The Alberta Teachers’ Association

This is an exciting time to be in the teaching profession in Alberta. When school leadership is focused on improving teaching and learning, it has a significant impact on student achievement. This impact is augmented when leading teaching and learning is widely distributed so there is a shared responsibility for improving the quality of teaching across a school.

One of the most positive features of the new professional practice standards for the teaching profession in Alberta is that they clearly describe one profession in which three roles within that profession are defined. They underscore that there is a single profession—the teaching profession—in which teachers play a variety of roles to ensure success for every student and for the system as a whole. Together, the three professional practice standards provide an amazing opportunity for teachers to collaboratively work together in all of their roles to support optimum learning for students. They offer the potential to increase collaboration rather than to divide the profession by placing barriers between those roles.

The introduction of the new Leadership Quality Standard (LQS) in Alberta provides an opportunity for everyone in the system to grow. The new standard underscores the importance of school leadership at a time when it is becoming ever more important, as school leadership teams are making critical choices about staffing, staff development, implementing curriculum, resource allocation, and design and implementation of improvement strategies (Schleicher 2012, 15–17).

Most decisions regarding pedagogy and curriculum are too specific to be made by the school leader. The introduction of the LQS will encourage school leaders to focus on leadership for learning that enables teacher development and learning, and supports all teachers to continually enhance their teaching practice and to view themselves as coleaders in an ongoing inquiry into the relationship between their teaching and student learning.

The new LQS also widens the scope of those we consider to be “school leaders.” This is a positive step forward in recognizing that all teachers are leaders and in fostering broader teacher–leadership within Alberta. There are times those in leadership roles other than the principal might be in the best position to lead a pedagogical change. These are individuals who have the most granular knowledge of various subject areas or practices.

Teachers in a variety of roles across the system can play a pivotal role in sharing new ideas or practices that can foster positive changes and growth within classrooms (Matthews et al. 2011; Spillane et al. 2011). The new standard will be applicable to assistant, associate and vice-principals, and school jurisdiction leaders, including central office teachers such as assistant superintendents, consultants and other certificated teachers. In other words, the new LQS will be applicable to all certificated teachers in Alberta who have a role in leading and supporting classroom teachers in the work they do every day.

The new LQS encourages school leaders to focus on what has great impact—improving teacher capacity. It requires school leaders to demonstrate a depth of knowledge, skill and fluency that will allow them to lead and support the development of diverse groups of teachers and therefore ensure that all teachers in the learning community have what they need to improve their practice and impact on the students they work with. This is a good thing for education in Alberta and is a step forward toward imprinting upon the teaching profession a strong focus of collaborative professionalism.

Getting it Right

Several principles need to be in place to ensure that all actors within the education system can co-ordinate their efforts to ensure success, as outlined by Breakspear et al. (2017):

• Deeply engage with the profession in order to ensure ownership.
• Realize the agency of other system actors, and create cohesion.
• Start small, evaluate and expand.
• Enable leadership by putting in place the enabling policy conditions.

The professional practice standards for the teaching profession offer those in the teaching profession in Alberta the hope of being a lighthouse and an example of how the best student learning can occur in a system that includes teachers, school leaders and superintendents working within one collaborative profession. It is important to note that “Leadership development is not something that can be ‘done to’ the profession. Successful approaches will need to involve deep partnership and co-creation with educators, as they are the ones who must own and drive ongoing leadership development. Furthermore, the expertise to understand what effective leadership looks like and how it can be developed is located primarily within the education profession, not within government (Breakspear et al. 2017, 98).

As we move beyond the introduction of the new professional practice standards and toward their implementation, it is essential that school leaders in Alberta work together with superintendents and other decision- and policy-makers in the educational system to make sure decisions are driven by the principles noted above. Most members of Alberta’s current cohort of school leaders already have master’s degrees and engage regularly in ongoing professional learning activities. Requiring them to engage in a narrow set of prescribed programs would take away their professional autonomy to identify their own learning goals in relation to preparing for their desired roles within the teaching profession and their own pathways for acquiring that learning.

Aspiring school leaders in Alberta will continue to seek out high-quality opportunities to serve as members of the teaching profession within the roles defined by the LQS. To ensure that those learning opportunities fully reflect the new standards, those offering programs of preparation for school leadership roles must work hand-in-hand with the profession both to develop and to deliver those opportunities. This is especially true since Alberta Education has indicated that it currently intends to tie required leadership certification for school principals directly to mandated leadership development programs, rather than to a demonstration of proficiency in professional practice as measured by the LQS, which is the norm in most jurisdictions worldwide.

Leadership activities should have as their goal the deliberate development of a culture that encourages every individual to consider themselves a leader, and participation in leadership activities within the school. This can only happen if the teaching profession, in all of its roles, is engaged in the professional learning opportunities that support it; if all actors within the system work together to ensure collaboration and cohesion; and if implementation efforts are focused.

While it may be tempting to quickly impose a systemwide structure of programs to develop the next generation of Alberta school leaders, it would be much wiser to work with the profession to build and implement such programs on a small scale. Then, after evaluating and improving them, they can be scaled up when it is clear that they are working. The aim should be for policy-makers in Alberta to significantly enhance support for school leaders rather than to impose top-down requirements for prescribed programs of preparation. This would help create a learning ecosystem in which school leaders can focus on leadership for teaching and learning.

We have embarked on a voyage that will be an example to the world of a collaborative profession if we get it right in its implementation. What is needed now is to work with the profession to chart a course of implementation that will continue to lead us in an exemplary education system that others can follow.

References

Breakspear, S. L., A. Peterson, A. Alfadala and M.S. Khair. 2017. Developing Agile Leaders of Learning: School Leadership Policy for Dynamic Times. World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Research Series. www.wise-qatar.org/sites/default/files/rr.7.2017_learnlabs.pdf (accessed August 27, 2018).

Matthews P., R. Higham, L. Stoll, J. Brennan and K. Riley. 2011. Prepared to Lead: How Schools, Federations and Chains Grow Education Leaders. Nottingham, UK: National College for School Leadership, p. 75. www.lcll.org.uk/uploads/3/0/9/3/3093873/prepared_to_lead.pdf (accessed September 17, 2018).

Schleicher, A., ed. 2012. Preparing Teachers and Developing School Leaders for the 21st Century. Paris: OECD. Also available at www.oecd.org/site/eduistp2012/49850576.pdf (accessed August 27, 2018).

Spillane, J. P., L.M. Parise and J.Z. Sherer. 2011. “Organizational Routines as Coupling Mechanisms: Policy, School Administration and the Technical Core.” American Educational Research Journal 48, no. 3, 586–619.

Jeff Johnson is an executive staff officer in the Professional Development program area of the Alberta Teachers’ Association.