Conference Agenda

This is the first of two linked symposia on belonging. It shines the ‘social belonging’ spotlight from the ‘Outside-in’ on the policies and practices which reduce opportunities for young people to belong, as well as those which help develop their sense of agency.

In many countries, rapid increases in exclusion and a sense of ‘not’ belonging in schools have led to mounting concerns about the mental health and life chances of young people, and the consequences for families and communities (Allen et al., 2018; Riley, 2022). The Covid-19 pandemic, global and economic uncertainties have exacerbated inequalities, with the most disadvantaged losing out.

Accepting that belonging and ‘not’ belonging are highly differentiated experiences (Vincent, 2022), this first of two linked symposia will seek to consider:

• What external policies reduce young people’s chances of experiencing school belonging?

• How can place-based approaches enable them to develop a sense of social belonging?

• Can new forms of leadership support young people in becoming active citizens?

Prompted by the respondent, participants will be invited to reflect on two presentations and through peer discussion seek responses to these questions examining the implications for their own policy and practice.

The work on belonging rarely addresses the role that municipalities and their educational staff members play in creating a sense of belonging among all of the members of a school community – and those that feel that they have an immediate stake in that school. However, there is increasing evidence that school and district-based leaders have a significant impact on the way in which schools are experienced as inclusive settings for both adults and students (Louis & Murphy,2019), which suggests that they need to be considered as we enlarge the way in which belonging is conceptualized. Some countries have focused on developing belonging from the outside in, prioritizing family and community engagement as essential to healthy relationships in school. Scotland, for example has, over the last decade, developed a national policy on engagement that clearly points to the importance of family belonging (https://www.gov.scot/publications/cld-plans-guidance-note/pages/6/).

This presentation, however, takes another perspective by examining issues facing local school leaders in Sweden and the U.S. when they are faced with competing policies that tend to reinforce segregation, weaken integration, and thus constrain the schools’ efforts to create belonging (Ekholm & Louis, submitted). We examine two external policy clusters that have emerged in Sweden and Minnesota (U.S.) and that contribute to the challenge of creating more equitable and inclusive schools at the local level. The first is the expansion of school choice policies, which in the two settings were initially driven (at least in part) by underlying assumptions about how “a thousand flowers blooming” could promote democracy and innovation (Bunar, 2008; Junge, 2012) rather than by a singular focus on competition and New Public Management.

We will briefly describe the parallel policy developments in the two settings. We then discuss how parent responses have, led to increasing socio-economic and racial segregation. This is particularly evident in Minnesota, where many charter schools have promoted curricula that are intended to be more culturally relevant to immigrant and minority populations. This has been challenged as a form of self-segregation that stands in contrast to 50 years of both legal and policy efforts to eliminate racially segregated schools. The second policy stream is related to housing policies, which relatively rarely considered in conjunction with educational policies. In both Sweden and the U.S., as well as most other developed countries, residential segregation is increasing due to complex policies that that accrue over time but that result in more socio-economically homogeneous schools (Yang Hansen & Gustafsson, 2016; Kornhall & Bender, 2019; Van Ham, Tammaru & Janssen, 2018). If belonging is to have meaning beyond the confines of a single school building, school leaders at all levels must confront the challenges of neighbourhood inequities in which promoting equality and belonging for all students may be more challenging.

The presentation will conclude by discussing emerging opportunities for school leaders to promote belonging that challenges these constraints (Momandi & Welner, 2021; Lund, 2020).

This presentation is part of a project which focuses on how social belonging can be facilitated for young people living in disadvantaged areas. An important starting point for the project is that the professional development in school and leisure settings must be anchored in the experiences of children and young people and that they need to be involved throughout the process.

As this project has just been started, this presentation focuses on the experiences of children and young people and what they see as important for feeling a sense of belonging and how professionals can facilitate belonging. In this study, the focus is on 10–12-year olds' own experiences of belonging, both in relation to school and leisure time. The pre-teen years are identified as a sensitive time with significant importance for children's well-being and living conditions. To experience a sense of belonging during these years affects important choices later in life (McGuire, 2016). However, the living conditions and life for different groups of Swedish children and young people varies (Forte, 2018). To gain knowledge of and develop leadership to even out these differences is an urgent issue to contribute to good school results and well-being for all children and young people.

The concept of belonging is used to describe the individual's sense of being part of a community but is closely linked to the conditions, relationships and structures that contribute to belonging (Riley, 2019). Riley (2019, 2022) emphasizes how activities that contribute to creating belonging must be seen as part of a larger context. This means that the sense of belonging that young people’s leisure time can provide is in turn important for how young people navigate society more generally.

Data is collected at a leisure center in a disadvantaged area using focus group interviews with 10–12-year olds' about their experience of belonging. The study is inspired by child-centered methods (Clarke & Moss, 2011), where young people's ability to make their voice heard is central. However, we see the importance of an expanded concept of voice where young people are given the opportunity to give their perspective in different ways (Lago & Elvstrand, 2022). In this case, participatory maps (Davies, 1999), where young people are asked with help of drawing to highlight and describe places and social contexts that are important to them, will be used as a basis to the focus group interviews.

Tentative findings show that relations to positive adults (staff at the Leisure center) and influence in the daily leisure activities can function as bridge both to school and to the wider society. Young people’s experiences also are important resources in school development work, for example, to improve school performance and attendance.

This symposium addresses ways of developing education systems that support the progress of all children and young people. Building on an on-going ten-year research programme (Chapman and Ainscow, 2021), it will present and reflect on emerging findings from Every Dundee Matters (EDLM), a research-practice partnership attempting to build a city-wide Networked Learning System (Madrid Miranda and Chapman 2021) designed to promote equity. The strategy, which involves all the nurseries and schools, began in 2021 and is in the third year of its implementation.

EDLM is driven by the principle of equity, defined as: ‘A process of improving the presence, participation and progress of all children and young people in nurseries and schools by identifying and addressing contextual barriers’. This requires rethinking roles and relationships amongst stakeholders and researchers.

The symposium will address the following research questions:

• What factors influence the implementation of the strategy?

• What evidence is there of impact on the presence, participation and progress of learners?

• What are the implications for policy and practice more widely?

In contributing to the ICSEI conference focus on the impact of research/policy/practice partnerships on improving the effectiveness of education systems.

This paper will provide an overview of the EDLM strategy. It will explain the guiding vision, which is of a high performing education system that is at the forefront of developments to find more effective ways of ensuring the education of all children and young people, particularly those who are most vulnerable to underachievement, marginalisation or exclusion.

Set within an education system that is relatively centralised, the strategy sets out to build a Networked Learning System that increases collective agency regarding decisions about priorities for improvement. With this in mind, the methodology used is ‘design-based implementation research’ (Fishman et al., 2013). This is guided by four principles: a focus on problems of practice from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives; a commitment to collaborative design; a concern with developing theory and knowledge related to both classroom learning and implementation through systematic inquiry; and a concern with developing capacity for sustaining change in systems.

The starting point for strengthening the capacity of schools is with the sharing of ideas, knowledge and practices through collaboration amongst staff. This is intended to encourage new thinking and experimentation with alternative ways of working. This is based on research which shows that this can be stimulated through an engagement with the views of different stakeholders, bringing together the expertise of practitioners, the insights of pupils and families, and knowledge from academic research in ways that challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, not least in respect to the progress of vulnerable groups of learners (Ainscow, Chapman & Hadfield, 2020).

