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Professional Development in Education
ISSN: 1941-5257 (Print) 1941-5265 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjie20
Leading learning: the role of school leaders in
supporting continuous professional development
Michael Stevenson, John G. Hedberg, Kerry-Ann O’Sullivan & Cathie Howe
To cite this article: Michael Stevenson, John G. Hedberg, Kerry-Ann O’Sullivan & Cathie Howe
(2016): Leading learning: the role of school leaders in supporting continuous professional
development, Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2015.1114507
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2015.1114507
Published online: 02 Feb 2016.
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Leading learning: the role of school leaders in supporting
continuous professional development
Michael Stevenson*, John G. Hedberg, Kerry-Ann O’Sullivan and Cathie Howe
School of Education, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
(Received 29 July 2014; accepted 3 October 2015)
In contemporary school settings, leaders seeking to support professional develop-
ment are faced with many challenges. These challenges call for educators who
can undertake professional learning that is continuous and adaptive to change.
As a term, continuous professional development (CPD) reflects many different
forms of professional development in face-to-face and online contexts. However,
as school leaders seek to facilitate effective CPD, identifying the best model of
CPD for each school community remains a challenge. This mixed-methods study
sought to understand the contextual factors that influence how school leaders
facilitate CPD within their communities. Drawing on data from three school case
studies and questionnaire responses from a broader sample of 102 school leaders
across 17 schools, the researchers examined leaders’changing perceptions, the
school-based professional development support structures and the ways in which
educators employed both structured and unstructured time for professional learn-
ing. Findings draw attention to two key areas: first, that leaders increasingly pre-
fer technology-mediated, informal professional learning over more traditional
and structured forms; and, second, that leaders are drawing on insights from pop-
ular thinkers in education aided by the expanded networks which current tech-
nology tools afford.
Keywords: continuous professional development; school leadership; technology
Introduction
School leaders play an important role in teachers’learning, responding to the chal-
lenges and needs of their school communities while working within larger contexts
of curricular, technological and pedagogical change. These contexts were relatively
stable throughout the twentieth century, with typical emphases on print-based infor-
mation, face-to-face learning and the relatively ‘private’classroom walls. By con-
trast, the twenty-first century challenges school leaders to perform in very different
ways.
In contemporary times, there is a growing emphasis on the need to employ con-
tinuous professional development (CDP), a term that implies both the agency of the
educator in their professional learning and the need for such learning to be respon-
sive to change. The literature on CPD emphasises its continuity beyond the life of
pre-service and in-service training and brings into focus the steps that teachers and
school leaders need to take to facilitate professional learning in different contexts at
different times (DiMauro 2000, Ryan 2003, Kirsch 2015).However, as Mitchell
*Email: michael.stevenson@mq.edu.au
© 2016 International Professional Development Association (IPDA)
Professional Development in Education, 2016
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(2013) points out, the underlying purposes of CPD tend to be highly sensitive to
context, politically charged and somewhat difficult to define. The author draws par-
ticular reference to the positioning of CPD in relation to external change agendas
and its perceived purpose in meeting ‘the needs of globalisation’(2013, p. 389).
Labelling these discourses as ‘woolly’and at times ‘neoliberal’, Mitchell maintains
that professional development and CPD should be processes ‘whereby an individual
acquires or enhances the skills, knowledge and/or attitudes for improved practice’
(2013, p. 390).
Identifying the most appropriate models for facilitating CPD remains a challenge
for many school leaders that is reflected in the literature. Drawing attention to the
need for school-based structures to better support life-long learning, Richter et al.
(2014, p. 97) note that ‘modern views of professional development characterise pro-
fessional learning not as a short-term intervention, but as a long-term process
extending from teacher education at university to in-service training at the work-
place’. Similarly, in a review focusing on the role of technology in enabling profes-
sional learning, Brooks and Gibson (2012, p. 7) point out that traditional models of
professional development ‘reinforce an externally-designed, stand-and-deliver non-
participatory type of learning environments [that] do little to assist teachers in enact-
ing constructivist, inquiry-based learning practices, commiserate with twenty-first
century learning, in their classrooms’, while arguing that school leaders needs to
support more personalised,practice-focused and community-oriented learning
amongst their staff.
As educators increasingly explore options for newer forms of professional
learning –such as CPD –that enhance and extend on traditional and largely face-to-
face ‘one-off’forms of professional development, the assumptions tied to these
older forms are being questioned. Huber (2010) notes that, until relatively recently,
professional development has been centred around the twentieth-century industrial
schooling realities of information scarcity, the dominance of print media and the pri-
vatised classroom, reflecting largely unquestioned assumptions about how teachers
can, or should, learn. The author’s discussion of the use of technology for profes-
sional learning illustrates a pressing need to challenge ongoing traditional beliefs
such as ‘passing information on is enough’,‘insight must come from outside formal
training’and ‘planning means learning’(2010, p. 42). As Huber elaborates:
Each of these false assumptions takes hold because of a reliance on traditional models
for professional development. The school goes through the motions of professional
learning, but its approach is based more on the illusion of collaboration than on sub-
stantive, on-going, sustained conversation. (2010, p. 42)
New opportunities for CPD are presented to school leaders through the increasing
connected affordances of technology tools now available in most developed (and
many developing) countries. For example, the proliferation of mobile apps and Web
2.0 tools enables access to both information sources and people across traditional
geo-political divides. Leaders can use tools for content aggregation and social media
to access a wide range of information sources from industry, education and other
experts, and to form people-to-people connections outside traditional school-based
and system-based networks. Increasingly recognised as the ‘Personal Learning Net-
work’(Richardson and Mancabelli 2011, Nussbaum-Beach 2013, Creelman et al.
