners? What differences are observed in RPPs across contexts? How do meeting artifacts shape power and discourse features?

Framework

We use a practice theoretical approach where “bundles of practices and arrangements are the central unit of conceptuality and analysis of social life and social phenomena” (Schatzki, 2019, p. 27). Discourse is one observational category of practice (Reckwitz, 2016) which can illuminate power dynamics within a context. Ultimately, power and status differences influence all types of collaborations (Yamashiro et al., 2022; Eshchar-Netz et al., 2022). Research has documented power asymmetries between researchers and practitioners in RPPs (Klein, 2023; Vetter et al., 2022). Examining discourse within RPPs can illuminate how communication is distributed and roles are negotiated (Farrell et al., 2023). Artifacts used in RPPs, such as shared documents, can be explored as boundary objects that redistribute power and raise productive tensions in discourse (Tabak, 2022; Wegemer & Renick, 2021).

Methods

Sixteen Meetings from US and Swiss RPPs were videotaped and coded using MAXQDA software. Each RPP involved researchers and school practitioners, a focus on improving instruction, and participant involvement in defining the work. We analyzed discourse in RPP meetings coding whether it was generative, non-generative, or structuring (e.g., opening a meeting) (Lefstein et al., 2020). We also coded data to determine who has a voice and who contributes generative dialogue, considering relational power and identity. While there are different ways to operationalize power differences, we focus on the share and type of discourse of groups of participants.

Results

Meetings in both RPPs were rich in generative utterances (47.4% in US RPP; 44.6% in Swiss RPP) in which participants engaged in collaborative problem solving. Despite efforts to give more voice to practitioners, researchers spoke 60% of the time in the US case and 78% in the Swiss case, reflecting their proportion in the group. While researchers spoke more in meetings, practitioners were responsible for their representative share or more of the generative discourse (58% of generative utterances in US RPP; 24% in Swiss RPP). RPP agreements also defined meeting situations and the use of artifacts (e.g,, Google docs) engaged more practitioner voice, but did not necessarily shift power. The positional authority and identity of participants also influenced power dynamics, beyond researcher-practitioner distinctions.

ICSEI Connection

This paper is relevant to the ICSEI theme of “quality professional development” as RPPs are intended to promote capacity building. The call for proposals also notes the influence of partnerships globally (e.g., RPPs).

Learning Objectives:

After participating in this session, attendees will be able to…

• Transfer and apply the Model of Professional Relationship and Professional Learning to their own school context and staff culture.

• Plan and prepare for structured, solution focused professional conversations between school leaders, special education teachers and general education teachers.

• Prioritize actions to support positive professional relationship among co-teachers, whilst also identifying professional learning opportunities.

Workshop Overview - Educational Importance and Approaches

The provision of Special Education Teachers (SET) in Ireland has recently undergone monumental change with government guidelines promoting a predominately co-teaching approach and no longer emphasising the withdrawal of students by SET (Department of Education, 2022). This model, although used sporadically across schools, has been met with some resistance, misunderstandings and without adequate professional development. School leaders noted tensions amongst SETs and general education teachers (MacConduibh, 2019).

This session will look at the Model of Professional Relationship and Professional Development (Uí Chonduibh, 2018) developed during a Collaborative Action Research (CAR) doctoral project. This research was conducted in a wide range of Catholic schools; Irish medium, disadvantaged, urban, rural, and special schools. CAR engaged the participants in co-teaching lessons and professional development meetings across school settings. The research identified opportunities for professional learning and shared professional responsibility between teachers and school leaders. Collaborative practices were developed and fostered in-school and across school settings which impacted on participants’ professional learning and teacher self-efficacy. Findings suggest that tensions which teachers face in professional relationships were dealt with during scaffolded reflections. Sharing of professional responsibility and professional conversations, whilst still fostering needs of teacher education during co-teaching, also added to the continuing professional learning of all staff. A central innovation of the research was an exploration of solution-focused coaching strategies for the development of professional relationships in school.

This workshop explores and examines models of co-teaching (team teaching) and how they are or might be put into action. It also focuses on how co-teaching, as a central method for in class support teaching, can benefit and develop professional relationships while also creating a platform for continuous professional development. The workshop will examine Collaborative Action Research as a tool to structure and schedule planning, implementation and review of in class intervention and support programmes. How to engage in collaborative reflective practices and professional dialogues will be addressed. The workshop explores practical ways to foster and utilise co-teaching in class to benefit both student and teacher learning. The workshop will allow for the opportunity to share and receive ideas for best practice, it will create a space to think of co-teaching and Collaborative Action Research and their impact on school effectiveness and improvement.

