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The role of international school teacher leaders in building leadership capacity within their teams

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Content Running head: BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

1

THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS TEACHER LEADERS IN BUILDING
LEADERSHIP CAPACITY WITHIN THEIR TEAMS

by

Emmanuel Bonin

_________________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

May 2018

Copyright 2018 Emmanuel Bonin

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my dissertation committee members for their guidance in
the process of developing and completing this dissertation. I was blessed to have Dr. Datta chair
my committee. Dr. Datta proved incredibly supportive and positive in the two years between our
initial exchanges and the defense of this dissertation. She provided the advice needed to
complete this project and helped build my confidence along the way. Thanks to Dr. Picus for
agreeing to serve on the committee. His thorough knowledge of the IRB process was
instrumental in allowing me to conduct my own interviews, which not only increased the quality
of the data collected, but also allowed me to meet the deadlines to defend in a timely manner.
Finally, I am forever indebted to Dr. Lillo. As my Inquiry methods instructor, she taught me the
skills needed to conduct this research. The thoroughness and timeliness of her feedback set the
standard for graduate studies at USC. In addition, her expertise in the field of international
education helped me fill the gaps in my literature review and understand the context of my study.
I also would like to acknowledge the support of my successive Heads of School, John
Fleck and Michael Maniska at the International School of Los Angeles (which is not the site for
the dissertation), and the Head of School in my current organization, who should remain
unnamed here to maintain the confidentiality of this research. They understood that helping an
administrator grow is ultimately beneficial to the organization.
Thanks to John Fleck, Jean-Philippe Genet, and Iain Whyte for initially recommending
me to USC Rossier School of Education’s admission committee.
Finally, I want to thank Guillemette and Arno. Guillemette planted the seed of the idea of
a doctoral program in a U.S. university and consistently watered the plant along its growth,
supporting me at all times and helping me to complete in a timely fashion. Arno lived his
BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

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sophomore, junior, and senior years in high school with a stepfather always involved in his work,
on a professional or graduate studies level. He did so gracefully and with maturity, providing
welcome opportunities to decompress in a musical environment. I am proud to see the two of us
graduate the same month. Arno, my interstellar deer hunter, a word from your good, bad, and
ugly godfather: Thank you for being an inspiration in my life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements 2
List of Tables 6
List of Figures 7
Abstract 10
Chapter 1: Overview of the Study 11
Introduction of the Problem of Practice 11
Background of the Problem 12
Related Literature 13
Importance of Addressing the Problem 14
Organizational Context and Mission 16
Organizational Performance Goal and Current Performance 17
Description of Stakeholder Groups 17
Stakeholder Group of the Study — Stakeholder Goal 18
Purpose of the Project and Questions 19
Methodological Framework 20
Definitions 20
Organization of the Dissertation 23
Chapter 2: Literature Review 24
Review of the Literature 24
Teacher Leadership in International Schools 24
General Research about Teacher Leadership in International Schools 25
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework 36
Stakeholder Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences 37
Conclusion 60
Chapter 3: Methodology 61
Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Teacher Leaders' Knowledge and 61
Motivation and the Organizational Context
Participating Stakeholders 65
Data Collection and Instrumentation 67
Data Analysis 71
Credibility and Trustworthiness 73
Validity and Reliability 75
Ethics 76
Limitations and Delimitations 78

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Chapter 4: Results and Findings 80
Definition of Validation 81
Participating Stakeholders 81
Results and Findings for Knowledge Causes 87
Results and Findings for Motivation Causes 97
Results and Findings for Organizational Causes 106
Summary 125
Chapter 5: Solutions, Implementation and Evaluation 127
Purpose of the Project 127
Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences 128
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan 141
Summary 154
Limitations and Delimitations 155
Recommendations for Future Research 156
Conclusion 157
References 158
Appendices 181
Appendix A: Survey Instrument Protocol 181
Appendix B: Interview Protocol 189
Appendix C: Informed Consent/Information Sheet 191
Appendix D: Recruitment Letter 193
Appendix E: Interview Protocol (After Training) 194
Appendix F: Interview Protocol (Delayed) 195