2014), educators are now able to use technology tools to construct and manage very
personalised online networks of people and information that are relevant to their
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specific professional learning needs. As Nussbaum-Beach elaborates, Personal
Learning Networks have the potential:
to profoundly affect both professional and personal learning. Networking can help
boost your energy, stimulate personal growth, and lead to a revitalized individual prac-
tice. Self-organized networks can also lead to opportunities to join or create power-
house communities of inquiry and practice, which are distinguishable from PLNs
[Personal Learning Networks] by their deeper levels of thinking, collaboration, and
engagement. (2013, p. 26)
However, while the potential of online technologies to further enable CPD is becom-
ing more apparent, there remain the physical realities of the school environment
such as the dominance of face-to-face instruction, the lack of time and the cost of
implementing most forms of change. These realities present barriers to realising the
potential for learning both within and beyond the school. In empirical research on
CPD, issues have manifested in a range of ways. For example, in a study of primary
teachers, Geldenhuys and Oosthuizen (2015) found that school leaders provided
inadequate support and direction for CPD, while teachers showed reluctance to par-
ticipate in CPD activities. Likewise, in a study of early childhood educators, Walton
et al.(
2014) found that efforts to implement CPD did not adequately address the
needs of the individual educator or institutional context.
There is a need to better understand how school leaders determine the best mod-
els for CPD in their communities. In particular, research is needed that closely
examines how school leaders perceive, support and otherwise facilitate CPD in con-
temporary school settings, including the many push–pull factors in play. Such
research needs to consider contextual constraints in school environments –such as
time, money and the provision of support structures –and how leaders work within
these environments to effect change. Research should also consider the role of tech-
nology-enabled networks in shaping the identity and practices of twenty-first-century
school leaders and explore how current school leaders might be supported through
the diverse communities of practice –reflective of the local, national and global con-
texts –that are possible in the digital age.
Study
When exploring self-managing schools, Caldwell and Spinks (2013) note the impor-
tance of collective ownership of change, through shared management, autonomy and
responsibility. They also allude to the important relationship between institutional
and personal change:
Experience of past top-down change programs or improvement scheme was one of dis-
mal failure and it is therefore easy to see why the self-managing school is currently
such a popular concept. The school effectiveness literature also shows that the more
effective schools in all countries have staff groups who own their school because they
as staff are responsible for its management and general wellbeing. It is also clear from
the various school improvement programs that, commitment to personal and institu-
tional change is greatest where the individual school is in charge of its own schemes.
(Caldwell and Spinks 2013, p. 32)
Focusing on the role of school leaders within the context of the self-managed
school, this study explored the contextual factors that shape CPD in contemporary
school settings. Two research questions informed the study:
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1. What are the contextual constraints that impact on CPD in contemporary
school settings?
2. How are contemporary school leaders approaching the challenge of support-
ing CPD in response to curriculum change?
The data gathering and analysis activities were undertaken during 2013/14,
endorsed by the University Ethics Committee, and involved: three initial school-
based case studies through semi-structured focus group interviews with principals
and their leadership teams; and an online questionnaire delivered to a broader sam-
ple of 102 school leaders from 17 schools.
The timing of the study coincided with the implementation of the new Australian
Curriculum, a curriculum that calls for significant change in terms of pedagogical
approaches, the use of new technologies and major revisions to subject content. As
part of their participation in the study, schools received A$10,500 of funding that
leaders were relatively free to use for professional development in response to the
new curriculum demands. Prior to selection of the sample, all government schools in
the state of New South Wales, Australia were invited to prepare expressions of inter-
est outlining the school-based professional development deemed necessary for imple-
menting the new curriculum and how the school leadership team would seek to use
the funding to facilitate this development. Seventeen schools were selected on the
basis of expressions of interest that showed evidence of capacity for school-based
CPD that addressed the curriculum-related needs identified by the school leaders. In
this way, the Australian Curriculum acted as a contextual catalyst for exploring the
different forms of professional development evident in each community.
Participation in the study further required a school leadership team to provide
interim and final reports on professional learning outcomes, as well as posting
weekly updates in a shared public blog. The shared blog posts prompted school
leaders to reflect on their progress, and were often used to identify common prob-
lems and solutions, promote inter-school dialogue and share links to useful digital
resources. Apart from the programme’s reporting and blogging requirements and the
need for each project to include a clear focus on professional development related to
the new curriculum, school leadership teams were free to determine the scope and
parameters of their perceived learning needs. The overall sample of 102 participants
included principals and non-teaching executives, teachers with leadership roles (e.g.
information and communications technology mentor and subject coordinators) as
well as regular classroom teachers who had adopted unofficial leadership roles in
their school.
Schools and participants
Because of their different needs and interests, the reports shared by each school
varied considerably. Table 1presents a profile summary of the participants. For
example, whereas some schools focused on professional learning with technologies
that were currently in place, others used their participation as an opportunity to
acquire and explore new technologies. Some schools attempted a school-wide
change with every teacher involved, whereas others included only a small number
of teachers. Some schools cited specific pedagogical models (e.g. ‘project-based
learning’), whereas others cited general pedagogical principles (e.g. ‘student-centred
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learning’). While each school employed their funding for different forms of profes-
sional development, the majority of schools spent more funds in the areas of teacher
release (the provision of time away from classroom duties to plan, work with col-
leagues or attend training) and the purchase of new hardware devices (most notably
tablets) for teachers to develop their technology skills. Other areas like formal train-
ing and the purchase of needed infrastructure for professional learning were less
consistent, being applied in a relatively small portion of schools.