Evaluative Thinking and Teaching (Hattie, 2023: Teaching with Intent) provide a well-researched framework for data-based processes for the schoolwide enhancement of teaching and learning. The Steev-Approach (Simultaneous Teaching and Enquiry that is Effective and Visible) translates this framework into a feasible 5-step process which allows teachers to optimize their teaching, and thus strengthen student learning and progress. Application of the Steev-approach leads to an amplification of teacher professionalization as teachers reflect - in practice - on practice while connecting to and considering scientific evidence. Collective teacher efficacy is fostered as teachers collaborate more intensively and make educational success schoolwide visible.

The latest developments of the approach include a practice-theory hub which allows users to access both sources of expertise directly, efficiently and effectively. Basis is a ten-year collaboration process between researchers / higher education specialists of the teacher college and more than 1.000 teachers from more than 100 schools. Core products are 36 published “tried-and-tested examples” of teacher implementations of the Steev-approach in their classrooms. These project-reports are mostly product of continuing professional development / in-service training. In these short reports, the researchers have worked out which of the 357 influences on school learning currently prepared by John Hattie are activated. For a selection of 35 of these influences, a matrix shows in which examples they are used or activated. (300 connections).

This combination of experiential and research-generated evidence aims to contribute to bridging the often-lamented gap between pedagogical theory and practice. It provides suggestions for both initial teacher education and continuing professional development: How can research- and practice-generated evidence reinforce each other and deepen professional learning?

The presentation offers an introduction to the 5-steps of the Steev-approach. It is put up for discussion together with the newly added practice-theory hub. Participants are invited to examine Steev’s potential for initial teacher education, continuing professional development, school effectiveness and improvement within their own educational contexts. The benefits for student learning, teacher and school development will be explored.

Format of the innovate presentation: short presentation of the Steeve-approach and implementation process, supported by concrete examples. Supplementary materials will be made available on an interactive board (Padlet) even beyond the duration of the conference. Participants ask questions and comment on the interactive board, to prompts like "Which innovative elements are applicable to your own research/practice? "What objections/reservations/questions come up?" As many questions as possible will be answered or discussed already in the session.

An important link with the conference theme is that an example is given of an innovative partnership between universities and schools. The role of teachers and school leaders from practice in cooperation with researchers / teacher training colleges should be clarified and strengthened. The aim is to show that there are new, particularly productive, and efficient ways for universities to further develop pedagogical theories which will prove relevant to teachers' practice and be validated by them.

The objective of this session is to have participants experience a participative research method for exploring professional identity, aimed at ‘the bigger picture’, inspired by the approaches Kelchtermans (2009), Ruijters (2015) and Vandamme (2009) take on the professional, who is driven by a greater cause.

Our practice based research takes place within a project in a neighbourhood of a town in The Netherlands (approx. 228.000 inhabitants in total; approx. 12.700 in this part of the town). The project is aimed at creating a healthy, vibrant and educative surrounding for all the children and their parents in this neighbourhood, which characterises as culturally and sociologically diverse. Children in this area often come from families that need extra financial and pedagogical support. For many pedagogical professionals in this area, work is more than earning a living: they describe it as a vocation, a way to have impact on the young lives of the children. They are ‘actively engaged’. Gallup research shows that only 23% of all professionals describe themselves as such (Gallup, 2023). But this group is also vulnerable for stress: they report ‘to take the problems home’; ‘to have troubles to let go’. Our research aims at their professional identity: how do they describe themselves in their roles? What makes it worthwhile and what attributes to staying in the job? As Bakker & Oerlemans (2015) state: “individuals who are engaged (vs. burned-out) in their work are better able to satisfy their basic psychological needs through their work activities, because there is congruence between the person and the situation.”

The importance for policy, research and practice lies the connection between people and in sharing stories about professional identity, before and while working together in a network. Also, this way of making sense of ‘what is going on’ is connecting to participative reflexive inquiry as described by Griffin & Stacey (2005). The researcher also takes part in the sessions, writing about their own professional identity and sense of belonging in the project. In order to deepen the understanding of each other’s professional identity in a diverse network of pedagogical professionals, we designed a workshop. At the conference, we would like to share this intervention with the participants.

