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Disabling conditions: Investigating instructionalleadership teams in action
Jennie Miles Weiner
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract This study investigated why and how principals selected members for
their instructional leadership team (ILT) and how this selection criteria and process
may have impacted team members’ understandings of, and behaviors on, the team.
Qualitative methods, specifically interviews and observations, were used to explore
team members’ perceptions regarding the team’s purpose, function, and selection
criteria as well as how these perceptions seemed to impact team members’
behaviors. Data were collected for a period of 8 months during the 2011–2012
school year from ILT in four, in-district charter schools. Results suggest that
principals had difficulty articulating their teams’ purposes and functions, with the
latter remaining primarily informational or consultative; members were not given
decision-making authority. Additionally, when selecting team members, principals
prioritized broad representation of teacher groups over other criteria. This focus on
role representation above expertise, coupled with teachers’ tendencies to embrace
traditional professional norms, limited ILT members’ abilities to effectively work
together to lead instructional reform.
Keywords Educational leadership � Educational change �Teacher Collaboration � Shared leadership
Introduction
In the 1970s, Lortie (1975) characterized the teaching profession as lacking a strong
technical culture and embracing professional norms of autonomy, egalitarianism, and
conservatism. Since then, various reforms have been introduced to reform school
culture and improve educational outcomes. Some, like those promoted by the
J. M. Weiner (&)
Neag School of Education, 249 Glenbrook Road, Unit 3093, Storrs, CT 06269, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
123
J Educ Change
DOI 10.1007/s10833-014-9233-1
accountability movement, take a ‘‘carrot and stick’’ approach, attempting to use
performance measures to change teacher behaviors (DuFour and Mattos 2013; Jacobs
2005). Others, like charter schools, take the view that bureaucratic structures create
school cultures unresponsive to change, and therefore leverage market forces to
support reform (Chubb and Moe 1988; Walberg and Bast 2003). Despite these
attempts and nearly 40 years after Lortie’s observations, questions remain about
whether these or other myriad reforms have made positives changes to school culture
(Ballet et al. 2006; Valli and Buese 2007; Hill and Barth 2004), instruction (Horn and
Miron 1999; Preston et al. 2012), or student achievement (Hemelt 2011; Stuit 2010).
Perhaps partially in response to the absence of real change as a result of these
reforms, many reformers’ focus has shifted to the intersection between school
culture and teacher daily practice, and on creating opportunities for administrators,
teachers, and other stakeholders to engage in collective learning and leadership
activities (Copland 2003; Hallinger 2011; Wahlstrom et al. 2010; Wells and Feun
2007). By reshaping teachers’ roles in school decision-making, these collective
leadership activities are thought to shift school culture to enhance teachers’
inclinations to innovate and implement reforms (Fletcher and Kaufer 2003; Gronn
2000; Spillane et al. 2001; Wahlstrom et al. 2010), and their instructional
proficiency, thereby improving student achievement (Barth 2001; Hallinger 2011,
2003; Harris and Muijs 2004; Hart 1990). While these potential positive outcomes
are often touted, questions nonetheless remain about how best to implement shared
leadership and what it actually looks like in action (Harris et al. 2007; Harris 2008;
Wells and Feun 2007, 2012).
Even so, many schools have implemented shared leadership models, including
school leadership teams (David 1991; Portin et al. 2006; Slater 1994). A relatively
new and prolific form of these teams is the instructional leadership team (ILT),
which aim to create and implement a school’s reform plan through an explicit focus
on instruction. Though ILTs are broadly implemented, little attention has been paid
to the challenges their members face in implementation or how these challenges
may impact team performance. This oversight is problematic as researchers who
focus on teams in various industries (Hackman 2002; Rico et al. 2011; Sims et al.
2005) have long argued that while teams can create effective outcomes, team
leaders often fail to create conditions for success (Chen et al. 2007; Stewart 2006).
This may be particularly true in education, where prevailing professional norms
often challenge increased teacher collaboration and empowerment (McLaughlin and
Talbert 2001; Wells and Feun 2007).
By focusing on what might be considered the seemingly straightforward, though
critical, condition of effective team composition (i.e., who is selected to the team
and why) (Dickinson and Mclntyre 1997; Mathieu et al. 2008; Neuman and Wright
1999; Wellins et al. 1994), the current research reveals how education’s deeply
ingrained professional norms continue to influence decision-making and perfor-
mance. After observing and interviewing ILT members in four, in-district charter
schools in a large Northeastern city, I found that though they worked in relatively
high performing schools with a number of autonomies, ILT members struggled to
lead instructional reform. This stemmed from the principals’ difficulties articulating
their teams’ purposes and functions. Without a clear way to frame the work, and
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given teaching’s weak technical core, principals focused on teacher expertise and
selected members from a broad array of teacher groups for the teams. This focus on
role representation above other important criteria, coupled with teachers’ tendencies
to embrace traditional professional norms, then shaped ILT members’ understand-
ing of their work and limited the teams’ ability to productively engage in
instructional reform.
Background
The move to introduce shared leadership models in schools and in particular, the
creation of teams comprised of teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders, finds
its origins in the 1980s (Chrispeels 2004; Newhall and Buchen 2004). At that time,
many states and districts introduced site-based management (SBM) and school
councils to transfer district decision-making to the schools. Despite their promise, such
initiatives had mixed results in raising student achievement (Malen and Ogawa 1998;
Smylie et al. 1996) or increasing teacher productivity (Ferris1992; Leithwood and
Menzies 1996; Malen et al. 1990), which suggested that simply providing
opportunities for decision-making may not have been enough to create real change
(Borman et al. 2003; Murphy and Beck 1995).
After studying these processes, scholars like Senge (1999) and Elmore (1995,
2002) argued that effective reform was contingent not only on implementing new
structures, but also on shifting school culture. To achieve this, decision-making
authority needed be extended to those, like teachers, who had not previously
occupied formal leadership roles (Bennett et al. 2003). Following this, researchers
like Spillane et al. (2001) and others (Copland 2003; Gronn 2000) came to re-
conceptualize school leadership as ‘‘distributed’’ across individuals identified by
patterns of decision-making and influence (Wahlstrom et al. 2010).
Professional learning communities (PLCs) are a prominent enactment of such
theories. PLCs aim to create deliberate opportunities for teachers and administrators to
engage in learning and critical reflection about teaching and learning (Fullan 2006;
Lieberman and Mace 2008). Through these opportunities, PLCs hope to enhance
school culture by increasing collaboration (McLaughlin and Talbert 2006; Wells and
Feun 2012; Westheimer 1999), and improving learning and teaching (Hord and
Sommers 2008; Mitchell and Sackney 2000; Toole and Louis 2002; Stoll et al. 2006),
and student achievement (Harris and Jones 2010; Hipp et al. 2008). While PLCs offer a
great deal in terms of creating collective action towards continual and sustainable
improvement (Harris 2011; Moller 2004; Stoll et al. 2006), questions remain about the
core characteristics of PLC work and their impact on performance (Hord and Sommers
2008; Stoll et al. 2006; Wells and Feun 2007, 2012).
