Conference Agenda

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.