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This study examined the impact of school leadership on teacher professional collaboration, with collective teacher innovativeness and teacher self-efficacy (TSE) playing the mediating role. Two most commonly used leadership styles, instructional leadership (IL) and distributed leadership (DL), were analyzed using a multilevel design, i.e. teachers are nested within schools.

The proposed model was validated using data of Taiwan TALIS 2018 collected from both teachers and principals and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

Results showed that IL and DL influence teacher professional collaboration through different paths. IL had a significant direct impact on teacher professional collaboration alone, while DL had a significant direct impact on both teachers' collective innovativeness and their professional collaboration. While TSE had a direct effect on collective teacher innovativeness, TSE and collective teacher innovativeness had a direct effect on teacher professional collaboration.

This study highlights the significant impact of principal leadership as both principals and teachers work in the same environment and culture co-shaped through the interaction and collaboration. Research evidence regarding the effects of IL and DL on teacher professional collaboration is limited; this is even less evidential when the indirect effects of variables mediating between school leadership and teacher outcomes, including teacher collective innovativeness and TSE, are added to the total effects. The present findings provide useful references for principals and teachers when promoting professional collaboration to achieve desired outcomes in school and student improvement.

While the benefits of teacher collaboration are well documented, less is known about how emotions intersect with teachers’ collective work. Educational change is an emotional process, as reform efforts often involve shifts in teachers’ daily routines and professional identities. To better understand these complexities, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the emotional dimensions of teachers’ collaborative efforts to improve instruction.

Drawing on qualitative data, this longitudinal case study of one teacher team explores how teacher collaboration for instructional improvement intersects with emotional geographies. Data analyzed include three years of meeting observations and annual interviews with teachers and school leaders.

An analysis of data reveals how emotions both shaped and were shaped by teachers’ collaboration experiences. Varying beliefs about practice, expectations about collective work and identity (in this case, gender) impacted collaboration and subsequently opportunities for instructional improvement.

This study demonstrates how attending to the emotional aspects of teacher collaboration could serve as an effective strategy for bolstering capacity-building efforts. Findings highlight the interplay between emotional geographies, suggesting that common ground across one geography could potentially be built upon to close gaps across others.

This study provides a unique longitudinal exploration of the emotional dimensions of teachers’ collective work. The study also contributes to new knowledge about the ways in which teachers’ emotions and collaborative experiences intersect, including the interplay between emotional geographies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what school leadership practices are associated with a school’s level of instructional collaboration among school professionals and also investigates what school characteristics are linked to the level of instructional collaboration in a school.

This study drew data from the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey. CALL is a multi-source measure of distributed leadership, comprised of five domains of school leadership practices. Responses from 3,767 teachers and 167 administrators working at 129 schools were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression analysis.

The findings show that there are significant relationships between school leadership practices and the extent of instructional collaboration taking place within schools, both in terms of quantity and quality. In particular, school leadership practices that are closely related to facilitating instruction and allocating resources are associated with a school’s instructional collaboration, whereas a leadership practice related to environmental factors tends not to be significantly correlated with a school’s collaborative culture. This study also found that leadership perspectives on instructional collaboration are an important predictor of both quantity and quality of collaboration among school professionals.

This study clarifies the importance of school leadership in a collaborative culture and also provides empirical evidence of what specific practices of school leadership predict the frequencies of professional collaborative activities in school as well as their quality. In addition, this study demonstrates how schools’ contextual factors are related to the level of instructional collaboration among professionals.

An increasing number of schools and districts across the US are requiring teachers to collaborate for the purpose of data‐driven decision making. Research suggests that both data use and teacher collaboration are important ingredients in the school improvement process. Existing studies also reveal the complexities of teacher collaboration and the importance of context in shaping teachers’ collaborative work, especially with data. Yet, the intersection of teacher collaboration and data use has been understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the affordances and constraints that exist in the context of established teacher collaboration time for the purposes of data‐driven decision making.

The paper draws upon qualitative case study data gathered in six schools that structured teacher time for collaboration on data use.

An analysis of the data revealed that a variety of leadership activities and organizational conditions shaped teachers’ collaborative work with data. These included leadership focused on thoughtful use of data and the framing of data‐driven decision making in terms of collective responsibility; the establishment of norms for teacher collaboration; the implementation of data discussion protocols; and teacher groupings and subject matter subcultures.

Knowing how and when a leadership activity or organizational condition becomes either an affordance or a constraint to teacher collaboration around data use has important implications for leadership and educational change. The findings of this study also help to lay the groundwork for future research regarding teacher collaboration around data use.

Teacher collaboration is regarded as a central feature of school quality that promotes students’ learning processes, teachers’ professional development, and school improvement. Although the phenomenon is complex, studies often use global constructs and measures. To meet the research demands, the purpose of this paper is to take a differentiated perspective on teacher collaboration, its particular school conditions and effects on instructional development.

Data were collected through a survey of 1,105 teachers at 36 secondary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany). Using multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling, the occurrence of three different forms of teacher collaboration and their relations to activities of instructional development, structural and cultural working conditions, represented by appropriate scales and indexes, are analyzed.

The results show that teachers use less resource-intensive forms of collaboration more often and practice more demanding forms of collaboration less frequently. More demanding forms of collaboration not only depend on the working climate but also on individual self-efficacy, institutionalized teams, collaborative and instructional principal leadership and in turn promote the development of interdisciplinary curricula and concepts for individual support.

This study provides evidence for the importance of distinguishing different forms of teacher collaboration. Furthermore, by relating different collaborative activities of teachers to certain school conditions and instructional development, this study makes a contribution to research by emphasizing the relativity of teacher collaboration regarding its desired outcomes as well as its necessary requirements.