One reason why it has been somewhat difficult to quantify the impact of PLCs is that
they require deep cultural shifts in how teachers understand and enact their roles
(Marzano et al. 2005; Sparks 2006). A critical component to create this shift is the
ability of the building leaders to, as Fullan (as cited in Wells and Feun 2007, p. 156) put
it, ‘‘cause greater capacity in the organization in order to get better results.’’ Indeed,
much of the PLC literature makes it clear that the school leader is ultimately
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responsible for driving reform (Fleming 2004; Morrissey and Cowan 2004; Mulford
and Silins 2003). While this emphasis on one leader’s ability to facilitate change in the
building confirms the reality that she is, ‘‘ultimately in charge of the choices in creating
the need for change that can make a difference in its implementation’’ (Wells and Feun
2012, p. 237), it does suggest that at least in the initial stages of implementation, PLCs
are relatively top-down (Hord and Sommers 2008; Levine 2011). As such, while PLCs
offer structures and rich opportunities for teachers and administrators to share
responsibility for instruction, they may not shift decision-making authority for
governance decisions typically held by the school leader.
One model that attempts to facilitate collaborative decision-making focused on
both instruction and school governance issues is the ILT. An ILT is tasked with
engaging in what Hallinger (2011) and others (Heck and Hallinger 2009; MacBeath
and Cheng 2008; Mulford and Silins 2009) call ‘‘leadership for learning.’’ Under
Wahlstrom et al. (2010) definition of leadership as providing direction and exercising
influence over others, ILT members lead by collaboratively determining the school’s
reform strategy, making decisions regarding resource allocation to ensure the
strategy’s success, and engaging others in implementing this strategy. Therefore, an
ILT and a PLC may be complementary though separate entities (e.g., an ILT may
decide to implement a PLC), with the ILT acting as implementation teams (Higgins
et al. 2012): teams tasked with leading a reform strategy and implementing it—an
understudied entity both in education and among team scholars.
While an ILT’s operations and success in shifting traditional school culture
remains largely unexplored in formal research, they appear in a number of union
contracts, district- and school-initiated reform agendas, and states’ Race to the Top
applications (e.g., Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, California, and Rhode Island). In
these cases the ILT, like other school leadership teams, are presented as a means to
empower teachers’ decision-making and therefore enhance teacher willingness to
implement instructional reforms, improve instructional practice and, ultimately,
raise student achievement (Chrispeels 1992; Harris et al. 2007; Rosenholtz 1985;
Scheerens and Bosker 1997).
However, though promises regarding the positive impact of an ILT abound, these
outcomes may not be inevitable. Reforms aimed at increasing teacher leadership and
collaboration have faced resistance (Fullan and Ballew 2001; McLaughlin and Talbert
2006; York-Barr and Duke 2004), especially when aimed at changing instruction (City
et al. 2009; Elmore 1996); it is therefore likely that an ILT will also face such
challenges. For an ILT to be successful, it seems that attention will need to be paid to
how they are structured from the start, including ensuring that members have the skills
and knowledge to meet potential challenges (Hackman 2002; Mathieu et al. 2008).
Theoretical framing
Who should be on the team
Currently there is little research on ILTs in action, and specifically a lack of
knowledge about how or why principals select certain individuals to serve on these
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teams. This section focuses on team membership, as composition has been shown to
be pivotal in shaping a team’s norms and culture (Bantel and Jackson 1989), and
hence its ability to achieve successful outcomes (Dickinson and Mclntyre 1997;
Neuman and Wright 1999; Wellins et al. 1994). The inquiry is grounded in social
psychology research on how leaders across industries can best select individuals to
serve on their teams (See Wellins 1991 for a review), and then turns to educational
research to explore how traditional school culture and norms may impact this
process. Placing these literatures in conversation provided opportunities to explore
what teams should be versus how they were likely to be as implemented in the
specific context of schools.
Research on teams has suggested that leaders, when thinking about who should
be on their team, consider the team’s purpose and its function (Hackman 2002;
Morgeson et al. 2010). Of course, doing so requires deliberative forethought about
the team’s purpose (i.e., what the team needs to do) and function (i.e. how they
should go about doing it). Unfortunately, as many who have worked on teams know,
teams often suffer from a lack of clarity in these areas (Rico et al. 2011; Sims et al.
2005). Appropriate criteria for the selection of effective team members become
difficult to identify as a result of this ambiguity.
Team purpose
When the team has a purpose that is clear, compelling, and consequential (Hackman
2002), research has revealed that team members should be selected to produce the
right mixture of individuals to accomplish that purpose (Dickinson and Mclntyre
1997; Neuman and Wright 1999; Wellins et al. 1994). The criteria that produces the
‘‘right mixture’’ of team members often includes a variety of components such as
potential members’ knowledge and skills (Cooke et al. 2003; Hirschfeld et al. 2005;
Mathieu et al. 2008), functions within the organization (Bunderson and Sutcliffe
2002), demographic and ethnic backgrounds (See Webber and Donahue 2001 for a
review), and personalities (Bell 2007; Mathieu et al. 2008). Moreover, these
characteristics should shift as the purpose and environmental context changes
(DeRue and Hollenbeck 2007; Swann et al. 2004).
For example, if the purpose of the team was to develop a new product, the leader
might select members with diverse technical skills and knowledge of the market. If
the goal was to enhance effectiveness within current systems (e.g., an ILT in a
school), the leader might select members by position to create a cross-functional
team (McDonough 2000) and ensure diversity of views and expertise from across
the organization. Recent work by Higgins et al. (2012) suggested that this strategy
already occurs in education; selecting individuals to represent particular roles (i.e.,
principal, curriculum specialists, assistant superintendent, etc.) seemed to drive
team member selection in superintendent leadership teams aimed at reforming
district practices. While including members based on position might seem
straightforward, little is known about how much to emphasize this characteristic
over other forms of diversity or how these mixtures relate to performance (Jackson
and Joshi 2004; Rico et al. 2011). Even if the specifics regarding the right mix of
individuals remains unknown, there is strong evidence that diverse expertise can
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improve performance and should be emphasized by leaders in the selection process
(Bantel and Jackson 1989; Van der Vegt and Bunderson 2005).
Team function
In addition to team purpose, leaders should also consider team function to determine
who should be on the team; this is particularly true for top management teams like
an ILT. For example, in their research on senior leadership teams across multiple
sectors, Wageman et al. (2008) created a taxonomy of four distinct functions such
teams often play: informational, consultative, coordinating, and decision-making.