In the session, participants will start with writing down what is important to them in their actual projects. By using guiding questions, they will then deepen their reflection and connect it to their greater sense of urgency/ deeper assumptions and values. They will then share these with others in the group. Although the participants in this workshop won’t share the same work surroundings, they will still be able to questions themselves and others about what really drives them to create impact in their work and what contributes to their work happiness.

The aim is to connect professional identity development to creating learning environments that promote equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, social justice, global citizenship and environmental sustainability, and as such are also ‘good places to work’.

The purpose of this session is to explore the potential of expanding horizons for school leadership professional learning through business leadership collaborations.

The educational importance of this innovative practice lies in the potential of utilising a readily available resource to build school leadership capability. Principals are appointed for the leadership of learning; how might they be supported in their strategic leadership? Aotearoa | New Zealand’s Springboard Trust has for 15 years scaffolded school leader’s learning. By partnering with key corporate organisations across New Zealand, principals have strengthened their leadership practice to lift student outcomes.

Over this time learning has been transferred between the education system and the business world. Volunteer business leaders gain an understanding of what drives schools and school leaders. Learning is reciprocal. This collaborative partnership provides a large volunteer pool, extending our organisation’s reach.

To clarify the context, New Zealand's 2850 primary and secondary schools are self-managing entities, with the principal answerable to their Board of Trustees and responding to national Ministry of Education policy decisions. The wide geographic distribution of schools across the country also means there are huge differences between schools, from small, rurally remote schools with rolls sometimes less than eight students, to large campuses catering for more than 2,500 students. Each of these schools is governed by a Board of Trustees, elected from the local community, who appoint the principal. For principals, leading in this context requires skills in effective strategic leadership, building partnerships with their communities and having a strong focus on equity.

Understanding what it means to lead strategically through the knowledge and resources of their business leader counterparts has enabled school leaders to gain confidence and courage in their leadership decision making. Guided by their business partner, school leaders use specific tools and resources which they adapt to their specific educational context. The role of the business partner is interchangeably coach and mentor, while the principal leads the education approach. Business partners in turn gain real insights into the way schools operate and focus on community. Their partnership focus is upon developing the principal’s strategic leadership skills and knowledge, and supporting clear, insightful planning for schools, in doing so school effectiveness improves.

The session format includes sharing of slides that briefly describe the collaborative partnership model as well as viewing short video clips where the perspectives of the cross- sector volunteers and the school principals respond to the question “What was the impact for you working/learning in a cross-sector collaboration?”

Conversation will be generated through the initial information shared and the video clips of school and business leaders speaking about the impact of the cross-sector partnership. The following questions may be used to structure conversation:

• What risks does this model raise for you?

• What do you see as the advantages of this approach for your context?

Purposes of the session:

The purpose is to explore the implementation of leadership competencies within a Master of Education in Educational Leadership (MEDL) program at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia (BC), Canada and articulate how these guide the program redesign, implementation, and assessment.

The goal was to redesign the program to build graduate students’ capacity to know themselves as learners and leaders, and to participate in actions that contribute to educational change.

To support this process, faculty co-created a curriculum that included Big Ideas and Competencies that reflect the transformation in curriculum in K-12 systems in local jurisdictions (BCME, 2017; BCPVPA, 2019) and worldwide (Ananiadou & Claro, 2009; Voogt & Pareja, 2012; OECD, 2018b; European Commission, 2018).

Examples include, “Leadership is ethical, urgent & courageous in ambiguous, dissonant environments” and “Influencer: Acknowledges the influence of power and privilege; actively works towards greater equity”. Graduate students are required to use these competencies as a reflection tool. A further step that supports learning is the development of an ePortfolio incorporating scholarly writing and artifacts of learning and leadership. As a result, learning progression shifts from a static linear perspective to a dynamic model with students on their own path with “different types of assessments for different purposes” (OECD, 2019).

The intention is for graduates to leave the program as educational leaders who are deeply reflective, agentic, transformational leaders with strong skills in utilizing research for school improvement, equity and inclusion.

