Danish University Colleges Differences in Teacher’s and Leader’s Perceptions of School Development. Normal Variation or Obstacle to Reform? Hornskov, Søren; Modeste, Marsha

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Danish University Colleges

Differences in Teacher’s and Leader’s Perceptions of School Development.

Normal Variation or Obstacle to Reform?

Hornskov, Søren; Modeste, Marsha

Publication date:

2017

Document Version

Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication

Citation for pulished version (APA):

Hornskov, S., & Modeste, M. (2017). Differences in Teacher’s and Leader’s Perceptions of School Development.

Normal Variation or Obstacle to Reform?. Paper presented at ECER, Copenhagen, Denmark. http://www.eera- ecer.de/ecer-programmes/conference/22/contribution/40073/

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Differences in Teachers’ and Leaders’

Perceptions of School Development. Normal Variation or Obstacle to Change?

Søren B. Hornskov, Ph.D.,University College UCC

Marsha E. Modeste, Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

European Conference on Educational Research – 2017 København, Danmark– August 22 – 25, 2017 EERA Network: 32. Organizational Education

”Power Relations and Perception Gaps as Factors of Organizational Development”

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Introduction, Background,

and Context

Denmark The United States

The

Comprehensive

Assessment of

Leadership for

Learning (CALL)

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Introduction, Background,

and Context

Denmark The United States

Managing expectations for

reform in schools

Assessment of 5 Domains of Leadership Practice

 Focus on Learning

 Monitoring Teaching and Learning

 Building Nested Learning Communities

 Acquiring and Allocating Resources

 Maintaining a Safe and Effective Learning

Environment

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?

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Overview of Study

CALL-DK

• School year 2015- 2016

Quantitative Analysis of Teachers' and School Leaders' Scores

Policy

Implementation through School Reform

5 domains of Leadership Practice in CALL

 Focus on Learning

 Monitoring Teaching and Learning

 Building Nested Learning Communities

 Acquiring and Allocating Resources

 Maintaining a Safe and Effective Learning

Environment

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Research questions

Data from the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey indicates that the ways in which leaders and staff look at school development vary significantly (Modeste et al. 2016).

Research questions:

 How do we gauge the importance of perception gaps between leaders and teachers?

 What are the implications of such differences for the

implementation of school reform?

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Review of Scholarly Research

Multi-rater assessments

Performance Evaluation oriented towards the

leadership tasks, practices and work that teachers, school leaders, pedagogues and other personnel take up in schools

Distributed Leadership

School Leadership Practice: Leader(s), Follower(s), Situation or Context (Spillane, Halverson and Diamond, 2004)

Policy Implementation through System-

wide Reform

• Danish School Reform (2014)

• No Child Left Behind (2002)

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Conceptual Framework

Multi-rater assessments

Perceptions vary by role

Distributed Leadership

Organizational dynamics (sense-making, politics)

Policy Implementation through System-

wide Reform

Situational and institutional dynamics

(values, traditions,

politicy)

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Methodology

 Building on Blitz’ and Modeste’s approach to the analysis of US school data (2015), the paper looks more closely at

perception gaps in Danish schools.

 Aim: to identify the themes and issues in CALL survey data in which the differences are most pronounced.

 The methodology involves an exploratory analysis of the

mean scores from respondents to the Danish version of CALL,

disaggregated by role.

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Methods and Procedures

T-tests | Conducted Independent samples T-tests of Teachers' and School Leaders' Mean Scores on

CALL-DK

Quartiles | Identified the Quartile Cut-off points for the absolute mean difference

scores between

Teachers and School Leaders

Comparing and Contrasting | After ranking the Danish subdomains, using the quartiles, we

compared the results

to the US analysis

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CALL: Domains and Subdomains

Focus on Learning – Domain 1

Maintaining a School-Wide Focus on Learning (1.1)

Formal Leaders are Recognized as Instructional Leaders (1.2) Collaborative Design of Integrated Learning Plan (1.3)

Providing Appropriate Services for All Students (1.4) Monitoring Teaching and Learning – Domain 2

Formative Evaluation of Student Learning (2.1) Summative Evaluation of Student Learning (2.2) Formative Evaluation of Teaching (2.3)

Summative Evaluation of Teaching (2.4)