The early phase of EDLM took place during a period of unprecedented challenges, as schools and nurseries struggled to cope with the continuing impact of the Covid pandemic. Despite this unfavourable context, the following design features were introduced, including:

• Across the education system there is widespread awareness of Every Dundee Learner Matters and what it has set out to achieve;

• The introduction of the 3Ps (paresence, participation and progress) as the foci for enhancing educational equity;

• all schools and nurseries have established one or more school inquiry groups;

• these groups have used collaborative action research to identify and address barriers to the presence, participation and progress of some of their pupils;

• all schools and nurseries are members of a school improvement partnership set up to share expertise, experiences and encourage innovations;

• education officers and members of the university research team have worked together to support these school-led improvement efforts

and

• a programme of leadership/learning seminars has taken place to provide support and advice for key people in the field.

The evidence collected so far suggests that these developments are already having an impact on the presence, participation and progress of pupils. There is, however, lots more do in order to ensure that an education system that does well for many Dundee learners can do well for them all.

The EDLM strategy is built on a series of ten design features based on earlier research on system change (Ainscow, Chapman & Hadfield, 2020). This paper will present a summary of the findings regarding the implementation and impact of these features. It will also explain and reflect on the complexities of the roles of the University research team in carrying out its contributions to the initiative. In particular, it will consider the challenges created by a methodology that combines activities linked to both development and research, with the expectations that these two will feed off each other during their implementation, and are adjusted accordingly, as needed.

As developers, the University team is involved in activities to support the vision for change at the district level by meeting with a strategy group that involves headteachers and other senior staff to discuss progress, priorities and next steps. This also involves building capacity within establishments by supporting headteachers and teacher leaders in conducting collaborative action research activity and sharing their findings to other school staff, support services and community members.

At the same time, the university team supports the professional development of local authority staff as they adjust their contributions to improvement efforts that are led by schools. In addition, they have sought to ‘interrupt’ the structure of interactions within the system, by creating new school partnerships, and coordinating cross-school collaborative activities in an effort to move knowledge around.

In carrying out this complex set of activities, the work of the researchers is informed by relevant evidence. This is gathered through their involvement in planning meetings and events for school leaders. In this context, the research team use a range of methods to generate artifacts with the potential to inform insights and refine the strategy. For example, one technique involved schools designing posters that summarised their progress during the first year of the project. Addressing a common set of research questions, this involved members of the research team in supporting the planning of the posters within each school. The posters were then shared at a conference for school leaders and other stakeholders. Apart from encouraging a process of reflection within individual schools, this provided an efficient and engaging means of sharing experiences and practical suggestions across the city.

The evidence from on-going monitoring of the implementation of the strategy is triangulated with data regarding impact, which is generated through more formal means. These include an engagement with statistical evidence provided through the on-going procedures of the local authority and data generated through a programme of focus group interviews. Further evidence on the relationship between implementation and impact of the system change strategy uses Social Network Analysis in order to map headteacher and senior leader relationships and track the development and pattern of interactions over time (Borgatti et al, 2018). All this evidence is then used to create case study accounts of developments in particular schools.

Going to scale with respect to local systems change means that many actors have to be involved. This requires EDLM to be driven collectively by school leaders and local authority officers. The strategy involves practitioners at all levels of the education system - including early years, primary and secondary education taking shared responsibility for improving the quality of education across the city.

An engagement with a variety of evidence generated by teachers, supported by professional judgment and mutual observations and, crucially, engagement with the views of students, is a key factor in making this happen. In addition, schools work in improvement partnerships, using peer inquiry visits to stimulate the sharing of practices and mutual professional learning.

These interrelated approaches are based on evidence from international research regarding strategies for fostering forms of teaching that are effective in engaging all members of a class (Avalos, 2011). This suggests that developments of practice, particularly amongst more experienced teachers, are unlikely to occur without some exposure to what teaching actually looks like when it is being done differently with impact, and opportunities to discuss these differences with colleagues.

This points to the possibility of ‘joint practice development’, which Fielding et al. (2005) define as learning new ways of working through mutual engagement that opens up and shares practices with others. Joint practice development, they suggest, involves interaction and mutual development related to practice; recognises that each partner in the interaction has something to offer; and is research-informed, often involving collaborative inquiry. Through such collaborative activities, teachers develop ways of talking that enable them to articulate details about their practices. In this way, they are able to share ideas about their ways of working with colleagues. This also assists individuals to reflect on their own ways of working, as well as the thinking behind their actions. In effect, developing evidence-informed communities of practice where collaboration and engagement in improvement arrangements by participants fosters identification with goals and acquisition of related knowledge and skills (e.g.: Sim, 2006; Wenger and Lave 2001)

This paper will include a series of accounts of practice by school leaders that illustrate the nature of these activities, including reflections on their impact on thinking and practices within schools. It will also consider the challenges involved with regards to implementation of these approaches within the busy schedules of schools.

As a system-wide strategy, another key element of EDLM involves the development of leadership capacity in the middle tier, a role that in Scotland is that of local authorities. This involves a significant change in practices, summed up by the following mantra suggested by an education officer during an earlier project: ‘The job of schools is to improve themselves; our job is to make sure it happens’. The paper will, therefore, also provide an account from senior education officers regarding the challenges they are facing in putting this thinking into action.

The Symposium poses a number of questions that relate to the concept of Middle Leadership, both nationally (Ireland) and internationally. The three papers are from the same school of education, MIC Thurles, and are connected by the common theme of addressing a number of key aspects of the topic including:

1. A definition of middle leadership

2. An exploration of effective research methodologies

3. A response to policy documents and assumptions within

4. An exploration of Middle Leadership in the context of theoretical frameworks including

Distributed Leadership

The purpose of this research project is to capture middle leader voice on Middle Leadership (ML) as a concept, in an Irish context. This is important research considering the current changing approach to recruitment, purpose and competencies in the middle leadership space in Irish policy. The research question focuses on capturing middle leader perspectives, asking ‘what is middle leadership?’ Three ML themes are the focus of the embedded research questions, namely, autonomy, impact and potential. It is important to capture voice as future policy iterations in this space must be informed by a multitude of stakeholders. Furthermore, in the absence of context specific research, there is a strong reliance on international studies which cannot capture the Irish experience and cultural context of ML in post primary schools. The study was designed in the context of a lack of research in Ireland, changing policy demands and the scope to examine the concept in a more nuanced way.

The methodological approach is Psychosocial (Holloway & Jefferson 2013). The approach and methods selected reflect an attempt to unlock both the participants internal and external world view with the visual vernacular as a key data source (Cleland & MacCleod 2018). Participants have been asked to keep an image diary of 'middle leadership' over a two-week period in the first stage of data collection. Free Association Narrative Interviewing (Holloway & Jefferson 2013) is being used in the second stage of data collection. Participants are encouraged to offer whatever comes to mind, free from overly rigid questioning by the researcher, using their image diary as the primary prompt. The images have been brought to interview and used as lines of enquiry, rather than the researcher determining the questions in a formally structured way prior to meeting.

Initial data analysis shows the Irish experience of Middle Leadership is in flux, and also that it is a change leading layer of leadership within the system. Specific contextual themes have emerged, such as Mental Health, Corporatisation, ML as a Career Destination and being Unseen. Other themes such as Time, Promotion and Collegiality have emerged and these are reflected in the international literature. Further exploration of the Irish contextual themes is ongoing, as they can inform future potential and professional development. A typology of Irish middle leadership may emerge, which is not reflected internationally, as this space appears to capture the very core inner workings of a school community and is at the heart of all that happens or otherwise.

This research connects well with the conference theme in bringing the voices of an established and strong layer of leadership within the distributed model espoused by Irish policy. If quality professional development is important for school effectiveness and improvement, this research, in capturing perspectives, can help to understand professional potential as well as professional stumbling blocks in this space. The changing nature of ML, against the backdrop of the recent policy updates of 2018 and 2022, mean that future professional education should be influenced by ML’s current experience.