This Commentary is a review and critique of arguments that oppose the desirability and impact of professional collaboration in education. The purpose of this paper is to analyze two recent high-profile reviews of professional development and collaboration. The analysis is informed by a historical typology of five phases of professional collaboration in theory and practice.

The Commentary reviews and summarizes selected key texts that represent different phases in the development of advocacy for and research concerning the emergence of professional collaboration. It then critiques the methodology, findings, and recommendations of two key critiques of professional collaboration and development that have been widely disseminated for educators and policymakers.

Contrary to the views of its opponents, professional collaboration as a whole has a record of indirect, long term, yet clear and positive effects on teachers and students. Particular kinds of professional collaboration can vary a great deal in quality and impact, however. Short-term collaborative interventions, such as data teams, are often dependent for their success on the prior existence of deeper cultures and processes. These processes and cultures characterize high-performing systems globally. Advocacy for competitive alternatives is based on insufficient evidence.

Although advocacy for more competition in public school systems is common, high-profile critiques of professional collaboration are relatively new. This paper engages with these critiques from a broader historical perspective, and finds they have serious flaws of reasoning and methodology. Thus far, the critiques provide insufficient warrant for moves toward more competitive systems of schooling and teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of prosociality, which is defined in terms of helping and benefitting others, between teacher collaboration and their turnover intentions. Prosociality was measured as prosocial impact and prosocial motivation.

This study was conducted through a cross-sectional survey of 260 elementary and junior high school teachers in Japan. A structural equational model was employed to examine the mediating roles of prosocial impact and prosocial motivation in the relationships between teacher collaboration and their turnover intention.

The results, first, supported the hypotheses: the high perception of teacher collaboration in school predicted high perceived prosocial impact; high perceived prosocial impact predicted high perceived prosocial motivation; and high perceived prosocial motivation predicted decreased turnover intention. Second, results supported partial mediating roles of prosocial impact and prosocial motivation between teacher collaboration and turnover intention.

Limitations of this study include cross-sectional data that may limit the potential for causal inferences, and self-report data. Future studies should incorporate alternative designs.

Results indicate that teacher collaboration contributes to less teacher turnover intention via prosociality. Thus, to enhance teachers’ prosocial impact, more opportunities to realise their collaboration should be considered.

This is the first study to explore the relationships between teacher collaboration and turnover intention in educational organisations with prosociality, which resides as core goals and objectives of teachers.

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the role of School Leaders (SLs) in building Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools, as well as to expand a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context.

The study involved the purposive selection of two schools affiliated with a university. The sample comprised one school leader, one academic coordinator and five teachers from each school, altogether 14 participants. The participants shared similar demographic characteristics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically.

The findings of the study revealed that both schools have created PLCs to some extent and that school goals and culture were contributing factors in building these communities. Additionally, the SLs played a key role in promoting PLCs by encouraging teacher collaboration. The study concludes that SLs have the potential to strategize their actions to foster positive professional relations among teachers and ensure their well-being.

The study contributes to the literature on professional communities in Pakistan by validating a literature-driven PLC model. The model emphasizes collaboration among teachers, which can be facilitated by SLs. As such, the study implicates SLs in prioritizing the professional development of teachers to enhance student learning and achieve school success.

This study is unique in expanding a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context, with a focus on teacher collaboration as facilitated by SLs. The model has the potential for replication in other contexts and can serve as a useful tool for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the intersection of teacher emotions, teacher collaboration and educational reform, particularly with respect to time, a key teacher resource that is often impacted in school change.

This paper draws upon data gathered in an in-depth, two-year qualitative case study of teacher teams in two US elementary schools. A total of 57 interviews and 102 hours of teacher team meeting observations were conducted across the two schools. The data analysis process involved several rounds of content coding of interview transcripts and teacher team meeting observation notes using MAXQDA software.

Teachers at the two schools benefitted from collaborative school structures that allowed time and space to innovate and brought joy to their professional lives. Strong professional communities served as sources of support as teachers experienced stress and frustration with reforms that created demands on their time and shifts in their teaching. Leadership played an important role in providing emotional support and autonomy to teachers, allowing teachers to flourish collectively.

This study has important implications for how researchers, policymakers and practitioners conceptualize the emotional dimension of teachers’ time in educational reform efforts. It is critical to consider whether expectations for what teachers can accomplish in collaboration are realistic in light of current working conditions. Given that emotions are at the core of teaching and the process of change, it is important to continue to explore the connections between teacher emotions and the professional capital they build in collaboration with each other.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether the instructional and administrative leadership practices of principals and professional collaboration of teachers predict teachers’ self‐efficacy and job satisfaction in Turkish middle schools.

By applying a causal comparative design and a multilevel methodology, the current study used OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) data set to examine the relationships among study variables. The multilevel data included 178 schools/principals and 2,967 teachers. Two‐level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) method was used to investigate whether principals’ leadership and teachers’ collaboration predict teacher self‐efficacy and teacher job satisfaction, net of several important teacher‐level and school‐level control variables.

The findings showed that some select aspects of principal leadership and teacher collaborative practices significantly predict teachers’ self‐efficacy and job satisfaction at within and across schools. Among all independent and control variables, teachers’ collaboration appeared to be the strongest predictor of both teacher self‐efficacy and job satisfaction.

The areas of significance identified by this study may guide policy makers and practitioners for informed decisions and interventions targeting to enhance teacher self‐efficacy and job satisfaction. The multilevel methodology utilized by this study may also stimulate future research endeavors for capturing the nested relationships of educational data, otherwise would be unaccounted for at different levels of schooling.