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

A shift towards equity-oriented, competency-based education is one of the main responses (Schuwirth & Ash, 2013) to calls for educational transformation in order to prepare students for the 21st century (i.e., OECD, 2016, 2018a, 2018b; Phillips & Schneider, 2016). The shift is widespread in Canada, and elsewhere (CMEC, 2018, 2020). Competencies are defined as “related sets of skills, knowledge and dispositions” (CMEC, 2020, p. 2) and competency-based education is a “system that focuses on competencies as educational aims that can be reached and assessed” (CMEC, 2020, p. 2). Recently the OECD has developed the Learning Compass (2019) which defines three “transformative competencies” that students need to “thrive in our world, and shape a better future” (p. 16).

Format or Approaches:

To engage participants in rich conversations around the notion of developing leadership competencies by sharing successes and challenges, exploring student artifacts, and inviting critical feedback.

Connection to the conference theme

In recognizing the important link between school improvement, effectiveness and professional development for teachers and leaders, redesigning a MEDL program around leadership competencies addresses insight and innovation by shifting “attention away from “time on subject” or “process of instruction”” (CMEC 2020, p. 2). The redesign is an innovation in current leadership education that aligns with the current movement towards competency-based education that includes global awareness, citizenship, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education (UN, n.d.), by building capacity that supports teacher and school leader development, and by extension educational system change, that promotes equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, and social justice.

Objectives

Reckoning with glaring inequities and injustices in student opportunities to learn uncovered by the pandemic, scholars argue that we seize the moment as an opportunity to reimagine public education for all students globally (Nasir, Bang, & Yoshikawa, 2021). The challenge for education systems is that they are working from structural arrangements that created and reproduced the very inequities they now seek to redress, and any change efforts from outside of systems must play out in interaction with these same structural arrangements. Employing imagination as a research method (Levitas, 2013), this Innovate session will examine opportunities for building capacity for equitable teaching and learning by comparing system (re)building across several countries. Nine panelists, all part of a global network focused on systems and equity, studying several different countries (Canada, England, Iceland, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the United States) will deliberate and debate around three core questions:

1. How are education systems defining equity and social justice, and which stakeholders have a voice in these deliberations?

2. What system and non-system strategies motivate and mobilize education system (re)building for equity and social justice?

3. How is capacity for equitable teaching and learning constituted/defined similarly and differently both within and among education systems globally?

By systematically comparing similarities and differences across systems in different countries in their efforts to build more equitable opportunities for children to learn and develop, this panel will imagine new ways of how systems might build capacity for more equitable teaching and learning for all children.

Importance

The goal of this panel is to generate multiple ideas and conceptions of education system building for equitable access to ambitious learning and holistic development that can inform the work globally. Together, the panelists will expand theoretical frameworks and reimagine methodological approaches for research on education system (re)building for equity, as well as guiding policy and practice. Panelists will strive to ensure that emerging frameworks from their deliberations will be sensitive to the unique circumstances of education systems globally rather than imposing Western-centric models.

Format

The panel will be organized so that each of the panelists will have the opportunity to provide a brief response to the questions. This will be followed by a brief reflection by each panelist focused on one key cross-system comparison suggested by the comments of other panelists. The remainder of the session will involve a structured engagement of the audience with the ideas presented by panelists. Rather than an open Question and Answer session for panelists, the session chair will pose a focused question based on the deliberations among panelists, that will invite audience members to respond to a particular issue(s), that emerged from deliberations among panelists, using their own work in a particular education system. This organization will allow for a more focused engagement with the audience.

Connection to Conference Theme

This session directly connects with the conference sub-theme of leading schools and education systems that promote equity, diversity, and social justice.

Schools are increasingly complex organisations and research on leadership in schools is capturing this complexity (Harris & Jones, 2017; 2022; Ziebell et al., 2020). Whilst leadership from principals remains important and continues to be studied (Louis, et al., 2010; Grissom, et al. 2021), there is now significant research that explores middle and teacher leadership (Bryant et al., 2020; Harris, 2021; Harris & Jones, 2022; Lipscombe et al., 2021; Tian et al., 2016). There is also an expectation that teachers have an organisational leadership role, and there is a burgeoning research focus on teacher leaders (Wenner & Campbell, 2017; York-Barr & Duke, 2004) to the point that this has surpassed research on middle leaders (Harris & Jones, 2017). At the initial teacher education (ITE) level, teacher preparation programs are now beginning to include leadership subjects to better prepare new teachers for these increased leadership expectations (Acquaro, 2019). It is, therefore, timely to consider the leadership work and the leadership demands on new teachers in their first years of teaching.