Successive Irish policies have emphasised the importance of DL and the principal's role in developing leadership capacity in others (DES 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2019). This change in the conceptualisation of leading schools and how/if principals engage with middle leaders' (MLs) capacity as leaders, as opposed to managers, is worthy of exploration. MLs are critical to the success of DL (Kavanagh 2020) and, therefore, to a sustainable principalship. Though the concept of middle leadership has drawn international interest, a dearth of Irish research endures (Forde et al., 2019). International research usually focuses on MLs' perspectives concerning their role, with some exceptions (Cardno and Bassett 2015, Fernandes 2018, Bush and Ng 2019). This paper's point of departure is the principal's perspective because research shows that the principal constructs the ML role (Gurr and Drysdale 2013). Thus, an in-depth understanding of their perspectives holds value for maximising ML potential.

Research Question: What are principals' perspectives on the role of middle leadership, and how can an understanding of these be used to inform policy, professional development, and practice?

- How do principals construct the middle leadership role?

- How is middle leadership being utilised by principals?

- How do principals plan for ML development, and what is the role of succession planning in this?

This research uses a grounded theory (GT) approach. Findings in this paper form part of a larger PhD project comprising five case study schools. This paper focuses on findings from interviews with five principals. Comprehensive analysis of policy and literature provided the basis for the initial interview. In line with GT, data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously. The analysis of each interview informed the interview protocol for each subsequent interview. Transcripts were analysed using an edited analysis in NVivo. The preliminary findings that began to emerge are detailed below.

Principals' desire to move away from task-based ML roles towards leadership is fraught with challenges, e.g., a lack of understanding of the ML role amongst both MLs and staff, lack of time to enact leadership and a lack of leadership training among MLs. Principals seek to match school priorities to peoples' strengths and passions, including among teachers without formal posts, rather than adhering strictly to duties lists.

Regarding succession planning, concerns exist regarding advantaging some staff over others regarding competency-based interviews. The removal of seniority concerning appointments has increased the principals' workload but is viewed positively overall. Seniority is still highly regarded among school staff. There is consensus that MLs are not equipped for the complexity of their leadership role, but disagreement on how to mitigate this. Reviewing the role involves educating the wider staff and is generally catalysed by upcoming appointments rather than routinely initiated as policy recommends. In theory, MLs are accountable to the board and the principal, but in practice, principals report a lack of mechanisms to deal with underperforming MLs.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the Symposium on Middle Leadership in schools. Evidence will be drawn from a range of applied assignments that participants on a Master’s programme in Middle Leadership and Mentoring have shared. Such insights assist in establishing emerging trends associated with the actions and emotions of those in positions, or seeking positions, of Middle Leadership in our schools.

The programme of study from which the actions and emotions of practitioners are gleaned, is team-taught and delivered in a hybrid format which allows access to participants from Ireland and also from a range of international settings including Australia, Brasil, England, Malawi, Nepal and Switzerland. As well as being an international programme the students come from a range of backgrounds including early childhood, primary, post-primary and further education settings. This relatively unique cross-sectoral and international dimension to the progamme makes a review of the work of the students all the more interesting and pertinent.

The data source for the paper is a random selection of students’ applied assignments and the themes and tensions that emerge from their own rich description of their experience of engaging in activities that can be described as leading from the middle (Hargreaves, 2020). The theoretical framework is guided by the work of David Gurr (2023) who describes middle leaders are teachers who have an additional formal organizational responsibility. The concept of Middle Leader is often expressed or suppressed by other attending concepts such as distributed leadership (Harris and Jones, 2017). It is also found that the title ‘Middle Leader’ can be vague in its definition and carries with it many inherent tensions as set against relational contingencies such as school culture, leadership styles, clarity of role, and the position of middle leader vis a vis that of teacher and colleague. These themes and tensions are explored in this paper within the context of two key theoretical frames, namely Social Capital and Positioning Theory.

The results and findings from this study identify some key research practices that might assist in developing a deeper understanding of Middle Leadership and the modes of study that might best support middle leaders to attain a level of interconnected confidence and competence. The paper pays particular attention to participants’ practice data and the insights that emerge including the place of mentoring in the context of leading and being led from the middle.

The paper aligns with the conference theme and the variables associated with school effectiveness and improvement. It addresses the role of teachers and school leaders in supporting and promoting student learning through an exploration of practice and interactions, as captured and shared by practitioners. It has an international dimension and a cross-sectoral approach that may appeal to conference attendees and assist in continuing to explore the concept of Middle Leadership in the interest of supporting school effectiveness and improvement.

Around the globe, educational systems are grappling with the challenges of expanding access to high-quality learning opportunities for all students. Achieving these goals requires unprecedented levels of professional expertise in areas ranging from curricular content, pedagogy, modalities of learning, and more. One implication of ambitious goals, and their concomitant demands on professional knowledge, is that conventional modes of professional development are unlikely to suffice. Instead, we must redesign educational systems to operate as learning organizations that support the generation and use of professional knowledge, and that provide opportunities for continuous reflection and experimentation. In this session, we spotlight three approaches to system transformation in England, Singapore, and the United States. Each case describes a collaborative endeavor to transform traditional schools and systems into learning organizations, while also analyzing the obstacles they contended with throughout their work. By leveraging variation among cases, the session will provide an opportunity for participants to consider the actual work of system transformation as it unfolds in differing contexts. Each author team will give a 10-minute presentation, followed by discussant commentary. Then the audience will have time for small group discussion aimed at identifying questions to fuel a whole group discussion among authors and attendees.

This paper argues that system leaders who want to develop evidence-informed practice across multiple local schools must find a sweet spot between purism and pragmatism in terms of how evidence is integrated with wider professional learning and improvement efforts. It draws on an ongoing evaluation of the Western Excellence in Learning and Leadership (WELL) initiative – a GBP 3.9 million three-year programme (2021-24) which aims to improve educational outcomes for young people, with a focus on disadvantaged youth, across an isolated and deprived area of Cumbria (United Kingdom). A core thrust of WELL’s approach is to strengthen the use of evidence by schools in the 121 schools it supports, including through a partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (the UK’s educational ‘what works’ centre).

WELL support to schools includes a suite of evidence-based professional development programmes, themed networks, and events. In addition, each school receives annual funding of between £4500-£22,600. Headteachers decide how this money is spent but must attend training on the EEF’s ‘Putting evidence to work – a school’s guide to implementation’ (Sharples et al, 2018) and produce an evidence-based action plan.

The paper asks: What does WELL tell us about the opportunities and challenges facing local system leaders as they seek to strengthen evidence-informed professional learning and improvement at scale?

Access to research by practitioners is important but is unlikely to change established behaviours on its own (Nutley, Walter and Davies, 2007). School leaders play a key role in mobilising evidence and facilitating professional learning within schools, although changing existing norms has proved challenging in many contexts (Hall and Hord, 2001).

The WELL evaluation (authors) includes:

· Implementation and Process: observations; surveys and case studies;

· Impact: compares WELL-supported schools’ test outcomes with a matched sample.

WELL has been able to piggy-back on the EEF’s established ‘what works’ syntheses and tools. This has offered advantages but also carried risks. An overly narrow focus on ‘what works’ evidence risks downgrading other valid forms of evidence, such as school-level assessment data. Furthermore, there are many gaps in the EEF evidence base: for example, in areas such as leadership and curriculum development, which are not amenable to Randomised Controlled Trial-type evaluations. ‘What works’ approaches also risk reducing appetite for innovation – if schools can only adopt ‘proven’ approaches, why would they try something new?