Table 2presents the allocation of funds by area of expenditure, indicating the
number of schools allocating funds in each area. Of note, most schools spent the
majority of funds in the areas of teacher release and hardware acquisition, while
considerably less funding was spent in the areas of formal training, infrastructure,
software and accessories. Perhaps most notably, the majority of hardware acquisition
funds were spent on the purchase of iPads so that teachers could learn to use the tool
effectively in their classrooms ($25,961, or 20.5% of total funds).
Methodology
The school-based case studies undertaken in Stage 1 aimed to qualitatively explore
the school context, including the learning experiences, decisions, actions and leader-
ship styles of school leaders and how these affected professional development out-
comes for other teachers in the school. During the interviews, leaders were asked to
discuss professional development that was being undertaken to address new curricu-
lum challenges.
Six weeks into their involvement in the study, principals from each of the 17
schools were asked whether or not they had successfully begun to facilitate profes-
sional learning to meet the specific curriculum demands indicated in their initial
report. Of these, seven principals indicated that successful professional learning had
been undertaken. Researchers triangulated these claims by conducting analysis of
blog posts, reports and proposed expenditure in order to identify the nature of the
Table 2. Collective allocation of funds by area of expenditure.
Area Expenditure (A$) Number/percentage of schools spending money
Teacher release 60,170 14/82%
Hardware 41,405 9/53%
Formal training 10,830 4/24%
Infrastructure 8875 5/29%
Software 4599 4/24%
Accessories 705 2/12%
Table 1. Profile summary of participants.
Educator role
Principals
(n=5,
7.9%)
School executive
(non-teaching) (n
= 4, 6.3%)
Teachers with
leadership roles
(n= 35, 55.6%)
Classroom teachers (n
= 19, 30.2%)
Mean age 44.5 42.7 37.3 38.2
Mean years of
teaching
21.4 22 13.59 13.11
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professional learning and specifically look for evidence of CPD. From these
analyses, three case studies were included in this article as an intensity sample that
reflected school communities with established cultures of CPD. In particular, these
three schools cited clear examples of professional learning where teachers were
given considerable choice in what or how they learned, where specific programmes
had been put in place to facilitate more self-directed forms of professional learning
and/or where teachers were encouraged to use technology tools in their own time to
connect with other educators outside the school community. In contrast, leaders in
another four schools did not show clear evidence of CPD. Two secondary schools
used the majority of funds to release staff for ‘programming days’with no mention
of these days, or outcomes thereof, in their blog posts. One school used the majority
of funds for a university lecturer to speak at two staff development days, while the
remaining school funded a very structured staff development day for all teachers
involved. By closely examining the school context of schools that had already suc-
cessfully employed CPD prior to their participation in the study, Stage 1 was able to
draw findings about the nature of CPD in the school context that was further
explored in subsequent research.
Stage 2 developed the emerging themes as operational constructs in a question-
naire (Teacher Professional Learning Questionnaire) that was delivered online to all
participants from each of the 17 schools towards the end of the data-gathering
phases in 2013.
1
Participants were first asked to rate a range of broader typical pro-
fessional development support structures that included time, infrastructure, appropri-
ate leadership, technology tools and ideas. Each structure was rated in terms of its
professional learning value to the individual respondent, and principal components
analysis (PCA) was used to explore the connections between the constructs.
To more clearly illustrate the study design, Morse’s(
2003) sequencing and para-
digm emphasis model was used, with a design that employed a minor qualitative
component followed by a main quantitative component. Further, with respect to the
principles of mixed-methods research articulated in Greene et al.(
1989), the princi-
ples of complementarity and development were adopted. With mostly correlative
constructs reflecting different aspects of school leadership, complementarity was
used ‘to measure overlapping but also different facets of a phenomenon, yielding an
enriched, elaborated understanding of that phenomenon’(1989, p. 258). Likewise,
the principle of development –where research ‘seeks to use the results from one
method to help develop or inform the other method’(1989, p. 260) –enabled
themes in the qualitative component to inform the questionnaire design.
Case-study findings
Each of the three cases involved school visits mid-way into the implementation of
each school’s project (June 2013). To draw relationships between each school’s
socio-economic status (SES), the Australian Index of Community Socio-Educational
Advantage (for further discussion, see Barnes 2011) was used. All three schools are
state primary schools, with children ranging from five to 12 years old across seven
grade levels (Kindergarten–Grade 6).
Data from these interviews were explored inductively, through segmenting, cod-
ing and the development of category systems in QSR NVivo. These data helped to
identify important relationships, including themes, patterns and semantic distinctions
related to participants’perceptions of CPD in their school. Throughout data analysis,
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recurrent themes, topics and issues were explored from the participants’perspectives
with a view to establishing clear frames of reference. Inductive codes were based,
wherever possible, on emic terms used by the participants themselves.
School A: whole-of-school, ‘top-down’approach
School A’s project involved what the principal described as ‘just-in-time’and
‘needs-driven’professional learning for all teachers (n= 30) in the school. The
school was among the highest in terms of SES for the participating schools in the
sample, with the majority of families (78%) in the upper-middle and top quartiles.
