School leadership as collective profession: A mixed methods study on the role of professional learning communities in times of crisis

Lopez, Aura Seghers, Maud Cabus, Sofie März, Virginie [UCL]

Over the last decade, educational research has clearly identified school leaders as essential front-line implementers in efforts to improve schools and student learning (Bloom et al., 2014; Gumus et al., 2018; Grissom et al., 2021; Leithwood et al., 2020). Educational leadership has also become a concern for policymakers across the globe. More specifically, in the Latin American region, a growing interest in the role and effectiveness of school leaders is visible in the introduction of educational leadership policies as part of education reform agendas as well as in the presence of national research agendas (Ahumada, 2010; Avalos, 2011; Flessa, 2014). In the Ecuadorian context, there is an increasing call to support current school leaders, to make school leadership an attractive career for future candidates, and to professionalize school leadership. In the absence of formal pre-service training and induction programs for beginning principals, the notion of collective learning within Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) rapidly gained strength in Ecuador, as an opportunity to socialize, mentor, and professionalize school leaders (Stoll et al., 2006). By bringing together school leaders in a systematic way, PLCs aim to further develop the capacity of school leaders by creating a collaborative environment and collective responsibility among school leaders. The last couple of years, we have seen an increase in the number of studies on PLCs as a professional development strategy. Most studies focus on how PLCs contribute to school leaders’ professional development and collective learning to ensure the adoption of effective practices to improve schools and learning outcomes. Viewed from this perspective, PLCs can be defined as “collaborative teams whose members work interdependently to achieve common goals linked to the purpose of student learning” (DuFour et al., 2006, p.3). Current research on professional development models has identified collaborative knowledge development and knowledge exchange as being important for effective professional development (Daniëls et al., 2019; Stoll et al., 2006). Through professional interactions, educational professionals deepen their understanding of new educational practices (Rincón-Gallardo & Fullan, 2016). The specific new practices of interest for the Ecuadorian context, are those related to distributed leadership, whereby principals are no longer expected to be the only ones who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve the school's educational goals, but rather promote and facilitate teacher collaboration and, thus, distribute leadership across the school team (Devos, Tuytens, & Hulpia, 2014; Spillane, 2005). For some researchers “distributed leadership has become the default leadership response in this current [COVID-19] crisis requiring more school leaders, at all levels, to connect, share, learn and network their way through issues” (Harris & Jones, 2020: 246). But how does that play out in a context where more top-down leadership styles have long been the norm (Macías & Guzmán, 2016; UNESCO, 2014)? At the same time, PLCs have also been observed as a mechanism to build social networks and give leaders access to a broader support network (human, material, social) that enables and facilitates social relationships between school leaders and provides meaningful connections and solidarity in times of crisis, in (or despite) virtual environments. To study how PLCs can function as informal learning networks in times of crisis (see also Azorín, 2020), we will make use of social network theory. Rather than explaining social phenomena (such leadership behavior) by investigating individuals’ characteristics, social network theory focuses on the system of social relations within which the phenomenon is embedded (Borgatti & Ofem, 2010). In other words, social network theory foregrounds individuals’ attitudes and behaviours as affected by the social structures in which they find themselves (Borgatti & Ofem, 2010; Moolenaar & Sleegers, 2015). School leadership is thus seen as a collective and collaborative profession. Social networks produce social capital: being part of a relationship provides the actors with a wide range of possible resources like help, support, or even a sense of well-being. Through professional interactions and networks, educational actors can learn from each other, transfer information, and get access to knowledge and social support. Our paper presentation will investigate whether Ecuador’s PLCs indeed generated such social capital for school leaders at the front-line of education delivery during COVID-19. We will present the results of a mixed-methods study on the impact of PLCs in times of crisis on leadership development, in terms of distributed leadership and leadership networks. Regarding the qualitative study, we conducted an exploratory multiple case study based on four purposively selected PLCs for school leaders in upper-secondary technical (bachillerato técnico) education (two PLCs from Esmeraldas, two PLCs from Manabí). Data collection took place between July and September 2020 and combined online focus groups with (vice-)principals (N= 13 focus groups; 52 participants) and semi-structured interviews with pedagogical counselors (asesores) supervising the PLCs (N= 5 instructional coaches). All data were recorded, transcribed, and interpretively coded using Atlas.ti. The method used for the analysis was content analysis (reduce data, show data, draw conclusions, and verify) and involved two phases: a within-case and a cross-case analysis. The quantitative component of the study used a Distributed Leadership questionnaire administered in online between December and January 2021 to an N=239 sample of school leaders (N=198), teacher leaders (N=16), subject teachers (N=21), school inspectors (N=4), participating in 23 PLCs. The questionnaire was designed to assess five dimensions: communication and relationships, distributed leadership, teacher support, distributed leadership culture, and structural conditions. The questionnaire has been structured with a pre-post pandemic set of questions with the aim to evaluate changes in leadership development, practices, and networks established, channeled through participation in PLCs. The analysis of results is still ongoing, using the quantitative analysis software SPSS, where descriptive statistics will be calculated, and the means will be compared (T-student) to define if there are significant differences between the answers given by the members of the different PLCs. Answers to open questions will be categorized, added to existing or emerging codes, and analyzed using Atlas.ti.