The evaluation highlights a need for WELL’s leaders to balance purism and pragmatism in pursuit of collaborative evidence-informed improvement at scale. While a ‘what works’ purist might insist on only allowing the most rigorous evidence be applied by schools, this would have limited school engagement in Cumbria. Equally, an overly pragmatic and flexible approach might not be demanding enough to achieve genuine change. The sweet spot appears to be in between, focussed on school engagement, working flexibly within a clear process and set of tools, and encouraging a collective process of learning about how ‘evidence’ can add value.

This paper draws on a large-scale classroom-based longitudinal study in Singapore’s primary and secondary schools to critically examine the relationships between national assessment reforms, teacher learning, shifts in assessment practices, and system changes in the wake of a global policy push from summative assessments towards formative forms. In the recent decade, national assessment initiatives have been implemented by the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) (2009) to promote the use of formative assessment to enhance student learning. This was a deliberate attempt to shift schools away from a high-stakes examination culture that is deeply ingrained in Singapore society (Cheah, 1998). Initiatives such as the Primary Education Review and Implementation Holistic Assessment (PERI HA) and others are designed to create opportunities and space for teachers and students to use assessment for learning practices and reduce examination pressure. PERI HA in particular includes teacher professional development and school reforms so that teachers can employ a broad assessment repertoire to support student learning. Despite such system strategies, in doing so, a “contact zone” manifests where “cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (Pratt, 1991, p. 34). Schools become sites of contestation on the values of education and on assessment priorities, with teachers playing out system tensions through resistant and creative strategies around assessment practices.

The paper therefore unpacks the emergence of the contact zone over time, drawing from a critical discussion of Singapore’s educational policies and initiatives, and empirical findings from the CORE Research Programme (CORE) that describes changes to teaching and learning in Singapore’s primary and secondary classrooms from 2004 to 2022. Specifically, in recent years and building on prior national initiatives, MOE (2020) introduced an enhanced professional learning roadmap, termed “SkillsFuture for Educators” (SFEd), to further support teachers’ professional development in six prioritised ‘areas of practice’ (AoP) that are critical to improve the system and schools. SFEd provides learning infrastructures and resources alongside existing network structures, within- and across-schools, to enhance professional learning for teachers. Among the six AoPs is Assessment Literacy to help teachers improve competencies in designing meaningful assessments; such professional learning builds on and extends the work of PERI HA in an attempt to evolve schools into learning organisations centred around assessment improvements.

Alongside policy implementations over the decades, the systems-oriented CORE documents pedagogical shifts and has provided research evidence for further refinements to curriculum development, professional learning and pedagogical and assessment improvements. CORE’s long-term examination of transformation at the classroom level and linking it to broader system changes allows for a critical analysis of the relationship between policy enactment and pedagogical events in classrooms, their mediating processes and consequences for teachers and students (Luke et al, 2005). With a specific focus on assessment practices in classrooms from 2004 to 2022, CORE’s findings therefore sheds light on the complex interplay between system-level reforms, teacher learning structures, opportunities and challenges, and teachers grappling in the contact zone between well-intentioned national imperatives and sedimented sociocultural beliefs.

Two prominent efforts to transform public education in the US are research-practice partnerships (RPPs) and school improvement networks. These strategies take aim at entrenched organizational pathologies that have long undermined educational improvement, by supporting the redesign of educational systems to embed professional learning in the day-to-day work of schools. Improvement networks involve a set of schools, often connected through a central hub, that engage in a collective effort to solve problems of practice and to learn through collaborative inquiry (Barletta, et al., 2018; Katz & Earl, 2010; Kubiak & Bertram, 2010). RPPs, conversely, involve long-term engagements between research organizations and districts dedicated to supporting educational improvement (Farrell et al. 2021), creating a context in which research and practitioner communities forge shared understandings, norms, and ways of working (Farley-Ripple et al. 2018).

This paper applies boundary spanning theory to support a comparative analysis of RPPs and improvement networks. The importance of boundaries—epistemic, organizational, and cultural—is a common feature across the organizational learning literature. Boundaries represent “a socio-cultural difference leading to discontinuity in action or interaction” (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011, 133). Examples of boundaries include the fissures between home and school, work and family, and professional education and practice (Buxton, et al., 2005). A boundary is marked by a collision of norms, values, and legitimate behavior that complicate communication, but also create potential for learning.

The results draw on two separate programs of research conducted by the individual authors over several years: a qualitative comparative case study of two RPPs in large urban districts and a mixed methods case study of over forty improvement networks within a national initiative. The approach taken in this specific paper, however, is conceptual in nature in that the results are derived from the application of theory to distinct professional learning approaches.

The paper sheds light on similarities and differences in the assumptions and challenges that undergird RPPs and improvement networks. Examples of shared assumptions include: teachers and leaders can generate practical knowledge when working with others from outside their immediate work context; and the knowledge generated from partnership work can be effectively applied in partners’ context-specific settings; structural constraints, such as time, scheduling, and distance, can be managed to allow for sustained joint work. A common challenge is that RPPS and networks must contend with professional norms that favor personal experience over general knowledge, and autonomy over collective action.

These commonalities are offset by differences. For example, network-based collaboration and learning require practitioners to traverse the boundaries that separate individual schools (e.g., students, district context, curriculum), whereas RPP boundaries are more epistemological in nature in that they involve bridging differing conceptions of knowledge held by researchers and practitioners.

In applying boundary spanning to RPPs and improvement networks, we provide a framework for comparing partnerships among schools and other organizations that are looked to as models for innovative forms of professional learning. The popularity of these partnerships speaks to the importance of developing analytic tools that surface their key assumptions, potential, and inherent challenges.

Changing educational practices depends substantially on individual actors and their professional learning. However, Bryson et al. (2015) indicated that complex issues could only be resolved when stakeholders with different backgrounds and expertise know how to collaborate. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how educational professionals collaborating in multi-professional settings may lead to sustainable educational change. Our symposium, thus, focuses on different educational actors and how they perceive multi-professional collaboration within and beyond their schools. To this end, we rely on a definition by Bauer (2018), who characterizes multi-professionality as the "bringing together of people from different groups and professions", who jointly engage in prob-lem solving along their "specific expertise, knowledge bases and competences" (p. 731). Based on three contributions, we discuss whether multi-professional collaboration can be achieved and what potential it holds for facilitating change. The first contribution addresses the question of how inter-organizational networks of principals and school authority members act as catalysts for developing practices within schools. The second contribution presents how teachers perceive multi-professional collaboration in the context of an all-day-school and the third contribution indicates that the relationships between teacher collaboration and experience of stress and competence need to be disentangled on inter- and intrapersonal levels.

Collaboration across school boundaries, as in professional learning networks (PLN), has been ex-tensively researched. Findings show that networks can increase innovation capacity and promote professional development among the collaborators (Hillebrand et al., 2017). In this paper, we ex-amine a particular form of such PLN - the so called "family of schools". This concept stands out due to its dual nature. Firstly, it entails the collaboration of individuals in networks (horizontally) who, in their everyday interactions, uphold a hierarchical (vertical) relationship (school authorities and school principals), secondly, the concept stands for a systematic use of data for the development of schools (Klopsch & Sliwka, 2020).

The simultaneity of hierarchy and collaborative partnership could create a point of tension, as sev-eral studies (Chapman, 2019; Montecinos, Gonzales & Ehren, 2020) have already shown. Also, this transition from hierarchical to networked systems poses challenges, such as sharing responsibilities and negotiating common understandings. Research also shows that evidence-informed school de-velopment requires a high degree of readiness for change as well as expertise and resources (Ei-den, Webs, Hillebrand & Bremm, 2018).