An informational team exists primarily to provide the leader with data to make
informed decisions. A consultative team also provides the leader with information,
but requires members to debate this information and its implications. A coordinating
team provides information and manages points of intersection and interdependency
across the organization to accomplish the team’s goal. In this way, members make
decisions about their particular unit but not the whole organization. Finally, unlike
in the other functions, decision-making teams are empowered by the leader to make
strategic decisions regarding the organization (Wageman et. al).
While leadership teams can serve multiple functions, each of which has benefits
for team productivity, Wageman et al. (2008) made it clear that a team’s ability to
play different functions is limited by how much authority it is given: a team given
the authority to serve only an informational function cannot also serve a
coordinating or decision-making function. Team members, empowered by the
leader to make decisions for their department (i.e., a coordinating team), can then
serve a consulting and informational function but not a decision-making one.
Therefore, when the leader fails to give the team decision-making authority, she
also fails to fully utilize the team’s potential. Moreover, the team’s composition
should vary according to the team’s primary function (Wageman et al. 2008). For
example, as the main role of a team serving an informational function is to provide
data to the leader, team members’ abilities to interact with one another or their
expertise beyond their departments may not need to be considered. Alternatively, if
the team’s function is to decide on an organizational improvement strategy and lead
implementation (i.e., serve as a decision-making team), as is the case of the ILT, it
becomes important to consider whether these individuals are knowledgeable about
and represent views from across the organization, have expertise explicitly aligned
with the team’s goal, and can effectively work together and communicate the team’s
decisions to the larger community (Wageman et al. 2008).
Team member selection in the context of education
This section focuses on how elements of traditional school culture—specifically
teaching’s weak technical core and the norms of egalitarianism and autonomy—
may create challenges for the leader as she attempts to create a team built on
expertise and best suited to lead instructional reform at the school.
First, the expectation that expertise should serve as the primary driver of team
membership may be difficult to meet in schools where expertise has long been
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loosely defined (Fullan and Stiegelbauer 1991; Rosenholtz 1985) or shunned in
favor of the view that effective teaching is an expression of a teacher’s personality
(Lortie 1975). Teacher training and professional support tend to reinforce the idea of
teachers as technicians (Little 1993) and hence can limit teachers’ abilities to
perform expertly in their classrooms (Darling-Hammond 1996), or lead instructional
reform at their schools (York-Barr and Duke 2004; Dozier 2007). Once teachers are
in the classroom, they tend to take a trial and error rather than best practice approach
to their work making the identification of best practice difficult (Fullan 2001, 2006;
Huberman 1983; Rosenholtz 1985). Moreover, despite policies that include
oversight of teacher practice, like No Child Left Behind or recent attempts to
link teacher evaluation with student performance, many have argued that teacher
professionalism and sense of technical expertise is in decline (Hamilton et al. 2007;
Hill and Barth 2004).
Second, even if teachers did have the requisite expertise to effectively serve on
an ILT, due to prevailing professional norms of egalitarianism and autonomy
(Donaldson et al. 2008; Little 1990; Lortie 1975; Weiner 2011), they may not be
willing to do so (Dozier 2007; Little 1987; Katzenmeyer and Moller 2001; York-
Barr and Duke 2004). Indeed, even with the progress establishing teacher
collaboration and joint inquiry in schools (Goddard et al. 2007), many teachers
still lack the confidence to step outside of their classrooms and share ideas about
practice or critique each other’s work (Coyle 1997; Little 1990; Murphy 2005;
Smylie 1996), and often face resistance from peers when they attempt to do so
(Donaldson et al. 2008; Weiner 2011). Working and often acculturated within the
same context as their teachers, principals may be unwilling to directly address these
norms (Conley 1989; Yarger and Lee 1994), favoring harmony even at the cost of
better outcomes (Murphy). Therefore, while it is clearly critical for team leaders to
select members based on expertise and the ability to lead, it is also clear the cultural
context of schools may present a number of challenges to doing so with fidelity.
Methods
Research design
This research was exploratory and required detailed data about principals’ decisions
regarding who they selected to the ILT and why, and the way these decisions
impacted team members’ perceptions and enactment of their roles (i.e., sense-
making) (Weick et al. 2005). Therefore, qualitative methods, and specifically
interviews and observations, were most appropriate (Maxwell 1996; Miles and
Huberman 1994; Seidman 2006). The focus on multiple ILTs also allowed for cross-
site comparisons (Miles and Huberman 1994).
Study context
Using the ILT as the unit of analysis, this study captured the experiences of ILT
members in four in-district charter schools in a large, Northeastern city serving
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approximately 60,000 students. Students in the district are typically students of
color, with almost 75 % receiving free and reduced price lunch. Almost 50 % are
non-native English speakers. Of these students, approximately 6,100 attend a group
of 23 in-district charter schools named Partnership schools.1
The goal of the Partnership schools is to serve as ‘‘models of educational
excellence, which will help to foster widespread educational reform throughout all
of the City Public Schools.’’ Though still under the auspices of the district and its
collective bargaining agreement, each Partnership school has autonomies related to
hiring (among unionized teachers), curriculum, budget, and schedule. They also
choose their governance structure with the expectation that they will create a
governing board and foster shared leadership among administrators, teachers, and
families (See ‘‘Appendix A’’ for a full description of the Partnership schools).
Essential for this study, each Partnership school has an ILT. Finally, all but one of
the Partnership schools in this study was converted from a traditional public school
and kept many staff members in this process, making it likely that a traditional
school culture persisted to some degree even as they received these autonomies.
While the choice to sample from a group of in-district charter schools limits the
generalizability of my findings, a review of the literature made it clear that most
schools do not have the conditions in place for the ILT to be successful (Johnson
and Birkeland 2003; Lortie 1975; Murphy 2005). Therefore, though focusing on
ILTs in traditional public schools may have made the sample more generalizable, it
would have also likely reshaped the focus to the lack of resources, autonomy, or
control granted by the district office that made it difficult for the ILT to be effective.
I chose to focus on the Partnership schools as I perceived them to be a possible
‘‘strong example’’ to observe the ILT in action.
To identify my sample among the 23 in-district charter schools in the district, I
used a process of ‘‘purposeful sampling’’ (Maxwell 1996). I met with representa-
tives of a non-profit organization that provides support to these schools. They
identified eight schools with an ILT that met regularly (i.e., at least once a month),
and had missions that aligned with instructional reform. After receiving confirma-
tion that all eight schools were willing to participate, I selected, at random, four
schools with which to proceed with the study.
