Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Doing qualitative research: a practical handbook, by David Silverman, Los Angeles, Sage, 2010, 456 pp., AU$65.00, ISBN 978-1-84860-033-1, ISBN 978-1-94960-034-8. Available in Australia and New Zeal...

Doing qualitative research: a practical handbook

International evidence suggests that educational reform’s progress
depends on teachers’ individual and collective capacity and its link with schoolwide
capacity for promoting pupils’ learning. Building capacity is therefore
critical. Capacity is a complex blend of motivation, skill, positive learning,
organisational conditions and culture, and infrastructure of support. Put together,
it gives individuals, groups, whole school communities and school systems the
power to get involved in and sustain learning over time. Developing professional
learning communities appears to hold considerable promise for capacity building
for sustainable improvement. As such, it has become a ‘hot topic’ in many
countries.

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

This article argues for a reconceptualization of leadership. Possible substitutes for leadership are reviewed along with a number of existing dualisms. These are rejected in favour of the claim that the leadership of organizations is most appropriately understood as a distributed, rather thanas a focused, phenomenon. Various attributes, dimensions and applications of distribution are then considered, and a revised approach to action and influence in organizations centred on conjointly performed activities is thenproposed. For this new formulation a summary is provided of the core concepts of, and recent developments in, activity theory. It is shown that two particular advantages of this approach include the helpful model it provides for contextual analysis—an aspect sorely neglected by the field of leadership—and its focus on the evolving division of labour in organizations, the prime mover for tracking emerging patterns of distributed leadership.

Distributed Properties A New Architecture for Leadership

This article considers the relationship between distributed leadership and school improvement. Drawing upon empirical evidence from two contemporary studies of successful school leadership and recent studies of school improvement, it explores the extent to which distributed forms of leadership can contribute to school improvement. The article argues that the distributed perspective offers a new and important theoretical lens through which leadership practice in school can be reconfigured and reconceptualized. It concludes by suggesting that, while evidence would suggest that distributed forms of leadership can assist capacity building within schools which contributes to school improvement, further research is needed to confirm a relationship between distributed forms of leadership and improved student learning outcomes.

Distributed Leadership and School Improvement: Leading or Misleading?.

The theories used to describe and explain educational leadership are subject to change as interests and priorities unfold. In the 21st century, distributed leadership has become increasingly fashionable as scholars, policy-makers and practitioners regard it as an appropriate way to lead and manage schools and other educational organisations. This model provides the potential for principals to share leadership, partly to reduce workloads and partly to empower and develop teachers. In the version of the model promulgated in the global north, distribution is seen as ‘emergent’, with principals nurturing a climate to encourage leadership initiatives that may arise anywhere in the organisation. A contrasting version, sometimes encouraged or mandated in centralised systems, is allocative distribution where tasks are given to teachers, notably senior and middle leaders, in a process often indistinguishable from delegation (Bush and Ng, 2019). Micropolitics, a model pioneered by Eric Hoyle (1982) in the 1980s, is based on the assumption that conflict is endemic in organisations, as participants seek to promote and defend their interests, both personal and professional. Interest groups arise, perhaps linked to subjects, and compete for supremacy within schools. Conflicts are usually resolved through the exercise of power and it is principals, of course, who usually have the most power in schools. This model has become much less prominent in the new millennium, perhaps because it is seen as unduly cynical in portraying staff in professional organisations as pursuing conflict rather than consensus. Mor Hodaya and Izhak Berkovich provide a rare contribution to distributed leadership theory by aligning it with micropolitics. They claim that distributed leadership largely adopts an apolitical outlook, with a limited focus on how it links with power. The authors adopted a multiple case-study design, with four Israeli secondary schools. Because they are generally larger and more complex than primary schools, they are ‘ideal sites’ for exploring distributed leadership. Their data indicate ‘imperfect’ distribution, noting that principals exerted control through ‘veto power’. They claim that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, for example, tends to promote distributed leadership. They conclude that policy makers wishing to promote distributed leadership should foster context-specific supportive conditions. Joan Andres Traver-Marti and her colleagues also focus on distributed leadership, in the context of Spanish inclusive schools. They define inclusive schools as those which are committed to ensuring that all students benefit from equal access to quality education. They also adopted a multiple case-study design, with four public infant and primary schools in four different regions of Spain. Through their participatory action research projects, they claim that the four management teams followed inclusive and democratic leadership practices, similar to what is understood as distributed leadership. They conclude that management teams are key to developing inclusive education, by fostering collaboration, shared vision and collective decision-making. A central question in understanding distributed leadership is ‘to whom is leadership distributed’, although this also assumes a deliberate rather than an inadvertent process. In many settings, particularly where distribution may be characterised as allocative, it is senior leadership figures who are the Editorial

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/17411432231156397

Distributed leadership and micropolitics

RC1. Alphasense NO2-A43F electrochemical NO2 sensors (and Alphasense NO2-B43F) have a known cross-sensitivity to ozone (Spinelle et al.). Although the Praxis Urban sensor system and the St Ebbe’s monitoring site do not appear to measure ozone, the study fails to mention/address this concern. While inclusion of this variable into feature training could restrict the spread of this model to other networks, it could greatly enhance the performance of the NO2 model. Spinelle et al. also found that sensors from the same manufacturer can behave differently in the same environmental conditions. This manuscript would greatly benefit from applying your model to more than one sensor to demonstrate its capability to nullify discrepancies from sensor to sensor. (Spinelle, L.; Gerboles, M.; Kotsev, A.; Signorini, M. Evaluation of Low-Cost Sensors for Air Pollution Monitoring: Effect of Gaseous Interfering Compounds and Meteorlogical Conditions; Publications Office of the European Union:Luxemborg, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2760/548327)

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Reply on RC1 - response to detailed comments from authors

RC2. The applied data post-processing approach is in my view not sufficiently explained. The different applied stages are described, that is good, however, some of the stages raise questions: The filters applied in stage 1 are presented in Table 1. If I understand the logic behind the filters as presented, I conclude that all observations at relative humidity > 35% had to be removed. It is unlikely that this is true, please correct (if yes the sensors are useless for most locations).

/pdf/reply-on-rc2-response-to-detailed-comments-from-authors-jvdg61rs.pdf

Reply on RC2 - response to detailed comments from authors

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1741143211429250

Developing Leaders for Diverse Schools

Instructional leadership is widely recognized as important for school improvement and a significant tool for creating an effective teaching and learning environment. The British Council is committed to promoting and developing instructional leadership and is offering programmes to develop it in several African countries, including Tanzania. These programmes focus on developing and improving instructional leadership in schools. The programme is provided by British Council facilitators to school leaders and is delivered over a period of six to nine months, including time for a school-based project. Previous research shows that leadership in many sub-Saharan African countries, including Tanzania, is primarily administrative and that instructional leadership is often neglected. Data were collected with 20 participants of the British Council programme, all primary school leaders, chosen through volunteer and purposive sampling. The findings show many reported gains from participation, notably greater understanding of key concepts such as vision and missions distributed leadership, and instructional leadership processes, notably classroom observation.

Tony Bush

Papers

Distributed leadership and micropolitics

Reply on RC1 - response to detailed comments from authors

Reply on RC2 - response to detailed comments from authors

Developing Leaders for Diverse Schools

Developing Instructional Leadership in Tanzania: Impact of a British Council Initiative