Antecedents of Collaborative-Oriented Learning Activities Among Icelandic Beginning Teachers

• In Event: Aspects Influencing Preservice and Beginning Teachers' Motivations, Aspirations, and Actions

Abstract

Purpose. Teacher collaboration activities are in vogue and this has emerged as a common theme in both research and policy environments (OECD, 2014). This is based on an expectation that collaborative activities among teachers may contribute to improving instructional quality (Moolenaar et al., 2012) and student learning (Putnam & Borko, 2000). Although not all pathways of effect are yet explored, recent research indicates that a collective spirit and collaborative activities among teachers contributes to their learning and professional development (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009), to how well beginning teachers' feel supported and integrated in school as well as their intention to leave the profession (Tiplic et al., 2015). The purpose of this study was to explore how organizational and contextual factors may affect beginning teachers' collaborative-oriented professional learning activities COLA.

Framework. Previous research shows that affective commitment is a significant factor for teacher collaboration (Achinstein, 2002). Role clarity is concerned with the beginning teachers’ feeling of how much authority and responsibility they have, as well as what is expected of them by the leaders (Chesebro & McCroskey, 2001). We suspect that role clarity will be an important factor for teacher collaboration. The leader's feedback is regarded as playing an important role in shaping both the employee's role clarity, and organizational citizenship behaviour, OCB (Organ, 1997). OCB, or collegial support (Elstad et al., 2011), is considered as positively associated with both affective commitment and COLA.

Method. Participants were 215 beginning teachers in Iceland with less than three years of teaching experience. A survey was used to collect data and all measures were adapted to the Icelandic context from internationally validated scales: 1) Collaborative- oriented Professional Learning Activities (Opfer & Pedder, 2011); 2) Affective Commitment Questionnaire (Meyer et al. 1993); 3) Role Questionnaire (Rizzo et al. 1970); Citizenship Behavior (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Based on theoretical assumptions and stepwise exploration of the data, we set up a parsimonious structural model, which we tested by means of Mplus.

Results. The model fitted the data well: χ2(128, n=215)=232.65, p<0.001; RMSEA=.062; CFI=.958; TLI=0.95; SRMR=0.071. Our analysis shows a clear pathway from school leaders’ feedback via perceived role clarity to COLA. We also find a direct effect from OCB to COLA, as well as a significant direct effect from OCB to affective commitment. In addition, leaders’ feedback generates OCB. Finally, the analysis shows two significant indirect effects not reported in Figure 1: a) from feedback via role clarity to COLA (β=.09, p<.01) and b) from feedback via OCB to affective commitment (β=.13, p<.001).

Significance. Our results were mainly supportive of the hypothesized model, suggesting that feedback, role clarity, and OCB explains COLA. However, our results also suggest that affective commitment does not contribute to COLA, which conflicts with previous research. Overall, the current study contributes to the research field exploring organizational and contextual antecedents to teacher collaboration. Nevertheless, the study also implies a need for more nuanced concepts of COLA in school leadership.

Authors

• Dijana Tiplic, University of Oslo

• Christian Brandmo, University of Oslo

• Eyvind Elstad, University of Oslo

• María Steingrímsdóttir

• Guðmundur Engilbertsson