In this paper, we address two questions (1) we explore the compatibility of implementing a con-cept originally developed in a different national context (Canada) with the specific contextual con-ditions in Germany and to what extent this project can initiate change processes in the existing system. (2), we research how the new form of collaboration is perceived among the different groups of actors (school authority members, school principals).

We draw on two different sources of data to address the above questions. On the one hand, we analyze training documents that outline the "ideal change scenario" that the "family of schools" concept is supposed to articulate. Knowing, that document analysis (Hodder, 1994; Prior, 2008) is particularly well suited as a method because it can be used to examine the cultural translation that become visible in the form of concept papers, input slides, and handouts (Schmidt, 2017). On the other hand, we rely on expert interviews (Meuser & Nagel, 2009) with school authority members (n=4) and school principals (n=20) to find out what kind of change they expect from the new form of collaboration. Moreover, we examine these interviews regarding the second inquiry, which fo-cuses on the actors' perceptions of the collaboration during the initial stage of the project. The in-terviews were conducted during the beginning of a three-year pilot project and serve as the foun-dation for a longitudinal study that follows the groups of actors across three measurement points.

Given the fact that the "family of schools" concept is being adapted from the Canadian system to a highly bureaucratic education system like the German one, it is already apparent in the initial phase that the transfer requires a high amount of cultural translation. This refers to, among other things, the connectivity of the concept to previous routines and processes of the system. Furthermore, we expect that the hierarchical socialization of the actors will have a significant influence on the collab-oration experienced.

Objectives / Purpose

In Europe, all-day schools and other forms of extended education have been increasingly estab-lished in recent years (Fischer et al., 2022; Schüpbach, 2018; Schüpbach & Lilla, 2019). Although this development has been observed since the 1990s, the focus has now shifted towards combining teaching and care in conceptual and practical terms. This goal places a high demand on the collabo-rators. Teachers and other pedagogical professionals from different backgrounds (social work, early childhood education, etc.) must work together to design their daily actions. This study examines how personal and professional relationships develop among staff and its impact on professional and quality development in three all-day schools (Breuer et al., 2019).

Research

Especially since the Corona Pandemic, the creation of a collaborative culture in schools has become a focus of attention. This involves higher societal demands for networking and mutual support among pedagogical professionals (Azorín & Fullan, 2022). The concept of multi-professional collabo-ration in all-day schools has been studied in detail, especially in German-speaking countries (Olk et al., 2011; Speck, 2020; Speck et al., 2011; Dizinger & Böhm-Kasper, 2019). The studies found that different professional attitudes can hinder collaboration, and that it often remains only at the level of exchange. In-depth discussions about pedagogical content and problems are rare (Dizinger et al., 2011; Breuer, 2015).

Methods

The data was gathered from 12 group discussions with pedagogical professionals from three all-day schools in Switzerland. The multi-professional teams consist of teaching staff, remedial teachers, social workers, care specialists, interns, and people without pedagogical training. The group discus-sions were conducted at three different times (fall 2020, summer 2021 and summer 2022) including all employees. Group discussions are suitable for recording multi-professional collaboration be-cause interindividual perceptions of development processes can be asked for, which are construct-ed over time and negotiated together (Przyborski & Riegler, 2010; Witzel, 2010). Respondents make statements about the current state of multi-professional collaboration and reflect on how collabo-ration has changed over the course of the two years of study. Since these are natural groups, it can be assumed that the joint reflection is close to the experienced reality. The group discussions were structured using a guideline and lasted approximately 90 minutes.

Results

The results of the qualitative content analysis show that personal and professional relationships develop between the interviewed pedagogical professionals. Over time, the common pedagogical understanding is sharpened and the shared responsibility for the students is emphasized. Howev-er, this development is strongly dependent on the respective context. In two of the three all-day schools, there is a clear separation of responsibilities and tasks between teachers and care staff.

The all-day school is a specific professional context. Unlike school, it is not only an expert organiza-tion but a team organization. It needs to be further investigated to what extent the employment in an all-day school has an influence on the self-understanding of the professions. This research gen-erates implications for the further expansion of all-day schools in Switzerland and associated dis-cussions on the training and further education of pedagogical professionals.

Teachers often see themselves more as lone fighters than as team players (Vangrieken & Kyndt, 2020). From a theoretical and empirical perspective, however, the crucial importance of collabora-tion for effective professional learning seems undisputed (Drossel et al., 2019). Possible explana-tions might be that teachers perceive collaboration as an additional burden and too little productive for their practice (Vangrieken et al., 2015). However, the current evidence on the relationships be-tween collaboration and teachers' experience of stress and competence is inconsistent (Mucken-thaler et al., 2019). Moreover, what currently needs to be improved are empirical findings closer to everyday work-life on why teachers continue to view collaboration with skepticism. Furthermore, different authors indicate that perceptions of collaboration differ significantly depending on the teacher group to which they belong (classroom, subject, or special needs teachers) (Jurkowski & Mueller, 2018).

Therefore, this contribution aims to investigate the everyday collaborative practice of teachers through the experience sampling method (ESM) (Ohly et al., 2010). In doing so, we asked to what extent different proportions of collaborative activities in the total workload (apart from teaching) are related to teachers’ experience of stress and competence on the classroom and school level (research question 1) and to what extent these relationships are moderated in terms of belonging to different teacher groups (research question 2).

In the school year 2019/20, we collected data from 868 teachers in 56 schools in German-speaking Switzerland over 21 days using ESM. The data on collaborative activity, stress, and competence ex-periences from the daily survey (level 1) are each nested within one teacher (level 2) (see Figure 1). To answer our research questions, we computed mixed-effects models for multilevel longitudinal data using the R package esmpack (Viechtbauer & Constantin, 2019). This approach allows to disen-tangle interpersonal (e.g., Are more collaborative teachers more stressed?) from intrapersonal (e.g., Do teachers experience days on which they collaborate more than usual as more produc-tive?) relationships. Additionally, moderation effects for different teacher groups were analyzed.

Preliminary results at the interpersonal level indicate that teachers who collaborate more perceive a higher level of competence at the school level. However, there are no relationships in terms of experience of stress and the perceived effectiveness of teaching (see Table 1). When it comes to intrapersonal relationships, our results indicate that days on which more collaboration takes place are associated with a higher experience of stress and a higher productivity for school improvement. No such effect could be identified at the classroom level.

Regarding differential effects for teacher groups (research question 2), it becomes apparent that classroom teachers differ only on the interindividual level (see Table 2). Thus, subject teachers who frequently collaborate report a higher level of experience of competence both on the classroom and school level (interpersonal). Moreover, being a more collaborative special needs teacher posi-tively influences their experience of competence on the school level. At the congress, possible reasons and practical implications of these inter- and intra-individual relationships, as well as group-specific differences, will be discussed.

Ongoing collaborative inquiry has proven to be an effective form of teacher professional learning in a wide variety of contexts worldwide. But even in what appear to be highly conducive contexts, collaborative inquiry-style professional development is not easy to enact. For example, there are often ingrained patterns of thinking and practice in education and structural and economic obstacles to overcome, including those exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic. What does this mean, then, in contexts where there are structural, cultural, or economic barriers and/or where teachers have not had opportunities to engage in collaborative inquiry to realize the potential of situated, reflexive professional learning? Drawing on experiences from different projects involving various stakeholders in Canada, Chile, and Peru, this symposium seeks to highlight ways in which collaborative inquiry can promote locally responsive innovation and deep pedagogical change, with practical examples of what this might look like in a variety of contexts. The speakers will compare their experiences, speaking frankly about the specific challenges that they and their collaborators have faced; strategies they found effective for pushing forward with the work and making breakthroughs; work that was left undone; and things they might do differently in the future.