This study sought to understand the leadership demands beginning teachers face through their first years of work through exploring what new teachers are asked to do, and actually do, in terms of leadership practices, and any influence this may have on their career aspirations. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews of 20 recent graduates of teacher education programs from one Australian university who were in their first to fourth year of teaching. Interviews were conducted online and later transcribed and then coded to build thematic understandings.

Early findings from the study highlight early-career pressure from schools for beginning teachers to take-on leadership responsibilities in addition to developing their teacher expertise. Findings revealed that by the time early-career teachers (ECTs) were in their third or fourth year, they had been asked to apply for a formal leadership role, or were already acting in one. As a result of fragile work security in the sector, those ECTs who had been or were on contracts described how they accepted leadership roles in the hope that this would lead to more secure and permanent work. The study has also captured the leadership work that ECTs self-initiated as part of their desire to support students and their schools.

The scope and significance of this study fits within the Educational Leadership Network and is closely linked with the following conference sub-themes:

• Exploring the evolving research and evidence base for leadership education and capacity building;

• Policy and practice learning to support teacher and school leader development.

Several Western countries are facing a shortage of school leaders, in some cases coupled with high turnover rates. Increasing job satisfaction and professional success could help mitigate this situation as there is evidence that individuals who are objectively successful (criteria like salary) and feel subjectively successful (criteria like personal career satisfaction) are more likely to stay in office (Stumpf, 2014). Furthermore, international findings point to the relevance of qualification and mentoring measures for the success and satisfaction of school leaders (Yirci et al., 2023).

Using the jobs demands-resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) as orientation, this study sought to assess the impact of various factors on the career success of school principals in Germany and to contrast the findings with evidence from the international context. The following research questions and hypotheses guided our research:

1. What relationships can be identified between qualification measures and mentoring and objective career success?

2. What correlations can be identified between qualification measures and mentoring and subjective career success?

H1: Qualification measures show a connection with objective and subjective career success.

H2: Mentoring correlates with objective and subjective career success.

H3: Professional experience correlates with subjective and objective career success.

H4: Career success is different for different groups of people.

The population for the survey comprised all school principals at general education schools in Germany. In this group, a randomly selected sample of N=405 school principals, representative of Germany, was surveyed using a standardized online questionnaire. Scales were derived mainly from international instruments like PISA (OECD, 2013), TALIS (OECD, 2018) and PIRMS (Hallinger & Wang, 2015). Data was analyzed using MPlus 8.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2019). Both latent correlation and latent regression analyses were used for the dependent variable objective as well as subjective career success. Sequential modeling was chosen for this purpose: The basic model 1 examined the influence of (organizational) support measures on the professional success of school principals; model 2 additionally took factors of (objectified) human capital into account, while model 3 also took various socio-demographic factors into account. To test the stability of the model parameters, a fourth model was calculated in each case, in which various context variables were also taken into account that could have an influence on the dependent variables. Missing data was imputed for all variables in the data set and then used to estimate the final correlation and regression models.

The results point to a small link between perceived (subjective) success, mandatory in-service training and additional university qualifications. However, no statistically significant correlation could be found between income and qualification measures and mentoring. Female principals appear to have a lower income than male principals, even after controlling for a sizeable number of possible covariates. Compared to international contexts (OECD, 2018), the connection between professional development measures and (subjective or objective) career success seems to be underdeveloped. Further analysis and contrasting with the international evidence will allow us to provide hypotheses of effective measures that increase the chances of objective and subjective success (and relevant contextual elements).

Purpose

This year’s congress explores how teaching and learning are supported in ways that “respect and promote” teacher professionalism. Evidence-informed instructional initiatives can fail to support teacher professionalism if teachers are asked to implement practices that they perceive as a mismatch for their contexts, particularly as a characteristic of effective teachers is their ability to tailor instruction to the needs of their students (Parsons et al, 2018). Attending to the relational capacity of actors in the culture and climate in which they do their work is of primary importance to understand instructional transformation amidst sometimes conflicting organizational goals (Author, 2019a).