Participants
Participants were ILT members and their principals from four of the 23 Partnership
schools. These schools included Bright Beginnings, an early learning center;
Abraham Lincoln Elementary, a K-5 school; Independence High School; and City
Academy, also a high school. Table 1 details the schools’ student demographics in
terms of racial composition, English Language learners, students with disabilities,
and socio-economic status. Performance at these schools as measured by math and
reading proficiencies outpaced the rest of the district, particularly at the high school
level, and suggests that these schools receive minimal external scrutiny that
generally come with low performance.
1 Pseudonyms used throughout.
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The ILTs ranged in size from 5 to as many as 18 members. Members varied in
experience, race, and gender, though like the general population of teachers,
members were predominately female. Table 2 provides an overview of each team’s
composition.
Data sources and collection
I observed each ILT for approximately 8 months, attending 24 ILT meetings, for
approximately 40 h of observations. As sense-making is an ongoing, social process
including language, actions, and environment (Weick et al. 2005), the ILT meetings
provided an ideal forum to begin to understand the impact of the selection criteria
and process on members’ understanding and enactment of their team roles.
Principals (4) and members (18) from the observed ILTs were interviewed twice
for a total of 44, 1-h interviews. I created a protocol to support semi-structured
interviews that occurred at the start and the conclusion of my observations of their
ILT. All interviews and observations were digitally recorded and transcribed.
Data analysis
I analyzed the data thematically. According to Boyatzis (1998), thematic analysis
provides a process of building a system of relationships from what may be initially
perceived as disjointed information. Boyatzis also stated that codes can be
developed through existing theories or research, or through an inductive process.
Given the novelty of the terrain I explored, I used a hybrid process that included
inductive and deductive coding. First, I conducted line-by-line analysis of eight of
the interviews. At the end of each line, I wrote a gerund-based phrase to describe
what was said. For example, one member’s statement ‘‘I think that the district
priorities have been too conflictive, but where we are at, [Principal’s name] is forced
to either do this or not, and there’s no conversation about why this way might be
better than another way,’’ was rephrased as ‘‘thinking district priorities are too
constrictive and forcing principal to do things without conversation.’’ I then wrote a
quick interpretation of what I perceived this phrase meant in the context of the
larger piece of text (e.g., ‘‘The ILT member reports that the district demands are
overly constricting and autocratic towards the principal’’) as a basis for my codes.
Second, my codes were informed by the literature. Work by Hackman and
Wageman (2001) and Hackman (2002) on effective teams and the sociocultural
features that determined the degree to which the team’s strategy, skills, knowledge,
and effort were used effectively, drove my inquiry related to team functioning.
Included among these features was the degree to which the team’s purpose was
clear, compelling, and consequential; whether the team had decision-making
autonomy over the work; and whether the team had the most appropriate
composition to enable success. I also used literature about school culture and
how teaching’s traditional professional norms of autonomy, seniority, and
egalitarianism may have impacted attempts to implement shared leadership models
in schools (Donaldson et al. 2008; Lortie 1975; Little 1990; Weiner 2011; York-
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Barr and Duke 2004). My initial codes fell into the following categories:
egalitarianism, autonomy, hierarchical governance, team purpose and goals, other
barriers to reform, and team membership.
Once these categories and initial codes were formed and my interviews and
observations were housed in ATLAS-TI, as Boyatzis (1998) suggested, I applied
these initial categories to another set of interviews to make sure they appropriately
captured the context and began to flush out more specific and nuanced codes. As I
moved from one interview to the next, I returned to the data to determine how to
revise and improve my codes. The result of these efforts was a coding scheme with
three larger categories: Who, What, and Leadership. ‘‘Who’’ captured all codes
connected to who was on the team, why they were on the team, and any definitions
regarding how members were meant to enact their role. ‘‘What’’ included any
comments that addressed the team’s goals, purpose, or activities. ‘‘Leadership’’ was
used for anything related to the principal’s leadership of the team, its facilitation, or
external pressures that impacted its direction and decisions. The final layer of the
coding scheme analyzed whether the behaviors or issues reflected in the code
existed at the level of the school, the team to the school, or within the team (i.e.,
among members). Table 3 below provides a subsection of my codebook on the
‘‘Who’’ category and focused on team membership.
Finally, this process was iterative. At each stage I wrote analytical memos and
returned to the data to clarify and revise the codes, my interpretations, and analysis
(Boyatzis).
Table 1 Demographic and performance information of sampled performance schools
School % Non-
white
% ELL % SPED % FRL % Proficient
Math
% Proficient
reading
Bright beginnings 68.7 45.3 15.1 48.4 n/a n/a
Abraham Lincoln 91.8 30.5 29.2 78.1 54 45
Independence 97.3 5.4 18.2 80.6 94 85
City academy 87.1 16 15.6 65.6 76 88
District average 87 30.6 18.7 69.5 36*
62**
42*
67**
* 6th grade averages
** 10th grade averages
Table 2 Characteristics of the ILT by school
School Size Meeting
frequency
Avg. teacher years
of experience
% White % Female
Bright beginnings 6 Monthly 3 75 100
Abraham Lincoln 8 Monthly 6 70 86
Independence 5 Bi-monthly 5 25 100
City academy 18 Bi-monthly 6.5 65 84
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Results
Principals focused on general purposes for the ILT
As research on teams has suggested that effective teams are staffed according to
their purpose (Hackman 2002), I began my inquiry into how principals selected ILT
members by exploring each principal’s perceptions of the purpose of the ILT. Doing
so provided an initial framework to assess whether and to what degree this purpose
appeared to influence team member selection.
Across the four schools, principals stated that the purpose of their ILT was to lead
instructional reform. As the principal at Independence High School explained, the
purpose of the ILT was to, ‘‘figure out what needs to happen instructionally, in terms
of curriculum, so that kids are going to be ready to take an advanced placement (AP)
course and then also to use… Instructional Rounds to analyze ourselves to get a
clearer understanding of what is happening [pedagogically].’’ Similarly at City
Academy, the principal was clear that the team’s purpose was to improve
instruction. She explicitly stated that she developed this purpose deliberately. As she
put it, she had, in recent years, worked hard to ‘‘really try to not have it [the ILT] be
about leadership at large, but about instructional leadership, really about curriculum,
really about what goes on in the classroom.’’
However, while all the principals stated that their ILT’s purpose was instructional
improvement, they all struggled when it came to translating that broad purpose into
more specific goals for the ILT. For example, at Bright Beginnings, the principal
told me that the team would focus on instructional reform but could not provide
detail about the substance of these reforms. At Abraham Lincoln, the principal also
had difficultly articulating the specific goals the team would address as related to
their purpose of, ‘‘improving instruction and student performance.’’ Other principals
similarly talked abstractly about the ILT ‘‘working together to improve instruction,’’
or ‘‘discussing professional development,’’ rather than identify the specific
behaviors the team members would engage into improve instruction in the building.