The leadership team indicated that there was considerable focus on the use of self-
assessment through ‘inquiry-based learning’, a model that has been associated with
real-world inquiry in the classroom (Owens et al.2002) and the use of thinking
scaffolds for inquiry (see, for example, Clark 2009). To implement this model,
teachers were formally asked to identify areas of need in relation to the Australian
Curriculum:
When the recommendations came back from the teaching staff, we [the school leaders]
collated them and said [to the teachers]: ‘well, these are your needs …’ and they were
grouped into key areas …[We then asked teachers] ‘what should your professional
learning look like now?’So they came up with how they wanted it to look …they
wanted workshops, they wanted to visit classrooms and they wanted hands-on learning.
This is the shift of pedagogy …to me that was a huge shift for this staff because they
are now going to learn as twenty-first century learners.
While the leaders were keen to promote choice as an essential component of profes-
sional learning, there was nonetheless an acknowledged need for the school to adopt
a top-down style of leadership to ensure that every teacher was accountable for their
learning. The Assistant Principal conceded that ‘our staff in some ways reflect our
children …in that they don’t like to take a lot of risks, but they are becoming
greater risk takers in their own practice’.
When asked about the ideas that informed their professional learning, the princi-
pal cited the influence of three popular thinkers in education, all of whom were
high-profile educators with a strong online presence and wide reach (one having, for
example, over 93,000 followers on Twitter). The combination of these three educa-
tional leaders helped her to articulate how pedagogy operated within the school
environment. In particular, she remarked that one thinker’s inquiry-based learning
scaffolds ‘beautifully worked with the [curriculum] modules, stating clearly what the
twenty-first century skills are’, while reference to the meta-analytical work of
another thinker –a high-profile researcher known for meta-analysis of cognitive
strategies –encouraged her staff to make sure that ‘it’s all research based’and atten-
dance at a conference workshop with the third thinker –an influential speaker on
twenty-first-century school design –prompted all of the teachers involved to ‘come
back and rearrange their rooms as best they could’to represent a twenty-first-century
learning space that the thinker had described in detail. Pointing out the connections
between the practices of her teachers and these thought leaders, the principal stated:
‘you’ve gotta have good pedagogy …this is not somebody’s whim!’
Finally, two key themes in relation to technology emerged. First, the principal
emphasised the importance of flexibility when responding to change: ‘so, it hasn’t
just been me that’s driving it [the project]. It’s been the technology team. What
they’ve learned along the way is that every six months, that technology plan goes
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out the window…and that’s fantastic.’This positive perception of technology as
rapidly changing was also reinforced by a Grade 4 teacher in the focus group, who
described the shift in mindset where ‘technology used to be seen as the extra thing,
whereas now we see the technology is so vital to what is going on in the classroom’.
Second, attention on the role of students in teacher professional learning was evi-
dent. In particular, many of the participants reinforced the importance of students
having substantial input into learning with technology. One teacher described her
experience using the Kahoots software:
I guided those kids through what I wanted that software to do based on what that soft-
ware would tell me. Now, can I actually make anything move on Kahoots? I have no
idea! But the kids can work it out very easily and they taught each other.
In summary, the discussion reflected the importance of teachers being adaptable to
change –especially when thrown in ‘the deep end’–and the need for teachers and
learners to engage with one another in a way that reflects, to some extent, Fullan’s
(2013)‘new pedagogy’of the ‘teacher–learner partnership’.
School B: small team, ‘offering’approach
In contrast to School A, School B was among the very lowest in SES of the partici-
pating schools, with the majority (64%) in the lower-middle and bottom quartiles.
The school has 17 teachers, six of whom (including the principal) were directly
involved in the study. With only 259 students, this school was the smallest involved.
Similar to School A, the school leaders were focused on shifting the pedagogy from
direct instruction to inquiry. All leaders acknowledged they initially had limited
understanding of inquiry-based learning, so were dependent on each other and out-
siders for ideas and support. Nonetheless, they were all convinced that inquiry was
an important next step in developing their pedagogies, and that they needed to invest
time to understand it better in order to implement it in their teaching. They also
believed that tablet devices were particularly suitable for inquiry-based learning
activities, and had purchased and deployed two tablets in each classroom. Relative
to their size and number of teaching staff involved, School B spent considerably
more funds on teacher release.
Being a small school, researchers were interested in the number of, and the
extent to which, these teachers were learning about inquiry as part of their pedagogy.
When asked about the adoption of inquiry-based learning as a model, one of the
leaders remarked that most teachers ‘had been doing it for the last few years’but
that some ‘were on a higher level than others’. She also cited the work of one popu-
lar thinker mentioned in School A (whom she had independently discovered via her
email group connections with other principals) and the role of technology:
we did a lot of work with LC [name removed] –I don’t know if you’ve heard of her?
–yeah, we started with her, but not so much having adopted every idea …it was about
two years ago that we started …I mean, it’s [inquiry] always sort of been fundamental,
like a part of our school …but it’s actually been a lot easier, having the technology, to
go and do inquiry learning now …
Another leader described her experiences attending a face-to-face workshop and then
a follow-up online component with this educator. She had made extensive use of
LC’s learning scaffolds and the leader’s class had, after the workshop, continued to
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communicate with this thinker via Twitter (a common social media tool) and Skype
(video communication software). As she related:
LC speaks to me …like, when I listen to her, there’s something about what she says
and what she does that resonates with me …and I think that that is something that’s
poignant in relation to teachers and moving them …It has to speak to them …it has
to hit them in terms of their moral purpose and if the person speaking to them res-
onates with what they’re doing and why they do what they do, and perhaps forces
them to challenge some of those things that they themselves weren’t quite comfortable
with about their practice …that’s what pushes people forward.
