Shaping Collective Work: Leaders' Frames for Teacher Collaboration in Low-Performing Schools

• In Event: Using Data and Research to Achieve School Improvement

Abstract

School leaders play an integral role in providing opportunities for teachers to collaborate with one another, contributing to benefits such as instructional improvement and increased student achievement. A better understanding of the ways in which school leaders frame collaboration is needed, as the framing of reform efforts plays a large role in steering organizational change. This study explores how leaders’ frames for collaboration intersect with teachers’ collective work, drawing on four years of qualitative data collected in four low-performing urban middle schools. Findings from this study demonstrate the role of accountability pressures in shaping leadership frames about the purpose of collaboration, as well as a bi-directional relationship between leadership frames and teachers’ collective work.

Author

• Hayley Ryan Weddle, University of Pittsburgh