Table 3 Segment of codebook representing ‘‘Team Membership’’ focus
Larger
grouping
Level of
analysis
Code Description
Team
membership
School
level
Becoming a member
TMEM_becomingHow individuals became members of the team
Team membership as
representative role
TMEM_rep
Discussion of representing the views of teachers
or a specific department or demographic group
as a reason for team membership and/or what
happens when this representation does not
exist
Within
the
team
Team composition
TMEM_compDiscussion of attributes of team members that
distinguish them from each other and the rest
of the teachers at the school (e.g. personality,
specialized knowledge and skills, role, etc.)
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The principals’ tendencies to focus on a more general purpose for their team were
mirrored in team members’ discussions. Across all the teams, the ILT members
often discussed topics peripheral to, or outside of ‘‘the instructional core’’—defined
as the interactions between teachers and students around content (Cohen and Ball
1999; Elmore 2000). Such peripheral topics were often introduced by team members
(e.g., the nomination of emeritus teachers, implementation of grading software,
appropriate format for senior presentations, etc.), and seemed to signal that team
members lacked a clear understanding of what they should be doing on the team or
how to effectively collaborate to improve instruction.
At Independence, for example, ILT members had difficulty articulating how the
ILT’s discussions related to the principal’s stated purpose for the team, of improving
instruction. Instead, members responded to inquiries about this connection by telling
me that the team’s discussions were to help the ILT to, ‘‘get everyone on the same page
about instruction,’’ or to ‘‘lead everyone to better instruction.’’ Members neither
highlighted a specific focus of these efforts (e.g., improving teachers’ ability to
differentiate instruction, select and implement a new math program, etc.) nor what the
team would do to move these efforts forward (e.g., coach teachers in new instructional
techniques, research best math curricula, etc.). Without a clear sense of how to identify
activities to improve instruction, or, perhaps, even what such activities would be, team
members often spent ILT time addressing immediate or short-term issues even when
these issues were unrelated or peripheral to instruction.
Indeed, at Bright Beginnings and Abraham Lincoln, where the principals had the
most difficultly translating the ILT’s general purpose into team goals, ILT
members’ discussions were even more tangential to instruction. For example, at
Abraham Lincoln instruction was rarely a focus; instead, one team member recalled
that although the ILT dealt with ‘‘school-wide issues,’’ these issues were limited to
things like revising the school budget or determining the process for distributing
report cards, rather than instruction. The tendency to discuss non-instructional
issues was also apparent at Bright Beginnings, where ILT members used much of
their team meeting time to plan games and logistics for a family math night.
While creating a budget, a parent night, or a report card are all important activities;
all are critical tasks that relate to the successful functioning of a school. However, these
activities can be considered less central to the instructional core than those aimed
directly at enhancing how teachers deliver content to students (e.g., classroom-based
support on differentiating instruction). Taken together, these findings suggest that
members had difficulty translating instructional improvement into action (i.e., the
stated purpose of the ILT), and perhaps were influenced by the common push on
teachers to focus on important, though non-instructional issues. Whatever the reason
for these behaviors, considering the weak alignment between the ILT work and the
stated purpose of improving instruction, it seems unlikely that principals utilized the
team’s purpose to select ILT members or even that they could have done so if desired.
ILTs did not function as decision-making teams
While the principals expressed, at least initially, that part of the ILT’s function was
to make decisions, in reality, the ILT more often played an informational or
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consultative function. Although principals often used the term ‘‘decision’’ when
referring to the team’s activities, their descriptions of what decision-making looked
like were diverse and frequently contradictory. For example, at Independence,
regarding ILT members’ role in team decision-making, the principal explained:
You’re [ILT members] coming here to make instructional decisions. You’re
representing your teams, so it was really important you’re collaborating with
your teams, um, bringing information back and forth. And it’s really about
instruction, and not just, like, we’re not like this powerful decision-making
body… It’s really that you’re bringing the voices of everyone in the content
[area].
Here, the principal began by framing the ILT as a place for members to make
decisions. However, as she continued, it became clear that she was not necessarily
advocating for team members to make decisions, but rather for them to bring others’
‘‘voices’’ to the table. While she did not explain how these voices would be used,
she made clear that voice was not a mechanism for teacher decision-making but
rather a way for ILT members to share teachers’ perspectives that may then benefit
the principal in her decision-making. If true in practice, these comments suggest that
the ILT played an informational or consultative function, not a decision-making
one.
This conceptualization of voice as something separate or different from decision-
making was repeated by the other principals. For example, when I asked the
principal at Bright Beginnings to clarify the need to have ILT members share their
voices, she told me that it enabled members, ‘‘to share the responsibility, to share
the load.’’ However, it was unclear from her comments what this sharing would look
like in action or whether it had any relationship to decision-making. Therefore,
while it seemed that sharing information and perspectives via ‘‘voice’’ was expected
on each ILT, it was not always clear how this voice would be used.
Like their principals, ILT members indicated some confusion about where
decision-making authority lay when asked about the relationship between voicing
perspectives and decision-making. Specifically, while most members indicated that
their principal held primary decision-making authority on the ILT, they also seemed
to believe that members’ contributions, more often than not, shaped or even dictated
those decisions. As one ILT member at Bright Beginnings recalled,
I think that [Principal] is very willing to listen to our ideas and take them into
account. And she does change things based on what we say, what we say is
working and not working. And then sometimes I think she has an idea that she
thinks is better and yeah, we go with that… I do think that there’s input from
the staff and that does influence what happens in the school.
Based on these comments it seems that this team’s main function was to give the
principal information that would be important to consider when making a decision
(i.e., to serve an informative or consultative function). Such comments and others
like it from members across the teams suggested the existence of an unspoken
agreement between the principal and the ILT members that the principal would
defer her decision-making authority to the team when she viewed the team’s
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consensus on an issue to be both valuable and accurate. However, because this
agreement was not stated explicitly, it was unclear whether team members’
perceptions regarding their function were aligned with the principal’s perceptions.
Considering this lack of a mutual agreement on how the team would go about its
work (i.e., its function), principals’ use of function to drive composition seems
doubtful at best.
Principals sought broad representation of teacher roles for ILT membership
Through the principal interviews, it became clear that instead of team purpose or
function, the primary driver for member selection was to create an ILT that
represented teachers from across the school. This goal was then reflected in both
the selection process and the criteria used to identify team members. For example,
rather than have an open application process, principals tended to identify
different constituencies they viewed as important for a variety of reasons (e.g.,
political, cultural, task-based), and then handpicked individuals from each group
(e.g., grade levels, departments, special services, program leaders, etc.) to serve on
the team.
