Conference Agenda

The purpose of this paper is, to describe, through the lens of educational change research, two long-term projects aimed at extending and refining the instructional practices of teachers and to share a developing framework based on change theory that we suggest could be used to inform the design, monitoring and assessment of educational change initiatives.

In this paper the authors expand on research first shared in 2018 (AERA, 2018), describing and reviewing how educators in Ireland and Australia are working to systematically refine and extend teachers’ instructional repertoires based on a common programme of action through enacting current research related to change and systemic change.

In Ireland the project is called the Instructional Leadership Programme (ILP) and is an ongoing project that currently involves a total of 185 post-primary schools in Ireland (approximately 25% of all public post-primary schools). In Western Australia, the project is known as the Instructional Intelligence Professional Development Program (IIPD). It ran from 2005-2011 and involved ten vocational education and training colleges (100% of the state public-funded college system). The rationale for each initiative is our focus on ‘working at’ impacting student learning through teacher learning.

We offer insights, from both settings, to change implementation, with the Irish project now in its 15th year, and the Australian project, which ran for seven years. We avail of and seek to contribute to an evolving framework based on change research that has been used to guide our thinking, our actions and reviews of each project. In reviewing our efforts, we believe our work resonates with the theme of the conference, Quality Professional Education for Enhanced School Effectiveness and Improvement and in particular the subtheme of Educational Leadership Network. We believe our paper offers unique and useful stories and lessons on the process of large-scale systemic change, aimed at enhancing teacher and school effectiveness.

We initially draw on the theoretical frame offered by Huberman and Miles (1984) who describe three evolving phases of change: (1) initiation (decisions made prior to starting), (2) implementation (actions taken once making the decision to start), and (3) institutionalization (actions taken to embed and build internal capacity to not only sustain but respond to the never-ending press of educational change). Fullan (2015) ascribes to these three phases, collectively describing them as the “Triple I Model” (p. 54) and uses these as a base from which to build and develop his theoretical and conceptual perspectives on educational change. Concomitantly, we have employed them to frame our approach to critiquing our systemic efforts.

A critique of the projects is offered and we share our self-review through the change lens and the factors previously outlined in this paper. In so doing we contend our work contributes to a better understanding of what factors require attention when efforts are made to enhance school effectiveness and improvement. We believe our research will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

Professional Learning Communities are important to introduce new initiatives and bring about change within a school. How a school leader ensures that this change is sustainable, deep lasting and genuinely staff-led is a greater challenge than the introduction of the initiative itself and has the potential for its results to be immensely powerful and far reaching.

This paper draws on the experiences of educational leaders at the British School of Brussels (BSB) who have created, lead, and sustained an effective whole school PLC for the last 6 years. Since the outset, leaders have intentionally created a whole school Professional Learning Community built on genuine sustained collaboration that enables trusted creativity, purposeful reflection and focused analysis of learning and leadership.

Since 2017, the school has undergone a cultural shift. In terms of PL, we have moved from a sporadic, directed model of PD for teachers, to an ongoing, intrinsically motivated, self-accountable model of PL for all. The PLC model in this setting is a ‘whole school model’ that fosters staff interdependency, self-directed learning and is underpinned by distributed leadership.

Approaching PL in this way has been part of a wider cultural shift. We witness that staff relationships are strong, they feel trusted and supported to approach their learning in creative, collaborative, and welcome peer accountability. Staff purposefully and actively engage to co-create an ethical future-focused vision of education.

This is an effective model. Data collated over time demonstrates a compelling correlation between the PLC ways of working and improved practice and outcomes.

This paper reports on the analysis of qualitative data, viewed through multi-dimensional framework of self, others and organisation. Data is gathered from and triangulated with multiple sources. Additionally, since 2018, BSB has invited the critique of external trusted partners and critical friends who have openly shared their perspectives to our approaches.

In this paper we identify deliberate leadership interventions and exemplify several enabling processes that ensured success. Key learning from our inquiry shows the importance of collaboratively creating and sharing a vision, creating supportive and trusting environments, knowing our staff well, recognising the strengths of each individual, allowing for risk-taking and innovative approaches, building connectivity, providing the resources needed for growth and creating structures and process that sustain a learning culture across the organisation.

We offer here a humanistic and ‘transformational’ leadership model that supports at all levels of the school organisation and deals with the concepts and cultures that matter rather than administrative detail. It is our belief that by getting the culture right, everything will follow.

We recognize that the strength of a PLC lies in understanding the context and nuance of each setting, but we aim that by sharing our examples, along with the wider theoretical framework, that we will empower other schools to enact genuine deep and lasting change in line with the ICSEI 2024 theme: ‘Quality Professional Education for Enhanced School Effectiveness and Improvement.’

Into Headship is Scotland’s national professional learning programme for principalship, a masters level qualification aligned to the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s (GTCS) Professional Standards, leading to the award of the Standard for Headship, a pre-requisite for all newly appointed headteachers. The programme is rooted in the GTCS Standards which are underpinned by core principles of agency, criticality, strategic leadership and social justice. This paper presents the findings of a research project which investigated the experiences, responses and impact of Into Headship on a group of aspiring principals, during the Covid-19 crisis. This study is rooted in a pragmatic constructivist paradigm which recognises that the purpose of inquiry is the advancement of understanding rather than the search for absolute truths. The methods used to gather data were questionnaires and semi-structured online interviews. Data was analysed using a thematic analysis approach and themes categorised using the ecological agency model. Initial findings from the study signal the importance of the social aspects of learning, the place of values within educational leadership and the relational dimension of leading a school community while also highlighting tensions within the system. Conclusions are drawn from the emergent themes and implications for the future of leadership development programmes are presented.

An ecological model of agency was used to shape the research design process and analyse the data to reveal ways in which this sustained headship professional development programme fostered the agency of the participants in leading school improvement processes. Details of the Into Headship programme are outlined then the methodology which underpinned the study are discussed and findings presented. The paper concludes that the underpinning values, concepts, design processes and practices of the programme, enhanced the agency of participants in a variety of ways and provided them with key understandings about the political tensions they faced while also equipping them with strategies to navigate a way through these competing demands and expectations, to lead school improvement.