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1. Purposes
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of three research practice partnerships (RPPs) in Australian schools participating in professional learning and research on Leading learning and wellbeing together. Two researchers worked for a year in three diverse schools over a three-year period. The goal was for leaders to remedy collaborative practices to support the development of people, pedagogy and wellbeing in their school. The RPP supported them to develop knowledge, skills and collective habits to enable them to lead learning together in a sustainable way.
2. Methods, theoretical frameworks and data sources
Our paper reports on informal and formal processes of participant evaluation and researcher monitoring of the progress of the RPP. Methods included participant surveys throughout the RPP, and interviews with Senior leaders at the conclusion. Participants were surveyed at the start and end of the RPP, and at the end of each session. Participant feedback enabled us to tailor our sessions to the needs of leaders. Participant responses also gave us insights into the opportunities and limitations of each RPP which helped the design of subsequent RPPs.
We employed interdisciplinary methods drawing upon educational leadership research and organisational psychology. This included learning more about participants’ individual and collective capability from the program and beyond and evaluating changes in practices in the school outlined in the phases of a middle leadership framework created by Day and Grice (2019). The survey inquired into basic psychological needs from Self Determination Theory, including autonomy, competence and relatedness, which has been widely investigated in terms of teacher wellbeing (e.g. Collie, 2023). We also employed the Work and Wellbeing Survey (UWES-9; Schaufeli et al., 2006) to measure participant engagement in each school, as well as the Job Crafting Questionnaire (JCQ; Slemp & Vella-Broderick, 2013) to find out more about their capacity to remedy work practices. Participants were supported to develop critical reflection through explicit modelling of practices, including authentic listening and sharing that develops trust through communication, resolution, and action.
3. Results and substantiated conclusions
Our RPPs were designed to be centred around a continuous research and evaluation framework, including using principles of Action Research, however, three unanticipated difficulties arose around the monitoring and evaluation process. Ethics clearance was untimely for the delivery of surveys. Trust was fully established by the end of the RPP and consequently data gathered at the start of the intervention was incomplete. Schools did not have the time, interest, or inclination to utilise Action Research alongside professional learning. We adjusted our own expectations and ambitions as facilitators as we reflected on each RPP.
4. Scholarly significance
We assessed the strengths and limitations of our RPP in accordance with Hendrick et al.’s (2017) framework, whilst acknowledging the challenges of assessing the quality of research collaborations through RPPs (Welsh, 2021). Research interviews revealed the extent to which each of the three middle leadership teams grew in critical educational praxis (Francisco et al, 2021; Mahon, 2019) and was dependent upon the leadership conditions, interactions, and intentions within each of the three schools.