City Academy, where the principal invited over 18 people who served in school
leadership positions (e.g., department chair, head of student services, honors
program coordinator, etc.) to be members of the ILT, was perhaps the most extreme
example of this. When asked why so many members were included, the principal
explained that consensus was highly valued at the school and the size of the team
was to ensure that the larger community perceived the ILT as also holding this
value. Ironically, as often happens with large teams, the size of the team actually
created a number of difficulties in building consensus and limited members’ success
in coordinating efforts or making joint decisions about reform (Shaw 1981; Swap
1984; Wheelan 2009). Lisa, the team’s facilitator, reflected on the connection
between the size of the team and what she perceived to be its limited productivity.
I think we are still struggling with being representative versus having too
many people… I think the team is too big. And I think that too often there are
people that don’t really know why they’re there. I don’t think we’ve gotten
that right yet.
Even when the principals used criteria besides role to select ILT members (e.g.,
years of experience, expertise, status), this criteria remained subordinate to role. For
example, at Abraham Lincoln, the principal revealed that many of the individuals
she wanted to serve on the ILT due to their role were currently out on maternity
leave. According to her, the teachers on leave from various departments had greater
instructional expertise and knowledge of the school’s culture than the teachers she
inevitably selected to participate from those same departments. This prioritization of
role even when the principal felt the selected ILT member lacked the necessary
expertise to be successful on the ILT suggests that, whether they be perceptions or
externally driven, the pressures on principals to ensure representation were felt quite
strongly.
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This prioritization of role representation over expertise was far from an isolated
incident, as each of the principals reported that they often asked teachers to join the
ILT even when they did not consider these teachers to have strong instructional
leadership skills (e.g., instructional expertise, institutional expertise, working well
with other adults, etc.). For example, the principal at Independence High School told
me that she had chosen the particular English representative only because the other
teachers in the department had refused or were unavailable to serve. As she
recounted,
I am not sure that everyone thought that she [the ILT member] was the right
person, but there was some transition on the team, so four of the people on the
team, everybody was new to the English team, she was the only one still
standing after the transition.
In this case, another option might have been for this principal not to have put this
teacher on the ILT, but, for perhaps a variety of reasons, the principal’s drive to
have departmental representation took priority over her need to have a team
composed solely of the strongest instructional leaders in the school.
It is important to note that just because principals tended to favor representation
over other criteria for team membership, does not necessarily mean that their
selections lacked thought or coherency. Rather, at times, principals seemed to
believe that representation would best serve their goals of improving instruction, by
ensuring all teachers felt heard and respected in the reform process. In this way, the
decision to prioritize role makes perfect sense if the purpose of the team was solely
to give teachers the opportunity to be heard. However, if the purpose was, as stated,
to improve instructional practice, the prioritization of role over other criteria
becomes problematic and a potential hindrance to success.
For example, at Abraham Lincoln and Bright Beginnings, the emphasis on role
representation led the principals to select teachers new to the profession onto their
ILT. Because principals felt that certain constituencies needed to be represented,
when more senior teachers from those constituencies did not want to serve on the
ILT, principals instead asked newer, more willing teachers to serve. While
competency and years of teaching may not always be correlated and new teachers
may offer many innovative instructional techniques to their peers, research suggests
that it is unlikely that, in their first year, they have accumulated the necessary
instructional expertise (Clotfelter et al. 2006; Grissom 2011) and contextual
understanding to best achieve the teams’ stated purpose, and lead other teachers
within the school to improve their practice. Additionally, and often due to a similar
lack of alternatives, principals selected individuals onto the ILT who could
represent a given group but who were not well regarded by their peers, an issue that
many of ILT members were eager to share when explaining to me why they felt the
team was not functioning as productively as it should.
Many ILT members recognized the somewhat haphazard nature of the selection
process and that their appointment was based on their role and the fact that no one
else occupying that role wished to participate on the ILT. As one of the ILT
members from Independence High School said, ‘‘I joined the ILT mainly because
the science representative just had a lot on her plate and the principal just asked me
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to do it.’’ Another ILT member at Abraham Lincoln recounted a similar
understanding regarding her place on the team, explaining that she joined because
the principal ‘‘put it out to the content teams that she needed two representatives
from each content team; one from primary and one from intermediate and so I just
became the primary rep on the team.’’
However, even though ILT members saw the selection process as somewhat
arbitrary, they seemed to accept the underlying selection criteria. When I asked
whether the team could benefit from adding individuals who had different
knowledge and skills, members responded by focusing on whether all the
constituencies within the school were being represented. If so, they deemed the
ILT to be appropriately staffed. These responses suggest that, like principals, ILT
members accepted role representation as a reasonable criterion to identify ILT
members, or at least did not present other criteria with which to do so.
Role representation made team purpose more competitive than collaborative
Left without a well-articulated team function or purpose, role representation served
to fill these gaps and shaped the way members framed their participation on the ILT.
As was already established, each team member saw him or herself as representing a
particular group in the school. In practice, members tended to elevate this
association over their affiliation with the school as a whole. Therefore, when issues
were discussed that impacted multiple constituency groups, ILT members framed
their contributions using this orientation, thus creating a more competitive than
collaborative environment. One ILT member at City Academy recounted this
environment and its impact on his approach to team meetings:
You have to either get a little cold and angry about it, and kind of say, ‘‘Well,
this is it, and this is what I know, and this is where we’re going, and if you
want to have anything to feed back to me, then I understand that, and we’ll
look at it logically, but moving in this direction.’’ And it sometimes works
better that way, because you get in there and get out of there with your
program still halfway intact. But if you get there and you want to go, and be
too process-oriented, or be too receptive, or [consider] everybody else’s point
of view too much, you’re going to come out of there with half your program
intact, and so, there’s, it’s a more practiced thing. There isn’t time to have,
sometimes, the discussions that you would like to have. You’ve got to go in
there with a pretty formulated idea of what you want to say.
This description suggests that some team members may have been so wedded to their
roles that they were unable to approach the conversation open to alternative
perspectives. Moreover, the ILT members’ knowledge that the school had limited
resources to meet all constituencies’ needs further fueled their perceptions that the ILT’s
purpose was to protect their groups’ interests. In this way, the ILT became a forum for
different factions to fight over resources instead of to compromise and find solutions.
This perception that the ILT was a place where groups needed representation, and
representatives needed to firmly protect their particular factions, was reinforced by
the teams’ operations. Indeed, it was often the case that if a team member was
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absent from the ILT meeting, that member’s constituency’s needs and desires would
not be considered. At City Academy, for example, the ILT was deliberating about
whether to reorganize part of the school schedule. For many of the teachers this
would mean very little change to their daily activities either in terms of free time or
teaching. However, for the art department, keeping the current schedule would, as
the principal put it, ‘‘have devastating results because they were counting on the
change for more time.’’ There was no art teacher or department representative
present during the ILT meeting in which the schedule change came up for
deliberation, and no other member represented the art department’s viewpoint. In
the end, the team recommended to the principal that the schedule remain unchanged
despite its negative impact on the art department.