Of note, this statement illustrates the influence of the popular thinker on this leader’s
practices in School B. The language reflects what researchers have described as the
‘affective domain’(Krathwohl and Masia 1984), where the individual responds to,
organises and internalises phenomena in relation to their personal value system. The
leader in School B had used the combination of face-to-face and online connections
with this popular thinker in order to develop her ideas in relation to what she per-
ceived to be the ‘moral purpose’of her teaching.
Exploring the different levels of innovation and experience with inquiry-based
learning further, the principal pointed out that she encouraged her small team of
innovators to develop new approaches and ‘offer’them to other staff members. For
example, when developing the new units of work, she stated that when other teach-
ers heard about the new ideas, they would, she believed, ‘come on board’. One tea-
cher suggested that this process of co-opting new teachers to the project goals
involved time, patience and not forcing staff members to follow the new initiative.
She referred to her own experiences working in a team of three, with one cooperat-
ing teacher and one who ‘just did her own thing’, pointing out that she and her
cooperating colleague were trying gently ‘to bring the other teacher on board this
term’, a process that involved showing ‘what a great time the kids are having’to
encourage reticent teachers to try similar approaches. This principal also addressed
the school’s innovation in relation to her own style of leadership:
One of my biggest philosophies is that you go with who’s ready to go first …and hope-
fullythatrippleeffectwilltakeplace…once they [innovating teachers] have the opportu-
nity to share it [their ideas] with the rest of their stage, it [the reaction by other teachers]
will be, ‘We want some of what you’ve having …we want some of that too.’It’snot‘you
will do this’[to the staff] …it’s‘if you would like to …here it is for the offering.’
Interestingly, this comment reflected some of the principles of adult learning, which
often emphasises the extent to which adult learners are ‘autonomous and self-di-
rected’(Lieb and Goodlad 2005) and are more often voluntarily engaged in their
learning (Brookfield 1988). When asked specifically about the importance of ‘offer-
ing’a new approach instead of mandating it, one leader stated that it was important
for the educator to ‘buy in’to a new idea based on ‘what is going to move their
children forward’, a process where the teacher autonomously chooses to accept or
reject the educational initiative. All interviewees strongly agreed that forcing mem-
bers of staff to try new ideas was not at all part of their school’s culture.
School C: mid-size team, ‘innovate first –plan later’approach
School C is similar in size to School A, with approximately 650 students and 31
teachers, seven of whom were directly involved in their school’s project. School C
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resembled School B in terms of SES, with the majority (57%) of families in the
bottom two quartiles. The participating teachers initially articulated two professional
learning goals for their school: first, the effective use of tablet-based literacy apps to
support a whole-school reading programme; and, second, the development of a
‘learning alliance’of schools in the local area with a shared website for pooling cur-
riculum-related resources and communication. In relation to the first goal, the leaders
indicated that most staff (themselves included) had a very limited understanding of
literacy apps, being in the early stages of learning how to use several tablets that
had been purchased and deployed. Leaders also conceded that the learning alliance
was ‘more an ideal than a reality’. Separate members of the school’s executive man-
aged each of these goals; in both cases, however, this management involved setting
broad direction but leaving the specifics of professional learning up to individual
teachers to decide. In particular, the leaders admitted that, because of their lack of
technology skills, they ‘relied’on other members of staff (especially younger teach-
ers) to ‘show us the way’. As part of their involvement in the study, School C used
their funding mainly to purchase new tablets ($7051, or 69% of allocated funds),
with a small portion of funds set aside for teacher release ($1633, or 16%). When
asked about their use of the teacher release funds, the Assistant Principal noted:
…so we’re spending a lot of money on professional learning …the big cost of course
is the casual release …$415 a day and that’s a huge cost for us. We try to be creative
with splitting classes …like today, I split two classes and a couple of teachers made
comments about that …and I said ‘ok, well if you have a better idea, let me know’…
so we try the whole give and take a little bit …and as far as our push towards being
ready for the new English curriculum next year …
Similar to School B, the Assistant Principal of School C talked about what he
described as the ‘snowball effect’, where most teachers in the school were observing
the positive changes developed by the school’s participants and then trying these
new approaches in their own classrooms. In particular, two young teachers –
regarded as ‘unofficial technology mentors’–were exploring a very broad range of
apps on the iPads purchased with project funding and, unlike the other teachers in
the school, both had constant access to six iPads in each of their classrooms.
One of these teachers discussed how she learned how to use iTunes U, a plat-
form she was exploring for sharing content with her class:
Well, I was a little scared when I first saw it …because I have my own iPad and I am
just so used to these apps that are just fun …with a couple of games and that…and
then I saw them [the apps being explored for literacy] and I was like ‘what am I going
to do?’I just went on the Mac and Apple website …and watched video after video of
schools that were incorporating these apps …and iTunes U …and learnt how to do it
[set up an iTunes U course] myself …it’s really easy.
