The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Teachers, Leadership and Achieving Excellence and Equity in Alberta Schools

“It is not about Alberta being the best place in the world; it is about being the best place for the world.” —Ken Low

Although the research literature affirms that teacher leadership plays an important role in advancing excellence in schools, surprisingly little is known about the social and institutional factors that foster the emergence of teachers as leaders in their schools and communities. After examining the many formal and informal ways that teachers are drawn into leadership positions and advocacy roles in their schools and communities, Naylor, Alexandrou, Garsed and O’Brien (2008) draw the following conclusions:

• Leadership roles often evolve naturally and are not planned.
• Leadership evolves when teachers feel passionately about issues they believe must be addressed.
• Leadership is often assumed rather than proclaimed.
• Credibility among peers is crucial in taking on leadership roles.

Mascall, Leithwood, Straus and Sacks (2008, 215–16) argue that approaches to teacher leadership fall into four categories: “planful alignment, spontaneous alignment, spontaneous misalignment and anarchistic misalignment.” These self-explanatory categories suggest that more research is needed to understand the complex variables that contribute to the systematic development of teacher leaders. Support for teacher leadership in most school communities in Alberta is, at best, an afterthought.

Teacher leadership is an important factor in countering what Pasi Sahlberg (2011) has called the Global Educational Reform Movement or GERM. Driven by a small but powerful group of elite policymakers and corporate leaders, this neoliberal movement promotes an agenda with which Albertans are all too familiar: a narrow focus on large-scale testing of basic knowledge and skills in so-called core subjects, the implementation of “universal” standards for teaching practice and a fixation on technology as a way of improving schools. Fuelled by powerful organizations such as the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development and by transnational corporations, GERM compels schools and nations to compete for scarce public dollars rather than invest in education so that all students can learn. Sahlberg observes that the highest-performing jurisdictions in the world are those most deeply committed to equity. Sahlberg (2012) also notes that authentic and enduring learning is most likely to be found in school communities that are committed to excellence and to equity.

Leadership for Excellence and Equity in Community

How can Alberta develop a more coherent and systematic approach to supporting teacher leadership in its schools and communities? Murgatroyd and Couture (2012) observe that the attributes of teacher leadership needed to support the creation of great schools are the very same qualities that one would expect all leaders, including community advocates and provincial and federal politicians, to possess. Public education policymakers face the following challenges:

1. how to ensure equity for all learners, no matter what their home conditions, physical or mental challenges, or levels of community support.
2. how to provide learning pathways that meet the needs of different learners while also ensuring that all learning taking place in the school is of a high quality.
3. how to leverage the assets of a community to enable all to learn in a school.
4. how to leverage technology to support engaged and inclusive learning for all.
5. how to enable schools to design learning pathways for all students so that their ambitions, hopes and opportunities are realized. (Murgatroyd and Couture 2012, 7)

Pursing educational excellence and equity simultaneously is a fundamental leadership challenge. To be effective, educational change and development must originate in the classroom with real teachers and real students.

Allen Gregg (2012), one of Canada’s most respected political observers, has noted that a new public narrative is emerging that depicts us as living in a “zero-sum” society in which everyone is facing shrinking opportunities. Such a narrative, Gregg observes, partly explains not only the anger of the Occupy Movement and the Montreal student protests but also the growing “disdain that the middle class has for ‘pampered’ public sector employees or the excessive obsession the rich seem to have about the poor ‘ripping off the system.’” The result, Gregg argues, is a citizenry increasingly convinced that governments are powerless and that equity and social justice remain ephemeral goals. Caught in the post-2008 economic maelstrom, we are at risk, Gregg suggests, of turning against ourselves and becoming “a fearful divided citizenry.”

Last year, the top 10 per cent of working Canadians earned on average $165,322 after taxes, while the bottom 10 per cent earned $9,750. Over the past 30 years, the average income for the top 10 per cent has increased by 34 per cent, while income for the bottom 10 per cent has increased by just 11 per cent. This “shrinking pie” mentality is leading to a new age of imposed austerity and a major rethink of spending across Canada. Education and other public services are struggling to sustain their resource base. Education sectors in Alberta are already feeling the squeeze.

In Alberta, public cynicism and complacency hinder the emergence of equity and community. Although Albertans are among the top five richest people on the planet, one in seven Alberta children lives in poverty and over two-thirds of low-wage workers in Alberta are women. Courageous and decisive leadership at both the school and community level is required to address these inequities.

The Focal Leadership Practices of Alberta Teachers

Ultimately, bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all approaches to developing school-communities and leaders control what people cannot do, not what they can do (Kanter, 1977). Bureaucratic approaches reward cultures of sufficiency (“it is good enough”) rather than cultures of shared innovation, risk-tasking and transformation (“we can become better selves”). Authentic and enduring learning requires communities that are committed to both excellence and equity in their schools.

According to a recent national worklife study (Duxbury 2012), Alberta teachers, though busy people, are much more likely to volunteer than the general population. Duxbury also found that, in addition to spending an average of 56 hours a week on the job, Alberta teachers perform a wide range of other roles, including participating in sports, maintaining a home, being a partner or spouse, volunteering, supervising or managing, parenting children, being a grandparent, holding a second job and caring for a disabled adult.

The variety of ways in which teachers engage in community building illustrates what social philosopher Albert Borgmann (1992) calls “focal practice”—the art of being not only deep engaged in one’s professional responsibilities but also propelled by the moral imperative to make a positive difference in the life of someone else. Borgmann notes that the word focus derives from the Latin word for hearth—a place where people gather in a convivial way for a common cause. In such places, according to Borgmann, “reality and community conspire” (p. 135). The image of “conspiring communities” evokes the kind of warmth and professional responsibility that school leaders need.

Teachers Cocreating Alberta’s Future as Public Leaders in Learning

The act of patiently addressing the kinds of issues that schools face daily constitutes a “focal practice.” To engage in such a focal practice, teacher leaders need time and space. They also need to be emotionally engaged and to focus on locally determined needs and priorities. Whether aimed at improving an organization or society, leadership is about learning not only as a community but, more importantly, for community (Stoll, Fink and Earl 2003, 132).

References

Borgmann, A. 1992. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. London: University of Chicago Press.

Duxbury, L. 2012. “Worklife of Alberta Teachers: A National Study.” Presentation to Calgary Public teachers, November 1, 2012. Unpublished.

Gregg, A. 2012. “1984 in 2012—The Assault on Reason.” A presentation to Carleton University in October 2012. Available at http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/09/10/allan-gregg-speech-assault-on-reason_n_1871658.html.

Kanter, R. M. 1977. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.

Mascall, B., K. Leithwood, T. Strauss and R. Sacks. 2008. “The Relationship Between Distributed Leadership and Teachers’ Academic Optimism.” Journal of Educational Administration 46 (2): 214–28.

Murgatroyd, S., and J-C Couture. 2012. Rethinking School Leadership: Creating Great Schools for All Students. Edmonton: Future Think Press.

Naylor, C., A. Alexandrou, J. Garsed and J. O’Brien. 2008. “An Emerging View of Teacher Leaders Working Within Teacher Unions: Can Networks Build Understanding and Capacity?” Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, New York, March 24–28, 2008.

Sahlberg, P. 2011. Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? New York: Teachers College Press.

Sahlberg, P. 2012. Presentation to Stanford University, January 2012. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwHerTpwuvc.

Stoll, L, D. Fink and L. Earl. 2003. It’s About Learning (and It’s About Time). London: Routledge Falmer.