Similarly, at Independence, ILT members often overlooked the perspectives of
those adults not represented at team meetings, thereby reinforcing role’s importance
as membership criteria. In this case, the topic of discussion was the future of co-
teaching and inclusion at the school. ILT members, who were all regular education
teachers, tended to describe their co-teachers, who were Special Education teachers,
as being unwilling to contribute to the work necessary for the model to succeed. ILT
members also suggested that the Special Education teachers should be told by the
principal to take on additional teaching duties. Despite the effect such a decision
would have on Special Education teachers’ work, no one solicited their opinions
about the co-teaching model or how changes to it would affect them. It was only
when a visiting external consultant mentioned the possibility that Special Education
teachers might experience co-teaching differently than how ILT members were
describing it, did they consider soliciting Special Education teachers’ views.
Considering these examples, it appears that ILT members’ fears that their interests
would not be considered if they were not represented on the team were warranted.
Discussion
This study on ILTs responds to calls from within the research community to better
understand what shared leadership models look like in action and their impact
(Spillane and Healey 2010; Harris 2008). By focusing on one critical and potentially
enabling condition for team success—the selection process and criteria for team
membership, this study highlights the continued challenges that reforms, particu-
larly those aimed at changing school culture and teacher practice, may face in
implementation (Anagnostopoulos 2003; Marris 1975; Wells and Feun 2012). In
this case, teaching’s traditional professional norms influenced all aspects of the
selection process and, then later, negatively impacted the team’s ability to lead
instructional reform.
In keeping with prior studies on school-based instructional reform, principals had
difficulty translating the general purpose of the team into clear, actionable goals
related to instructional improvement (Anderson and Togneri 2005; Fullan 2001).
This tendency to focus on generalities was reflected in the ILT, as members often
discussed issues they viewed as pressing to school functioning but outside, or
peripheral to, the instructional core (Cohen and Ball 1999; Elmore 2000).
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Potentially an outgrowth of teachers’ tendency towards what Hargreaves and
Shirley (2009) called ‘‘adaptive presentism’’ this response was also likely influenced
by teachers’ already existing hesitancy to make their practice public (Coyle 1997;
Little 1990), or to appear to be evaluating their peers (Donaldson et al. 2008;
Weiner 2011).
Additionally, and despite the common framing of ILTs as a forum for shared
decision-making between principals and teachers, the findings suggest that these
teams are not often authorized to make decisions. Instead, the teams remain
informational or consultative in nature, providing the principal with information to
make decisions but not making such decisions themselves. Part of the reason for this
outcome may relate to larger difficulties principals have had in shifting from a more
traditional leadership orientation to one that is more shared or distributed (Blase and
Blase 2001; Blegen and Kennedy 2000; Murphy 2005). At the same time, members’
apparent acceptance of this lack of authority may also be related to these
hierarchical norms (Resnick and Hall 2001) as well as the valuing of consensus over
additional authority for some teachers (Little 1990; Katzenmeyer and Moller 2001).
Without a clear or actionable purpose, or a function aimed at authorizing team
members to make decisions, it is perhaps not surprising that the selection criteria for
team membership reflected criteria other than expertise aligned to these elements.
Principals instead prioritized representing teachers from across the school on the
ILT. Using role as selection criteria could be seen as a non-problematic or even
positive for a team that required broad perspectives (Garet et al. 2001), or the
political legitimacy to make decisions in organizations like schools that tend to be
oriented towards democratic decision-making (Turnbull 2002). However, in the
case of these schools, the emphasis on role was so strong that principals prioritized
it above equally important criteria for team membership given the stated purpose of
the team—to enhance instruction. The result was to create teams that lacked the
necessary expertise to lead instructional reform. For example, principals frequently
asked teachers to participate on the team who lacked instructional expertise and/or
experience. This tendency to underplay expertise in selecting teachers to leadership
roles is well documented (See York-Barr and Duke 2004 for a review) and likely
reflects teaching’s weak technical core (Talbert and McLaughlin 1994).
In response, teachers seemed to embrace this emphasis on role as they
approached team meetings; ILT members tended to take on a protective stance
towards their defined constituency’s positions and resources. The result was to
create an ILT that often felt like a team in name only, with members seeming more
interested in ensuring that their constituency got what it needed rather than finding
common ground to enhance the experience of all teachers and students in the
schools. In this way, role representation seemed to reinforce prevailing norms of
autonomy (Little 1990; Murphy 2005; Smylie 1996), generate additional compe-
tition, and slow the pace of potential reforms.
Implications and conclusions
These findings suggest a number of implications for practice and research. First, at
the level of team leadership, these findings promote making the change process
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more explicit for leaders, as Fullan (2001) has recommended. For example, it
appears that principals need targeted support and training regarding how to create a
meaningful team purpose and aligned function prior to implementing the ILT.
Moreover, such training needs to be overt regarding how traditional norms may
create challenges to these activities. This may include supporting principals to be
more reflexive regarding their adherence to such norms and to build skills to exhibit
what Hallinger (2003) and others (Leithwood and Jantzi 2000) have called
transformational leadership. In other words, effective leadership of the ILT may
need to be nurtured at the same time that such leadership is being enacted.
Similarly, while it was clear that principals appeared to favor representativeness
over other issues related to team effectiveness, including potential internal team
dynamics or capacity building, as the team was the unit of analysis, the reasons why
each principal made these decisions was not fully investigated. Additional research
focused on principal decision-making and motivations in relation to the ILT would
support more nuanced understanding of whether, and to what degree, principals also
need support in connecting the team’s purpose and function to other leadership
duties like talent management. Moreover, a greater focus on principals and their
intentions would support a growing body of work investigating the relationship
between principal behaviors and beliefs and enhanced school and student
performance (see Hallinger 2011 for a review).
Another interrelated though larger implication from these findings relates to the
current approach to introducing ILTs as a reform measure. One of the underlying
assumptions of the ILT seems to be aligned with Gusky’s (1986) work showing that
changing teachers’ behaviors will lead to changes in their beliefs. However, these
findings indicate that the structural change of introducing the ILT did not appear to
modify the way teachers and administrators thought about their roles. Instead, the
beliefs seemed to influence team members’ behaviors in ways that, over time,
served to reinforce rather than challenge traditional norms. The fact that these ILTs
existed in schools that, due to their relatively high performance and status as in-
district charter schools, had even less of the structural constraints associated with
traditional schools or those with poor performance (i.e., accountability mandates),
adds further evidence that new structures alone are not enough to beget cultural
change. Instead, the current approach to ILT implementation may need to be
modified so that explicit strategies to challenge teacher sense-making are
simultaneously, or even preemptively, deployed. If such approaches succeed, they
may also serve to support the implementation of other reforms aimed at using shared
leaders to produce instructional reform (e.g., PLCs, School Leadership Teams,
Teacher Leadership, etc.).
