Exploring School Leaders' Dilemmas and Practices in Response to Tensions Related to Teacher Professional Agency

• In Event: 81.032 - MTCC Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: 81.032-2 - Utilizing Care to Improve Ethics in Leadership

Abstract

Teacher professional agency can be defined as ways how teachers perceive and use possibilities for professional development (PD) and school improvement. Tensions may arise if teachers are hindered in these PD possibilities. School leaders are expected to empower and support teachers: but what leadership instruments do they select to do so? By means of a qualitative vignette questionnaire, we studied the dilemmas, practices and action considerations of 50 school leaders from Dutch secondary schools in response to agency tensions. The results show that school leaders perceived dilemmas on both school organization and teacher level. Five different leadership instruments showed a large variety of possible roles for school leaders (e.g., communicating vision, diagnosing problems, dialogue). Most participants showed context-dependent leadership strategies.

Authors

• Monika Leonie Louws, Utrecht University

• Rosanne Zwart, The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO)

• Itzel Zuiker, Utrecht University