Objectives and problem of practice

Initiating and sustaining deeper learning in schools is difficult. Barriers include time pressures and competing priorities; structures that discourage innovation or adaptation; teachers’ lack of firsthand experience with the pedagogies they are expected to promote; and a technical rather than adaptive approach to promoting change in schools (Mehta & Fine, 2019).

Meanwhile, collaborative inquiry has emerged as a promising form of teacher professional development that can help address some of these challenges. However, it is not easy to implement, especially in contexts where inquiry, collaboration, and teacher autonomy are not foregrounded in everyday thinking and practice. This paper delves into the potential benefits of a “less can be more” approach.

Theoretical framework

We report on a four-year collaborative, design-based study involving researchers from Project Zero and practitioners from the Innova Schools network, which operates approximately 70 low-cost, K-12 schools across Peru. The paper focuses on the concluding nine-month phase, which involved supporting 28 coaches and academic coordinators to lead organizational change “from the middle” (Rincón-Gallardo & Fullan, 2016). The participants engaged in a series of online, researcher-facilitated workshops, developing inquiry projects in small study groups which culminated in an exhibition of short videos. Here we dig into the special power of one of the tools we introduced: the See-Think-Wonder thinking routine (Project Zero, n.d.), which is designed to support careful observation and help surface different perspectives and ideas within a group.

Methods

This paper draws on the varied and extensive documentation gathered as part of the nine-month learning process, as well as inductive analysis of participant surveys (n=28) and interviews (n=14).

Results

• Our participants initially applied the routine in ways consistent with their existing interpretive lenses and practices, but which felt rushed and instructor-centric.

• However, with careful modeling and targeted peer feedback, most participants became more adept over time at using See-Think-Wonder in ways that promoted inquiry, collaboration, and autonomy–in their own practice and that of the teachers they supported. Their final videos provided evidence of their use of the routine to engage in careful observation and listening, while helping teachers to do likewise in their classrooms.

• Over a third of participants identified See-Think-Wonder as the most important practice or idea they gained, describing it as a key mechanism of change.

Educational importance

While inconsistencies in practice and room for further growth remained, the work of these educators speaks to the benefits of identifying a simple strategy or routine and returning to it repeatedly to promote substantive pedagogical change–especially in contexts where deeper learning and collaborative inquiry deviate from established norms. This paper fits squarely with the conference focus on enhancing professional education.

Objectives

This study examined teacher professional development within the Through a Different Lens professional learning network (PLN). Participating teachers invited a student identified as “at risk” to inform teaching practice to remove barriers to success and create strength-based classrooms where students can learn in alternative ways.

Perspectives

PD opportunities for teachers are rarely set up in ways that help them to develop situated understandings and practices that increase student access to learning. Top down, one shot, and generic PD models tend to be ineffective (Ainscow, et al., 2016). Promisingly, teachers’ iterative cycles of situated collaborative inquiry have been related to shifts in practice and positive outcomes for diverse learners (authors, 2013; Datnow & Park, 2019).

Dumont, Istance and Benevides (2010) call for learning environment transformation to foster critical skills/abilities of 21st century citizens. We need to enable all students to succeed in a world with far reaching technological change and profound transformation that require self-directed, lifelong learning. This PLN study drew from universal design for learning, culturally responsive teaching, and Indigenous perspectives to (re)design instruction with diverse learners as capable, contributing members of classrooms.

Methods

We conducted an in-depth case study. 77 teachers participated in year 7 of the Through a Different Lens (TADL) network. The PLN met 7 times over the school year as one large group and then subdivided into four inquiry teams based on common interests (assessment, literacy, inclusion, hands-on learning). Multiple forms of data were collected in order to: 1) trace whether and how collaborative inquiry fostered teacher learning and practice change, 2) support teachers to increase access for students to learning, and 3) trace relationships between TADL, practice change, and perceived outcomes for students in participants' classrooms, particularly the most vulnerable learners. Data was collected in the form of student case studies, teacher interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Data was iteratively analyzed. As patterns emerged themes were supported, reframed, and/or collapsed using confirming and disconfirming evidence.

Results

Teachers made significant shifts in practice in several domains: differentiation, explicit teaching, fostering self-regulated learning, and student leadership. Overall, we noted that educators benefited from choice and autonomy as learners just as students do. While teachers inquired with a particular student in mind, they saw benefits for the focus student and many other students in their classes. We found three themes in terms of student outcomes: affect/engagement, academic confidence/agency, and academic performance. Students tended not to make gains academically without increases in the other two domains.

Educational Importance

This study offers an example of teachers and diverse “at-risk” students co-creating pathways to learning. Findings from the TADL PLN study suggest that when students, teachers, and researchers have opportunities to engage in collaborative inquiry they can transform teaching practices. More specifically, this research suggests that equity-oriented PLNs can develop more ownership and agency in teachers and students by (re)framing diversity as a strength, creating pathways for at-risk learners based on their strengths/interests, and making innovations for diverse learners accessible to all students.

Objectives

This research explores the value of collaborative inquiry networks of headteachers and curriculum coordinators to cope with 2020’s coronavirus pandemic in Chile, the study emphasizes describing the main challenges, collaborative practices, and the influence of the networks supporting teachers’ innovative responses to address educational challenges in their own schools.

Perspectives

In times of uncertainty and crisis, collaboration has been crucial to effectively respond to educational challenges. School networks facilitate peer learning and strengthen professional learning communities to face the difficulties posed by the coronavirus pandemic (Chapman and Bell, 2020). School networks specifically allow for the establishment of a collaborative culture that allows the use of multiple platforms and resources, for that leadership requires focusing on leadership interactions more than actions, which translates into building capacities (Harris, 2020). The collaborative inquiry networks have been guided by this literature and it is sustained in national evidence about its positive outcomes before COVID-19 (Author, 2020).

Methods

This is a mixed-method study using different methods and data of a project implemented with a total of 54 headteachers and curriculum coordinators. The data sources were participants’ individual reports, network teams’ reports of their collaborative inquiry projects, and a short open-ended questionnaire responded by teachers that did not participate directly in the networks but benefited from their work. The data were analyzed using content analysis, categories were created to organize and describe the main findings.

Results

Participants of the networks reported that their active participation in the collaborative inquiry allows them to share knowledge among different schools and has helped them to support innovative practices in their own schools. Specifically, they have reported that collaborating has permitted them to maintain a pedagogical focus, foster distributed leadership within the school communities, provide them with greater autonomy, and develop skills to favor the emotional containment of their teams.

Educational Importance

This research highlights how networks’ collaboration should not be reduced to exchanging experiences to address complex challenges due to the pandemic, but even more so, the strengthened skills of school leaders that use this knowledge to implement innovations and changes at the school level. This work offers insights into how the Chilean school system has responded to COVID-19 challenges and shows how despite the negative aspects of the pandemic, it has become an opportunity to recognize and enhance teachers’ professional development through collaboration among different schools. Most headteachers and curriculum coordinators reported that an active collaborative inquiry changed how they used to think about their leadership and strengthened the value of professional relationships to address extremely difficult challenges because of the pandemic. These lessons can be taken to rethink and rebuild educational systems, specifically to support school improvement promoting teacher professionalism.

Professional learning creates opportunities for educational change at a variety of scales from individual, institutional, and system-level. The pathways from inspiration through implementation to transformation are rarely linear or smooth and leading improvement is complex. In this symposium we will explore a new conceptualisation of educational change. Five dynamic phases will be introduced (Lofthouse et al, in preparation), through which relational and reciprocal affordances and constraints between individuals and their contexts evolve. The significance of professional learning networks and networking will be critically explored through exemplification at school and system levels as well as in a more rhizomatic community.

