Understanding Interpersonal Dynamics of Teacher Leadership Through Relational Models Theory

• In Event: 18.071 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 18.071-11 - Structural, Conceptual, Interpersonal, and Critical Challenges to Teacher Leadership

Abstract

Navigating interactions with colleagues is one of the key challenges faced by teacher-leaders as they take on new positions and responsibilities (Margolis & Huggins, 2012). As noted by Wenner and Campbell (2016) in their recent literature review on teacher-leadership, “supporting teacher leaders… requires some attention to power structures that are bound up in the relationships between teacher leaders and teachers connected to the egalitarian norms of the teaching profession” (p. 30). Consideration of power dynamics requires a more nuanced and theoretically grounded understanding of how adults relate to one another in a work space, and why interpersonal challenges may emerge.
Fiske’s (1991) Relational Models Theory (RMT) offers one lens through which to view relational challenges between teacher leaders and their colleagues. RMT posits that four innate Relational Models (RMs) underlie dyadic human interactions across diverse cultures and settings:
• Communal sharing (CS) is an equivalence relation, in which people attend to something important they have in common.
• Authority ranking (AR) is a linear hierarchy in which people are asymmetrically differentiated in the current context.
• Equality matching (EM) is a relationship in which people keep track of additive differences, with even balance as the reference point.
• Market pricing (MP) is based on a socially meaningful proportionality, where the ratio may concern monetary value, utility, efficiency, effort, merit, or anything else. (Fiske & Haslam, 2005, p. 270)
RMT can be used to understand both universal patterns and cross-cultural differences in relationships, given that “each culture implements the four RMs in many distinct ways and in different combinations” (p. 269). RMT has been applied to the field of education through a study of how alternative grading methods in a progressive high school influenced students’ relational dynamics with their teachers (Author, 2010). Here, that inquiry and analysis is extended to relationships between teacher-leaders and colleagues via exploration of how teacher-leadership may be conceived and enacted through each of the four Relational Models.
In applying the framework of RMT to teacher-leadership, RMT is linked to other analyses of interpersonal relationships among adults, specifically Lipton and Wellman’s (2007) perspectives on various stances used in learning-focused conversations between teachers; Barth’s (2006) discussion of the types of relationships that occur “within the schoolhouse” (including parallel play, adversarial relationships, congenial relationships, and collegial relationships); and Sheppard and Sherman’s (1998) Grammars of Trust (as cited in Houde et al., 2004), which posits that the two characteristics of form and depth can intersect to result in four potential relationship types: shallow dependence, shallow interdependence, deep dependence, and deep interdependence. I present an initial typology of RMT within teacher-leadership, discussing how each RM maps onto a “grammar of trust” and positing that deep dependence (Communal Sharing) and deep interdependence (Equality Matching) are ideal spheres for teacher-leadership practice. I ultimately argue that an understanding of how Relational Models play out in the complicated landscape of collegiality in schools can ameliorate some of the interpersonal tensions that arise between teachers when distributed leadership dynamics are at play.

Author

• Sylvia Stralberg Bagley, University of Washington - Seattle