Building Nested Learning Communities – Domain 3

Collaborative School-Wide Focus on Problems of Teaching (3.1) Professional Learning (3.2)

Socially Distributed Leadership (3.3) Coaching and Mentoring (3.4)

Acquiring and Allocating Resources – Domain 4 Structuring and Maintaining Time (4.2)

• 335 Teachers

• 27 School Leaders

Respondents to 362

CALL-DK SY2015-16

• SPSS

Individual item-

level scores were used to

calculate subdomain

scores

• Excel

Quartile

Analysis

Data and Analysis

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Overview:

Findings and Discussion

 The discrepancy between teachers and leaders’

scores in the Danish context is less than that of the US. This may be an indication of a different

cultural context.

 Overall we find shared perceptions by role

(teachers and leaders) across the Danish and US

contexts, indicating related impacts from parallel

reform processes.

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Finding #1:

leaders believe more reform work is going on

 Danish teachers, to a lesser degree than leaders, acknowledge the intentions to implement

accountability measures and knowledge-based feedback in the school organization.

 For instance, while leaders indicate that there are a lot of feedback processes going on, teachers don’t indicate that this is quite the case.

 We find gaps of similar size in US data.

How do we gauge the importance of perception gaps between

leaders and teachers?

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Finding #2: similar perceptions of

collaboration across roles

 The ratings of collaboration and the distribution of leadership are the only domains where gaps are larger in US than in DK data.

 So, while Danish teachers score these items lower than their leaders, the gaps are small compared to other domains and, above all, significantly smaller than the comparative US data.

What are the implications of such differences for the implementation

of school reform?

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Summary of Comparison Quartile Analysis

Quartile Cut-offs - No Domain Scores Same DK higher US higher

0 0.22 46.2% 38.5% 15.4%

1 0.45

2 0.61

3 0.93

4 1.02

Sub-domain

DK - Absolute Value of Mean

Difference

Quartile Quartile - Blitz &

Modeste 2015 Summary Another

Summary

1.1 0.83 3 2 same - middle quartiles same

1.2 1.02 4 4 same - high difference same

1.3 0.93 4 3 greater difference in DK than US DK higher

2.1 0.22 0 1 same - low or no difference same

3.1 0.39 1 4 greater difference in US than DK US higher

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Findings and Discussion

0 0.22 46.2% 38.5% 15.4%

1 0.45

2 0.61

3 0.93

4 1.02

Sub-domain

Difference

Summary

CALL: Relatively Same Difference between Teachers and Leaders in DK and US

Focus on Learning – Domain 1

Maintaining a School-Wide Focus on Learning (1.1)

Formal Leaders are Recognized as Instructional Leaders (1.2) Monitoring Teaching and Learning – Domain 2

Formative Evaluation of Student Learning (2.1) Summative Evaluation of Student Learning (2.2) Formative Evaluation of Teaching (2.3)

Building Nested Learning Communities – Domain 3 Coaching and Mentoring (3.4)

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Findings and Discussion

0 0.22 46.2% 38.5% 15.4%

1 0.45

2 0.61

3 0.93

4 1.02

Sub-domain

Difference

Summary

CALL: Greater Difference between Teachers and Leaders in DK than US

Focus on Learning – Domain 1

Collaborative Design of Integrated Learning Plan (1.3) Providing Appropriate Services for All Students (1.4) Monitoring Teaching and Learning – Domain 2 Summative Evaluation of Teaching (2.4)

Building Nested Learning Communities – Domain 3 Professional Learning (3.2)

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Findings and Discussion

0 0.22 46.2% 38.5% 15.4%

1 0.45

2 0.61

3 0.93

4 1.02

Sub-domain

Difference

Summary

CALL: Greater Difference between Teachers and Leaders in US than DK

Building Nested Learning Communities – Domain 3

Collaborative School-Wide Focus on Problems of Teaching (3.1) Socially Distributed Leadership (3.3)

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Summary of Comparison Quartile Analysis

0 0.22 46.2% 38.5% 15.4%

1 0.45

2 0.61

3 0.93

4 1.02

Sub-domain

Difference

Summary

Overall there is a meaningful set of shared perceptions by role (teachers and leaders) across the Danish and US contexts. Where the discrepancy between teachers’ and leaders’ scores in the Danish context is greater than that of the US, we may be seeing a concrete illustration of the policy implementation process.