We offer perspectives as pracademic leaders ‘working astride and dynamically across both practice and academia domains’ (Hollweck et al, 2022, p.8). We consider how as leaders we enable encounters and reflect on the extent to which these become foundations for professional learning. We discuss the capacities and pitfalls of having (and not having) funding and strategic responsibility for improvement. The five dynamic phases will be used to articulate each example and offer a critique of the extent of sustainable change.

Participant discussion will explore how the five dynamic phases can frame understandings of educational change through practitioner, policymaker and researcher lenses.

A culture of professional learning is at times a complex and dynamic map that adapts to the nuance and context of the organisation. Adding structure to something that thrives on natural growth may appear a contradiction, but in this paper we share how clear processes and conditions can be witnessed at different stages of a PLC development. The paper exemplifies how we are creating and sustaining a whole school culture of leading and learning through our whole school PLC and how this has supported high-quality teaching and learning across the school.

This paper draws on the experiences of educational leaders in an all through British international school who have created, led and sustained a whole school professional Learning community for the last 6 years. Our PLC rests on genuine, sustained collaboration that enables trusted-creativity, purposeful-reflection and focused-analysis of learning and leadership. It is a whole school model that values the inquiry and collaboration of all of our community members, sharing expertise and learning within and beyond the school. Since 2016, we have used the terms ‘self’, ‘others’ and ‘organisation’ to understand the layers of our PLC ecosystem. To add momentum to the cultural growth of our PLC, staff can apply for two-year positions as ‘Professional Learning Partners’ who help drive innovation forward.

Literature reviews have provided evidence of staged processes to the growth and development of a PLC, and in this paper we reflect on our experiences in relation to the models offered by Stoll and Bolam 2006, Hargreaves and Fullan 2012, Lofthouse, Hollweck and Booten (In Preparation), Hargreaves and Fink 2006, Stoll and Fink 1989 and draw on evidence from previous papers presented at ICSEI 2019 & ICSEI 2020.

This paper reports on the analysis of qualitative data gathered from individual and group interviews, discussions, staff and student feedback surveys, meeting minutes, and recorded reflections. Additionally, since 2018, The British School of Brussels (BSB) has invited the critique of external trusted partners and critical friends to share their perspectives contributing to our growth and development.

It is hoped that by sharing our story and inviting like-minded colleagues to contribute to discussion, it can open the door to a wider network of professionals learning from each other, strengthening our PLC and creating dialogue to support teacher and leader development. We believe, in accordance with wide and varying literature, that a strong PLC not only builds professional capital, but ultimately can ensure deep learning for all students (Datnow & Park, 2019; Hargreaves and O’Connor, 2018; Fullan, 2017; Timperley, 2011; West Burnham & O’Sullivan, 1998). As a unique whole school setting where all of our community members have an active role in our PLC, we believe we are leading a genuinely sustainable PL culture. We continuously review both the conditions that support growth and the barriers that need to be overcome and look forward to sharing our findings.

This paper critically examines the initiation, implementation and ultimately, sustainability of a national network while also exploring the extent to which its deliberately designed learning encounters influenced network member’s classroom practice, professional collaboration and school culture. Taking a pracademic stance, the inquiry also explores what it means to lead improvement collaboratively and sustainably at a national level by highlighting some of the successes and tensions experienced by the network leader.

The following inquiry question is addressed in this paper:

In what ways does the national network’s design and deliberate learning encounters influence its members’ professional learning and development and contribute to mobilising future positive change?

The aim of the national network presented in this paper is to bring together 41 school teams from different contexts and communities across 7 provinces in Canada with a shared purpose of the network to bring more play-based learning into the middle years (grades 4-8) classrooms. Over the course of one academic school year, each school team of 3-4 teachers and one school leader, were provided with support to co-design and implement their own learning through play project that would meet the needs of their school community. The support provided by the network included funding for their project and monthly teacher release time for school team members to work together. Team members also participated in a coaching session with the network leader at the start of the year and were invited to participate in a variety of structured network ‘choose your own adventure’ activities that enabled them to learn from international experts, connect with other network members, share innovative practices and resources, reflect on their experience, and help spark a movement to drive positive change in public education.

With an aim to examine the impact and sustainability of the national network after its first year, this inquiry used the five dynamic phases of educational change introduced in this symposium as its theoretical framework. Data collected from semi-structured interviews, school visits, monthly reflections and group discussions from the 41 participating school teams (n=160) were analysed abductively with and against the five phases. Abductive analysis is described as a “creative inferential process” (Tavory and Timmermans, 2014, p. 5) whereby researchers work iteratively to generate theoretical insights from unexpected findings (Chew, 2020).

Some of the emerging findings and insights that will be shared in this paper include the importance of a shared purpose and sense of legitimacy that comes from being part of a national network, striking a balance between deliberately designed learning and accountability encounters and agency for network members, and providing structured and sustained opportunities for collaborative work and reflection. The paper will also highlight the type of network activities that were reported as most impactful for members. Finally, the paper will discuss the challenges of designing and leading a sustainable network that aims to create educational change and spark a positive play-based movement in public education but which is situated in an unstable funding and dynamic post-pandemic political context.

This paper focuses on a group of educational ‘others’ who form a university-hosted network or ‘collective’ which aims to expand the available knowledge base on coaching, mentoring and collaborative professional development and to develop new approaches to active knowledge mobilization. The values and purpose of the community include to increase the opportunities for positive educational change through enhanced professional agency and wellbeing.

This paper will explore the extent to which the creation of this fluid, and largely virtual community has built and sustained momentum towards positive change. In doing so the following enquiry question is addressed;

What role can a rhizomatic network of individuals with shared interests, but diverse educational contexts and roles lead, or even influence improvement?

The enquiry is undertaken through a pracademic stance, with the director of the network creating a series of vignettes which depict episodes in the five year history of the collective. These are shared for reflection with members of the network who are invited to respond in two ways;

• Adding comments related to the vignettes to a padlet

• Attending focus groups to discuss themes emerging from both the vignettes and the emerging padlet reflections

This qualitative data is analysed in relation to the conceptualisation of the five dynamic phases of educational change. The findings and implications are emergent, but include

• Participants value engaging in informal learning opportunities within a cross-phase, cross-sectoral, international and cross-role community.

• Adopting virtual meeting spaces with a variety of forms (including networking, themed discussions, book and article ‘clubs’) helped to create a new education network.

• Sustaining activity in the network required pracademic leadership which extended the role and academic identity of teacher educator and researcher to help ‘preserve the currency of their knowledge’ (Dickinson et al., 2022, p301)

• The network has become a critical mass allowing practice, research and innovation to be shared and co-constructed.

• Educators who have discretion about their attendance and participation in opportunities for professional learning are making deliberate decisions that they recognise as having value for them: this helps build momentum and motivation for individual practice-based developments away from the network.

• The online spaces enable conversation around themes of common interest; participants discover each others’ expertise and ambitions and build further informal and formal collaborations based on new working relationships and friendships and new opportunities for change have emerged.

• Through its rhizomatic character the community becomes curriculum (Cormier, 2008) and there is an organic quality to this work. It is neither linear or simply objective-led. Participants find this a welcome change to much of the current education practice and policy in professional development.

• While hosting the network within a university has created affordances for the members it also creates internal organisational tension. Navigating these is a source of turbulence within academic practice.

• Tracking the influence of the network through the five dynamic phases of educational change reveals a mosaic of changes rather than a pathway to impact.