Interestingly, while this teacher had been exploring the sharing potential of iTunes U
with her class, other participants –including the school’s executive –were unaware
of this, with one commenting ‘well, the iTunes U …this the first I’ve heard that
she’s doing that! I’ve not done it myself’. Referring to both of the younger teachers,
another member of the executive commented ‘I’m nowhere near as au fait as these
girls here’, stating that the school was ‘at the stage where they are still playing and
learning with the technology’and suggesting that ‘we’ll come to the point where
they share, and then people like me can pick it up and run with it’. Summing up this
process, she said: ‘we’ll let the young ones do all the hard work and then we’ll suck
10 M. Stevenson et al.
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them dry later’. These findings suggest that while the teacher, the principal and the
school executive initially supported innovation and professional learning, there was
an apparent lack of distributed leadership that influenced the direction the school
was taking. Further, while the younger teachers cited in the interview showed initia-
tive in learning about and employing technology tools in their teaching, it was
unclear as to how the school executive aimed to leverage this informal professional
learning. Moreover, there was limited evidence to suggest that these younger teach-
ers were being supported in their autonomy.
Questionnaire findings
The initial case studies illustrated how school leaders in three typical-case state pri-
mary schools responded to the challenges of the changing curricular, technological
and pedagogical contexts. In all three schools, leaders responded in ways that they
believed would best serve the unique needs of teachers and students in their school
community. The decisions made often reflected the leaders’styles and philosophies,
with communities of like-minded leaders assisting to create a school culture where
these styles, philosophies and decisions were seen as normal and appropriate. All
leaders approached the challenges pragmatically, working with available resources
to address some of the demands of the new curriculum. The qualitative component
thus helped to illustrate three typical school settings wherein school leaders worked
to facilitate different forms of professional learning that stood in contrast to tradi-
tional professional development programmes. These forms of professional learning
that focused, to varying degrees, on teacher’s needs, interests and weaknesses could
arguably be described as emerging forms of CPD. These forms were, to a greater or
lesser extent, supported and facilitated by the leaders.
The questionnaire employed in Stage 2 of the study explored a range of percep-
tions in relation to CPD contextual factors that shape professional learning. Partici-
pants were asked, from their point of view, to rate the importance of a range of
items for their professional learning. Items included a range of time-related factors
that reflected the emphasis of expenditure on release time, ideas and influence-re-
lated factors that reflected the emphasis on popular thinkers, and technology factors
such as the provision of infrastructure and use of relevant tools. The questionnaire
sought to measure perceptions of these factors with a view to obtaining findings that
might further explain how school leaders perceive CPD, the impact of their profes-
sional learning and actions on the school culture and possible leadership attributes
that leverage professional learning most effectively in contemporary school commu-
nities. Two key findings that resonated with Stage 1 are now examined.
Finding 1: leaders’perceptions and use of time for professional learning
Given the level of expenditure for release time, the Teacher Professional Learning
Questionnaire sought to measure how school leaders perceived and employed their
time in the context of common time-related support structures that exist in many
schools. These organisational structures include less formal uses of time, such as les-
son preparation periods, programming days and time to plan with colleagues, as well
as more formal uses of time such as staff meetings, training days and structured
release from face-to-face contexts to mentor other teachers. Further, the question-
naire also examined how much time school leaders spent time outside typical work
Professional Development in Education 11
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hours on their professional learning, with findings that revealed, on average, an addi-
tional 12.1 hours each week. Table 3presents the distribution of this time in relation
to professional learning activities:
Overall, the level of expenditure and the number of schools allocating funds in
this area suggested that time represents possibly the largest factor in the professional
learning outcomes of participating teachers. As one school leader conceded during
her interview:
There’s very few like me who actually get the release and the responsibility to do that
professional development with teachers. There are fantastic teachers in other schools
who are doing amazing stuff with technology, who are applying things in ways that I
haven’t been doing, but they simply don’t have the time to share their knowledge and
skills with colleagues.
The qualitative component of the study had revealed that leaders organised unstruc-
tured release from class for teachers who were willing to try new ideas, such as the
use of new technology tools and training of other teachers. By contrast, the limited
allocation of funds in the area of formal training suggested that most schools
employed less formal uses of time, most commonly for planning, further lesson
preparation periods and the mentoring of teachers. In many cases, participants cited
release time as a key factor that enabled them to meet perceived curriculum
demands; however, the questionnaire sought to examine how each leader’s percep-
tion and use of time impacted on the success of each school. While some schools
chose to implement this release as whole days for participating teachers, others
chose to break up release time into smaller components. For example, in the project
blog, one school described releasing an iPad expert teacher every Thursday to team-
teach with other participants throughout the day. As the teacher released noted:
I think that it’s the smartest way to do it …we’re a small school and we had a certain
number of participants from our team …and also, I still have a class …so it’s good
when I can say that Thursday I’moff…it’s quite nice to be able to have that block of
release …and while the sessions are 45-60 minutes for each class, because I’m
released the whole session, we’ve run over time quite a few times, but the teachers are
willing to keep going –and I have the option to stay which is really nice …and also
as a practicality …packing the iPads up and taking them to the next class …you
know, it’s just nice to have that day to focus on.
The questionnaire explored time as a multi-layered support structure, with 10 items
rated in importance by respondents through a seven-point scale on the use of profes-
sional learning time in different contexts. To understand relationships between the
items, principal components analysis was conducted. An initial analysis was run to
obtain eigenvalues for each factor in the data. Three factors had eigenvalues greater
than one and in combination explained 69.11% of the variance. Table 4presents the
Table 3. Use of additional time for professional learning: top activities.