Focus

This study is rooted in a research-practice partnership (e.g., Penuel & Gallagher, 2017) between a university and school district in the United States aimed at supporting the district’s goals of fostering a collaborative professional culture and increasing student-centered instructional practices. After observing evidence of sustained progress toward both these goals over four years (Authors, in preparation), this study asks: What aspects of a collaborative culture support instructional transformation?

Methods

Data for this mixed-methods study are drawn from yearly (2019-2022) semi-structured interviews with all eleven principals in the district and ten teachers and instructional coaches, as well as from yearly surveys of all teachers, principals, and district leaders. Interviews were coded using both a priori and inductive codes (e.g. Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006) to understand the collaborative and innovative culture of the schools and district and the experiences of educators in transforming instruction. Findings were triangulated using multilevel analysis of survey scales measuring collective involvement and distributed leadership (Author, 2019b) and beliefs and experiences with student-centered instructional practices (Author, 2021).

Findings

Instructional change efforts did not unfold as anticipated by district leaders, but a shift toward student-centered instruction did occur. Participants faced challenges in their efforts toward instructional transformation, requiring a high degree of innovation on their part. Rather than pushing for change to unfold in planned ways, the collaborative culture of collective involvement in the district provided space for educators to adapt the district’s plans in ways that met the goal of student-centered instruction in novel ways. Quantitative analysis supports the finding that leadership structures supported these efforts, showing growth over time in student-centered instructional practices correlated with collective involvement. Taken as a whole, the study demonstrates how educators, supported by a district orientation toward distributed leadership, could adapt instructional initiatives for their contexts in unanticipated ways that met the goal of increasing student-centered instruction.

Implications

These findings outline the supportive role collaborative innovation structures can play in fostering instructional change through teacher professionalism, and the power of research-practice partnerships in helping education systems move toward these goals. Asking educators to “buy into” or “implement” instructional change efforts ignores the crucial innovations that educators undertake to adapt resources to their contexts. This study demonstrates how concerted efforts to promote a culture of educator collaboration via collective leadership support the unexpected ways instructional improvement unfolds in context.

Providing quality staff development in a centralized education system: teachers' perspectives regarding school principals' role

Amal Alsaleh and Munirah Alajmi

Objectives

It is the purpose of this paper to describe how principals support quality staff development for teachers in a centralized Kuwait public school system, and the challenges confronted influence decision-making about staff development.

Research questions:

• How does the principal support quality staff development in Kuwait's centralized sytem?

• What challenges do school principals face when making decisions about teacher staff development?

Study context

Kuwait has implemented a number of educational changes to improve school quality and meet 21st century needs. The new comprehensive school reform program updates curricula, improves teacher training programs, promotes e-learning and digital resources, and emphasizes critical thinking and creativity. Education in Kuwait is highly centralized and supervised by the Ministry of Education, which establishes curricular standards, develops educational policy, and ensures quality throughout the system.

The Kuwaiti educational system has encountered quality issues based on international assessments such as TIMSS and PISA. Teachers' performance is one of Kuwait's main concerns. There have been studies that question the quality of teacher training and professional development programs. Teachers lacking adequate training and development may be unable to engage students effectively and promote deep learning due to a lack of pedagogical skills and strategies. By examining the role of school principals in enhancing effective professional development in schools , this study may shed light on the barriers and challenges facing school principals and teachers in creating positive learning environments and ultimately support the government's efforts to improve educational quality.

Methods:

A qualitative open-ended interview was conducted with 16 public school teachers. Inductive analysis was followed to generate themes and sub-themes. Findings indicate that all school principals support staff development in various ways. The results also indicated fragmented and unsustainable teacher staff development programs. The participants clarified several forms of staff development that are related to departmental leadership practices at school, such as teachers' visits, department meetings, and subject-based discussions. Participants also clarified that principals still face challenges such as lack of autonomy, inadequate educational resources, fragmented policies, and high workloads

Data sources/evidence

Semis structural interviews were conducted to 16 teachers working in public schools in Kuwait.

Educational importance of this research or inquiry for theory, practice, and/or policy

There was an in-depth examination of how staff development practices are implemented in Kuwaiti centralized schools, and what role the principals play in providing quality staff development to the teachers. The results may be useful for improving practices in other international centralized systems.

Connection to the conference theme

The topic of the conference focuses on the importance of quality professional education in the context of schools, so it is highly relevant to the conference theme.