Under the right circumstances, collaborative professionalism (CP) in education that combines solidarity of relationships with solidity of structures and protocols to deepen those relationships can lead to increased innovation and teacher renewal (Lieberman, Campbell & Yashkina, 2018; Hargreaves and O’Connor, 2018; Revai, 2020). In this sense, CP is about the nature of networked relationships between and beyond schools. Drawing on empirical and policy-based research, this symposium considers how to facilitate sustainable CP and how it can contribute to teacher renewal and development beyond the places and the periods where CP originally occurred.

The symposium will explore these essential questions about collaborative professionalism by bringing together studies of school-to-school collaboration in the context of an East African country, of the composition of relationships inside and outside innovative school teams in Canada, and, in a European country, of what happens to “seconded” teachers who spend time away from schools working on system innovations and improvements, how collaborative professionalism develops and the resulting professional capital accrued while away from school, and the impact once they return back to school and classroom-based assignments. It will close with reflective remarks and guided discussion led by a prominent scholar in the field of collaborative professionalism.

Policy focus:

In 2022-2023, The LEGO Foundation funded an international group of school networks to support and promote play-based learning for vulnerable and marginalized young people in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using some of this research and development funding, a University of Ottawa team developed a network of 41 schools across Canada to develop play-based learning initiatives for marginalized students in the middle years and network them together to deepen their practice. A member of the university team along with a partner from one of the participating school districts have developed a framework for educators within the network and elsewhere to reflect on and create indicators for sustainable network-based innovation.

Theoretical Framework:

The design of the reflective framework is based on Hargreaves & Fink’s (2006, 2022) widely cited seven principles of sustainable leadership and innovation, and on research on collaborative professionalism conducted by one of the authors, as well as by others (Campbell, 2016).

Focus:

This paper briefly outlines the seven principles of sustainable collaborative professionalism (depth, endurance, breadth, diversity, environmental impact, energy renewal and conservation) and concentrates in detail on three of them – breadth, diversity & environmental impact on other groups and priorities. Drawing on case studies of 12 of the 41 schools, it examines:

- the sustainability or non-sustainability of team composition.

- the representativeness & diversity of the teams in terms of role, gender, and orientation to innovation.

- the impact of these factors on breadth of impact beyond the innovation teams in schools.

Methods and Data:

- Data from recorded and transcribed individual and focus group interviews of approximately 4 hours with the playful learning teams in each of 12 project schools, spread across 6 Canadian provinces.

- Application to and intersection with theories of collaborative professionalism and sustainable change resulting in a reflective framework of sustainable collaborative professionalism.

Results:

- An instrument that sets out the framework of 7 principles of collaborative professionalism

- Case examples and vignettes highlighting issues within each of the three chosen principles of sustainability.

Implications:

This framework will be usable by schools, districts, and even broader systems to guide and track initiatives related to sustainable collaborative professionalism.

Policy focus:

School-to-school collaboration in Kenya is at a relatively immature phase. There is dearth of empirical research undertaken on collaborative professionalism in schools and its impact and influence on student achievement (Wambua, 2022). Kenya’s education system still remains deeply marketised, the gap between the policy and practice is widening, and education is geared towards competition for positional goods. Top-down school governance approach has created more room for high social regulation and ignored the fact that no school system can effectively serve its students if its teachers do not share knowledge, skills, experiences, resources and ideas. Functional school networks de-privatize teaching thus widening opportunities for enhanced reflection in relation to the primary task at hand. Learning should always be seen as a negotiation, a discussion and a dialogue.

Objectives of the study:

The challenges facing teaching and learning appear to increase exponentially, and individualism and presentism seem not to achieve sustainable magic since the spirit of school networks is not much alive. As such, this study aims to:

i.) Establish how school networks can act as a nexus between policy and practice in Kenya’s school system;

ii.) Conceptualize the relationship between collaborative professionalism and student achievement.

Theoretical Framework:

This study is guided by the theory of action – which stresses on values, beliefs, and attitudes which are fundamental yet bypassed by educators (Robinson, 2018). Solving the wicked challenge of school improvement requires investigation into the material conditions supporting a particular behaviour – since expectations influence behaviour and behaviour influences performance.

Methods and data:

Mixed methods were applied in the study. 254 questionnaire responses – 157 responses from school teachers, 71 responses from school heads and 26 responses from system leaders – were obtained from across the country. For qualitative data, 23 participants were interviewed in total i.e 11 school teachers, 5 school heads and 7 education system leaders.

Results:

The findings showed a gap between research, policy and practice. Competition between and among schools is very common and misconceptions on school-to-school collaboration still linger among educators across the board. Teachers are still seen as “Kings and Queens” in their classrooms. They decide what to teach, how to teach and when to teach. The few schools that embraced collaborative teaching and learning witnessed increases in student achievement.

Key lessons for policy and practice:

- School-to-school collaboration leads to better learning outcomes. Threads and knots in school networks have a positive impact on student learning.

- De-privatized practice improves teacher confidence. Teachers develop personal and collective mastery of the content, and believe in their capabilities to produce a better learner.

- Clarity in policies and procedures. There is a great need to audit existing policies and legislate new ones in support of school-to-school collaboration.

- Schools should be seen as learning organizations. Teachers, school heads and system leaders should continuously improve their skills and bear in mind that cultures that work together hold the prospect of long-term impact that is not dependent on a few individuals but the whole team (Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2018).

Policy Focus:

In Ireland state funded support services providing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers are staffed with teachers seconded from their schools annually for a maximum of five consecutive years. Policy legitimises temporary tenures by claiming that the professional development of these teachers will be enhanced by the secondment and that the schools to which they belong will benefit accordingly when the teachers return (Department of Education, 2018).

Problem:

There is a significant gap in what is known about the professional experiences and learning of teachers during these secondments. More specifically there has been no research capturing if and how the school gains from this on their return.

Aim:

This paper outlines the learning and experience acquired by teachers seconded to an Irish CPD service, how it shaped their identities and influenced their post-secondment careers.

Method:

Semi-structured interviews explored this from the perspective of primary and post-primary teachers previously seconded to the service who have since either returned to school or taken up other positions in the system.

Theoretical Framework:

Rooted in the field of career dynamics the theoretical framework maps out key stages navigated by these teachers while transitioning into, through and out of the service and onto their post-secondment career destinations.

Findings

The paper reveals

- extensive professional learning and capital acquired by these teachers during secondment

- the transformational impact of CPD practices such as lesson study and critical friendships

- how internal collaborative professionalism is nurtured across subject and sectoral boundaries through ‘expansive learning’ networks (Engeström, 2004)

- how shared desires for knowledge expansion and tolerance for healthy dissonance contribute to a collective intelligence

- how hybridity as teachers/teacher educators with daily proximity to both the profession and policymakers, spawns third space identities (Whitchurch, 2013) and dichotomous social capital to negotiate policy/practice boundaries

- how decisional capital is sharpened by the social capital built through intentional networking with external partners.

The paper exposes:

- paradoxical tension between the transformative impact of accrued professional capital and secondment’s capricious tenure conditions

- premature departures from the service to alternative education bodies offering career stability and platforms for long-term use of this professional capital

- a marked redundancy of such capital for teachers returning to school owing to accountability pressures, hurried classrooms and static cultures thus challenging assumptions that secondment benefits the school.

- a lack of career pathways for harnessing accrued capital and policy’s incognisance of conditions necessary for collaborative professionalism to thrive in schools.

- a ‘myopic view of teacher learning as solely attached to compliance ‘deliverables’ ignoring its deeper purpose within deliberate and collaborative efforts towards school improvement.

Contribution:

The paper yields:

- insights into the identities, work and learning of teacher educators working in the CPD sector.

- signature pedagogies required for reaching proficiency as a teacher educator

- recommendations for career pathways within CPD services and for teachers returning to school towards sustainable investment in accrued professional capital

- a transferable theoretical framework for exploring career transition into, through and out of a professional role