Professional learning activity Time (minutes)
Searching for and reading information 386
Watching or listening to audio and/or video content 106
Sharing information with people 89
Creating your own content 55
Co-creating/editing content 54
12 M. Stevenson et al.
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component loadings after rotation. The items that cluster suggest Component 1 is
time spent on preparation and planning within the immediate school environment,
Component 2 is time spent networking and planning beyond the immediate school
environment and Component 3 is traditional structured professional development
time beyond the immediate school environment.
The pattern matrix suggests that leaders perceived time spent on professional
learning time in three different contexts; each context reflected the locus of profes-
sional activity and interaction related to teachers’learning. The themes that had
emerged in the qualitative component were thus confirmed by the analysis. As
shown, unstructured time was generally perceived to be more important to profes-
sional learning, particularly in terms of interactions with colleagues both within and
beyond the school environment. The PCA in this area confirmed the themes that had
emerged in the qualitative component.
Finding 2: leaders’perceptions of technology, research and other leaders
The questionnaire also explored a range of support structures that were closely
aligned to the themes addressed in the qualitative component, including access to
technology tools and infrastructure, the nature of leadership and the importance of
guiding policies and current research. Eigenvalues greater than one were extracted
for four components and, in combination, these explained 71.87% of total variance.
Table 5presents the component loadings after rotation. The items that cluster
Table 4. Results of components analysis –time-related support structures.
Pattern matrix
a
Component
123
Importance of support structures [unstructured professional
development days in my own school (e.g. a planning day with
colleagues)]
0.874
Importance of support structures [release time from class] 0.789
Importance of support structures [structured professional development
days in my own school (e.g. staff training day)]
0.737
Importance of support structures [unstructured meeting time with
leaders to discuss concerns face-to-face in my school]
0.722
Importance of support structures [unstructured meeting time to share
ideas face-to-face with colleagues in my school]
0.703
Importance of support structures [Lesson preparation time (e.g.
designated free period in timetable)]
0.488
Importance of support structures [unstructured meeting time to share
ideas with colleagues face-to-face outside of my school]
0.893
Importance of support structures [listening to a guest visitor during a
professional development day or staff meeting]
0.705
Importance of support structures [unstructured professional
development days outside of my own school (e.g. a planning day
with colleagues from other schools)]
0.642
Importance of support structures [structured professional development
days outside of my own school (e.g. one-day course)]
0.827
Notes: Extraction method: principal component analysis.
Rotation method: oblimin with Kaiser normalisation.
a
Rotation converged in 21 iterations.
Professional Development in Education 13
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suggest that Component 1 is evidence-based direction, Component 2 is inspired
leadership, Component 3 is the role of collaborative technology tools and Compo-
nent 4 is access to adequate technology infrastructure (e.g. Internet access).
The component analysis shown in Table 5provides some insights that are
reflected elsewhere in the study’sfindings. The importance of evidence-based direc-
tion is reflected in Component 1, which includes setting clear directions and policies
and drawing on current research while allowing for individual teacher autonomy.
Component 2 reflects the importance of leadership that draws on current ideas and
innovations, such as the ideas shared by the popular thinkers that were cited in the
interview data. Separate to the research items loading in the first component, Com-
ponent 2 appeared to be more closely related to the role of these thinkers in inform-
ing many of the leaders’ideas.
Continuing professional development shaped by the school context
As these case summaries show, each of the schools presented adopted considerably
different approaches in their emphasis on, and treatment of, technology, pedagogy
and curriculum. With emphases on different curriculum areas, technology tools and
pedagogies, each school community reflected different priorities, values and
Table 5. Results of components analysis –additional support structures.
Pattern matrix
a
Component
1234
Importance of support structures [Leaders who set a clear
direction in the school for teachers to follow]
0.819
Importance of support structures [research papers that I have
searched for and accessed]
0.788
Importance of support structures [a clear policy about how
staff and students in the school should communicate online]
0.728
Importance of support structures [research papers that have
been shared with me by other teachers]
0.710
Importance of support structures [the freedom to try new
technology tools with my own students]
0.625
Importance of support structures [leaders whose ideas are
drawn from the innovations of other teachers in the school]
0.901
Importance of support structures [leaders whose ideas are
drawn from current minds in education (e.g. Lane Clark,
John Hattie or Stephen Heppell)]
0.883
Importance of support structures [online spaces for sharing
ideas between schools (e.g. shared blog)]
0.822
Importance of support structures [software that lets me
collaborate with colleagues both face-to-face and online
(e.g. Google Docs)]
0.804
Importance of support structures [access to the Internet in the
staffroom]
0.835
Importance of support structures [access to the Internet in my
own classroom(s)]
0.779
Notes: Extraction method: principal component analysis.
Rotation method: oblimin with Kaiser normalisation.
a
Rotation converged in eight iterations.
14 M. Stevenson et al.
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approaches to teacher professional learning in relation to the school’s project. All
three schools used their funding to explore new technologies in the classroom; while
School A appeared to explore a wide range of devices and applications, Schools B
and C chose to focus mainly on the use of tablets. The leaders in School A
employed what could best be described as a whole school approach to technology
adoption, where leaders from the school co-opted all members of staff –including
resistant teachers –into learning how to use the tools, citing equity as a guiding
principle and to some degree determining the nature of professional learning under-
taken. In contrast, School B’s response to inquiry in the new the curriculum pro-
vided an opportunity to try a form of collaborative professional learning that was
consistent with their ‘offering’approach. While some members of staff were keen to
get started immediately, others took time ‘to come on board’, and this was an
accepted part of School B’s culture. School C used literacy and their reading pro-
gramme as the key curriculum demand explored in their project plan; however, the
fact that these programmes had ‘stalled’meant that the current direction for their
school’s project was unclear. Although appreciative of their self-directed profes-
sional learning, the leaders in School C were heavily reliant on the younger teachers
to inform their direction.