To do so effectively, as recommended by Wells and Feun (2012), more research
is needed to understand the strength and scope of prevailing norms and the way
teachers and administrators make meaning of these initiatives, and how their prior
experiences shape this meaning-making. Such research that aims to get closer to the
experiences of those within and outside the team could also help to provide a
comprehensive picture of the ILT, and insights into each school’s cultural norms
and how these norms get established and reinforced over time, thereby identifying
how to help support the change process.
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These implications are not meant to suggest that teams cannot serve as useful
tools in promoting cultural change. Indeed, research tells us that changes to how
teachers think about and do their work can occur and requires opportunities to work
differently (Hord and Sommers 2008; Lieberman and Mace 2008), and takes time
(Fullan 2001; Hargreaves and Fink 2012; Schmoker 2004). Teams have also been
shown to go through developmental stages (see Fulk et al. 2011 for a review) with
their ability to work productively and promote cultural change growing over time
(Hackman 2002). Therefore, the key to improving ILT effectiveness seems to be an
approach that simultaneously addresses the organization’s current cultural norms
while instituting structural changes that can reinforce and expand cultural gains. To
evaluate such an approach, longitudinal studies of the ILT in different schools
would help to highlight the degree to which teams naturally evolve over time and
how leaders can best create the necessary structural and cultural conditions for
teams to successfully lead instructional reform.
Appendix A: Description of partnership schools
Partnership schools’ conditions of autonomy
Partnership schools are members of the City Public Schools (CPS) that have certain
autonomy from City Public Schools’ policies and from City Teachers Union
contract provisions. The goal of these autonomies is to enable Partnership schools to
become ‘‘models of educational excellence which will help to foster widespread
educational reform throughout all of the City Public Schools.’’ (CPS Memorandum
1995) What follows is a summary of these autonomies.
Staffing: Partnership schools have the freedom to hire and excess their staff in
order to create a unified school community. Teachers should play a significant role
in staff hiring. Partnership schools:
• Decide on staffing pattern and work assignments that create the optimal learning
environment for students.
• Hire staff who best fit the needs of the school, regardless of current status
(member of the district, or not, although every teacher becomes a member of the
CTU bargaining unit).
Budget: Partnership schools have a lump sum per pupil budget, the sum of which
is equivalent to other CPS schools within that grade span. A lump sum per pupil
budget allows the school to decide on spending that best provides programs and
services to students and their families. Partnership schools:
• Have a lump sum per pupil budget, the sum of which is equivalent to other
district schools within that grade span and includes salaries, instructional
materials, etc.
• Choose either to purchase identified discretionary district services or to not
purchase them and include the per pupil cost in the school’s lump sum per pupil
budget.
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Curriculum and Assessment: Partnership schools have freedom to structure their
curriculum and assessment practices to meet students’ learning needs. While all
Partnership schools are held accountable to federal- and state-required tests, these
schools are given the flexibility to determine the school-based curriculum and
assessment practices that best prepare students for federal and state assessments.
Partnership schools:
• Are freed from local district curriculum requirements—they can choose what
content to cover and how to cover it.
• Set their own promotion and graduation requirements, although they must be
comparable in rigor to the district requirements. Partnership schools have an
emphasis on competency-based, performance-based assessments.
• Decide on professional development in which faculty engage.
Governance: Partnership schools have the freedom to create their own
governance structure that has increased decision-making powers over budget
approval, principal selection and evaluation, and programs and policies, while being
mindful of state requirements, including school councils. Partnership schools:
• Have governing boards that assume increased governing responsibilities, while
being mindful of state mandates, including the following:
• Setting and maintaining the school vision
• Principal selection, supervision, and evaluation, with final approval by the
Superintendent in all cases
• Budget approval
• Set their own policies that the school community feels will help students to be
successful.
School Calendar: Partnership schools have the freedom to set their own school
days and calendar years for both students and faculty in accordance with their
principles, within the parameters for Partnership schools set by the CTU contract. In
particular, research supports a correlation between increased faculty planning time
spent on teaching and learning and increased student achievement. Scheduling
which allows for summer and school year faculty planning time contributes to a
more unified school community and education program. Partnership schools:
• Increase planning and professional development time for faculty
• Organize the school schedule in ways that maximize learning time for students
and planning time for faculty
Appendix B: Initial interview protocol
Thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview. This study aims to better
understand how leadership teams function in education.
The data you provide may be used for publication, at conferences, or in research
papers. However, this interview will remain completely confidential. That is, at no
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point will your name be connected with anything you tell me. With your permission,
I will be recording this conversation but will not share this recording with anyone.
Again, thank you for your time.
Warm ups:
1. Tell me a little about your professional background.
a. How long have you worked at this particular school?
b. In the district?
c. In what capacities?
2. Tell me a bit about how you came to be on the ILT
a. What was your appointment process (if applicable)?
b. What considerations did you make when deciding whether or not to take
the role?
Team Purpose:
1. When you first joined the ILT, what did you hope to accomplish?
a. What specific goals, if any, did you have for yourself?
b. Your school community?
2. From your perspective, what are your ILT’s main goals or objectives?
a. Can you tell me about the process that the team went through to select these
goals/objectives?
i. Probe about the level of agreement among team members around these
goals.
b. Can you give me an example of how these goals/objectives were shared with
the large school community (e.g., other teacher, parents, students, etc.)?
3. How do you define and measure the success of the ILT?
a. Can you give me an example of what that measure would look like in
action?
4. How effective do you think the team has been OR will be in meeting its goals
(dependent on length of team membership)?
a. Can you tell me about a time when the team faced a challenge as it tried to
meet its goals?
b. Can you give me an example of how the team used its strengths to achieve
its goals?
Internal Interactions:
1. What knowledge and skills does the team need to do its job effectively?
a. Do you feel that your team has these knowledge and skills? Why or why not?
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b. Can you give me an example of a time in which:
i. Your team had exactly the right knowledge and skills to address an
issue.
ii. You wished you had a person with different/additional skills or
knowledge on the team?
2. How would you describe the pattern of discussion among team members?
a. (Either way) Why do you think this is the case?
3. Tell me about a time when team members changed their mind about a particular
strategic decision.
a. Why was that issue important to members?
b. Who contributed to the discussion?
c. How did it get resolved?
Challenges to Translating the Plan into Action:
1. How receptive have teachers been to the ILT’s plans? Why?
a. Can you give me any examples of certain groups of teachers being more
receptive to the ILT’s plans than others?
b. What does this look like in action?
2. Can you tell me a bit about any challenges the team has faced as it has tried to
translate its plans into action?
3. How do you think the team might be more effective in enhancing instruction?
Conclusion:
1. Thank you so much for your time. Before we end is there anything else you
want to share about the ILT or your experience on the team?
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