Interestingly, for both Schools A and B questions on pedagogy prompted a dis-
cussion of popular thinkers in education, while School C participants seemed unable
to articulate current pedagogical approaches that were being employed by their
teaching staff. Both Schools A and B adopted inquiry-based learning and deferred to
this when explaining aspects of their pedagogy in practice. In the case of School B,
however, the adoption of this model was inconsistent because teachers were not
being explicitly required to work towards the school’s project goals (the ‘offering’
approach). While teachers in School B used one popular educational thinker’s
method to programme inquiry-based units of work, participants had not clearly
demonstrated their own conceptual understanding of this instructional model in a
broader context, suggesting that while the approach was considered broadly popular,
it was inconsistently applied across the school settings. Leaders in Schools B and C
seemed to deliberately avoid a ‘top-down’approach to leadership; while School B’s
model of ‘offering’stemmed from the principal’s own philosophies of learning,
School C leaders actively encouraged what might be described as a ‘bottom-up’
approach through the two younger teachers, whose innovations were valued but not
arguably consistent with the school’s articulated project goals.
These findings suggest that a key factor in its facilitation throughout the school
is whether or not CPD is required and monitored. The largest impact observed was
arguably in School A, where all teachers were asked to identify professional learning
needs and then formalise ways to address these. By contrast, Schools B and C
demonstrated pockets of quite successful CPD largely confined to small teams or
individuals.
PCA conducted on time-related support structures suggests that there are clear
distinctions between learning within, and outside, the local school environment. Fur-
ther, the higher component loadings for unstructured uses of time were apparent in
all cases, suggesting that school leaders recognise the importance of including
unstructured time when meeting the challenges of the changing local, national and
global contexts. This was consistent with the large allocation of funds on teacher
release, most of which was not associated with any formal training. These findings
suggest that exploring unstructured and/or informal uses of time for professional
Professional Development in Education 15
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learning is important for future research. In particular, further investigations in this
area might explore how school leaders engage in unstructured and informal profes-
sional learning, and how they might best equip teachers to be autonomous learners,
better able to use their time effectively and efficiently to meet more personalised
professional learning goals.
PCA on the technology, leadership and infrastructure support structures suggests
an intriguing distinction between evidence-based direction and an emerging concept
that might best be described as inspired leadership (as distinct from earlier notions
such as servant leadership and distributed leadership). The grouping of items in
Component 1 confirmed the continued role of the principal as the director of learn-
ing in the local school community, around which exist common elements like the
setting of clear policies, sharing of current research and the provision of a degree of
teacher autonomy. By contrast, the very high loadings of the two items in Compo-
nent 2 (leaders who draw their ideas from both ‘teachers in the school’and ‘current
minds in education’) suggest that leaders are clearly drawing ideas from both inside
and outside the school environment. Identifiable in the PCA, the impact of outside
ideas on school-based leadership was clearly observable in all three case-study
schools.
Likewise, the connections between leaders and other educational thought leaders
were influencing the leaders in several schools. It is important to note that the three
most common popular thinkers in education who were cited during interviews have
enormous reach through their established online presences (in some cases with
nearly 100,000 Twitter followers). In most cases, participants had not met these thin-
kers in person, but had cultivated online connections through direct messages, Skype
video calls and blogs. These findings suggest that in-school CPD facilitators are
drawing on external sources, particularly through the Internet, to gather ideas and
information to share with teachers in their school. Further research is needed to
explore how these and other social media connections are changing the nature of
school leadership. Such research might consider how key ideas that are shared in
online contexts permeate school communities and explore the important relationship
between personalised online professional learning and learning in more traditional
face-to-face contexts. In examining the impact of CPD on the school community,
future research should arguably consider online networks as an important factor in
influencing school leaders.
Relevance of this study for teacher professional learning
The changing educational landscape is challenging school leaders to re-think the
kinds of professional development required to meet the current and future needs of
the school community. These challenges are evident in a growing number of educa-
tional pressures such as implementing new curricula, meeting professional account-
ability demands and skilling teachers in evidence-based pedagogies. While it is clear
that many school leaders recognise that professional learning needs to be continuous
and adaptive to change, how this is best implemented remains open to question. The
administrative organisation and many support mechanisms that exist in schools often
reflect traditional face-to-face structures like the one-day professional training pro-
gramme and afternoon staff meeting. However, with numerous opportunities to
explore more personalised professional learning focused on the needs of an
individual educator, school leaders need to critically reflect on how they support and
16 M. Stevenson et al.
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facilitate CPD, including the influence of their perceptions, attitudes and philoso-
phies as well the ways CPD is measured, evaluated and accounted for. This study
has investigated some of the ways in which school leaders are attempting to bring
about change through these newer forms of professional learning. As they continue
to explore the range of possibilities –now and into the future –school leaders
should be acutely aware of their responsibilities to be leaders of learning.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank both the participants and the New South Wales Department
of Education and Communities for their support for the Connected Communities 21 Project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Note
1. A copy of the questionnaire is available upon request.
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