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Organizational Mission and Performance Goals 19
Table 2. Stakeholder Goal and Knowledge Influence, Type, and Influence 43
Assessment for Knowledge Gap Analysis
Table 3. Stakeholder Goal and Motivational Influence and Assessment for 49
Motivation Gap Analysis
Table 4. Stakeholder Goal and Organizational Influence and Assessment for 56
Organizational Gap Analysis
Table 5. Longevity of Responding Teacher Leaders in Their Role 86
Table 6. Number of Teachers with Whom the Responding Teacher Leaders Work 86
Table 7. Number of Professional Development Workshops Led in the Preceding 96
Two Years
Table 8. Responses to the Item: "Please Rate the Importance of the Following When 121
You Think of the Reasons Why You Would Leave the School One Day"
Table 9. Summary of Validated, Partially Validated, and Not Validated Influences 126
Table 10. Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations 128
Table 11. Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations 134
Table 12. Summary of Organizational Influences and Recommendations 138
Table 13. Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes 144
Table 14. Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for New Reviewers 145
Table 15. Required Drivers to Support New Reviewers' Critical Behaviors 146
Table 16. Components of Learning for the Program 150
Table 17. Components to Measure Reactions to the Program 151

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Interactions between teacher leaders' knowledge, motivation, and 63
organizational context
Figure 2. Responses to item: "Is this your first posting in an international school?" 82
Figure 3. Responses to item: "Which division are you working in?" 83
Figure 4. Responses to item: "What teacher leadership position are you currently 84
holding at the school?"
Figure 5. Responses to item: "Where you directly recruited in your teacher leadership 85
position?"
Figure 6. Responses to item: "Through my work in my leadership role, I contribute 88
to developing a culture of inquiry within the organization"
Figure 7. Responses to item: "I received training in how to set individual short-term 90
goals"
Figure 8. Responses to item: "I received training in how to set collective short-term 91
goals for a team"
Figure 9. Responses to item: "The school functions as a professional learning 94
community"
Figure 10. Responses to item: "I know how to foster a professional learning 94
community"
Figure 11. Responses to item: "I know how to lead a professional development 96
workshop"
Figure 12. Responses to item: "I feel confident in my ability to help other teachers 98
grow professionally"
Figure 13. Responses to item: "I set formal goals for myself in my work as a 99
teacher leader"
Figure 14. Responses to item: "Reflection on my growth in my leadership role is 100
inherently part of my thinking process"
Figure 15. Responses to item: "Since I started in my leadership role, my relationships 102
with other teachers have changed"

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Figure 16. Responses to item: "I feel understood by my colleagues in my role as a 103
teacher leader"
Figure 17. Responses to item: "Since I started in my leadership role, I feel empowered 105
to make a difference within the school"
Figure 18. Responses to item: "I feel my work as a teacher leader contributes to 105
improved student learning outcomes"
Figure 19. Responses to item: "My supervisor(s) meet(s) with me regularly to review 107
my work as a teacher leader"
Figure 20. Responses to item: "I am held accountable by my supervisor for working 107
closely with other teachers"
Figure 21. Responses to item: "Helping other teachers develop their professional 108
growth plan is part of my responsibility as a teacher leader"
Figure 22. Responses to item: "I have a clear job description for my role as a teacher 112
leader"
Figure 23. Responses to item: "The professional development workshops I attended 114
since I started in my leadership position at the school helped me acquire
important knowledge in relation to my leadership role"
Figure 24. Responses to item: "The professional development workshops I attended 114
since I started in my leadership position at the school helped me acquire
important skills in relation to my leadership role"
Figure 25. Responses to item: "Initial induction in my leadership role was effective" 115
Figure 26. Responses to item: "My motivation to fulfill my leadership role is essentially 116
intrinsic"
Figure 27. Responses to item: "I am adequately compensated for my leadership role" 117
Figure 28. Responses to item: "Monetary compensation is important to me in my 117
leadership role"
Figure 29. Responses to item: "Other forms of compensation (non-monetary) are 118
important to me in my leadership role"
Figure 30. Responses to item: "My leadership role within the school brings me 120
satisfaction"

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Figure 31. Responses to item: "I receive the appropriate level of administrative support 122
to fulfill my leadership role"
Figure 32. Responses to item: "I feel comfortable working with people from different 124
cultures and backgrounds"
Figure 33. Responses to item: "I make efforts to understand the host country's language 124
and culture"
Figure 34. Proposed dashboard for nominations to teacher leadership positions 153

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ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to evaluate the extent to which, in a high turnover context, teacher
leaders at an American International school in Asia were meeting the goal of building capacity
within their teams to prepare for effective succession planning. Using Clark and Estes’ (2008)
gap analysis framework, the study investigated the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
factors affecting teacher leaders’ performance. Using a mixed methods design, the study
combined survey, interviews, and documents to answer the following research questions: (1)
What are international school teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation in relation to helping
teachers develop their professional growth plan? (2) How do teacher leaders’ knowledge and
motivation interact with the school’s context to shape their ability to help other teachers develop
their professional growth plan? (3) What are the recommendations for organizational practice in
the areas of knowledge, motivation, and organizational resources? Two thirds of teacher leaders
in the organization participated in the study through survey, and nine teacher leaders were
interviewed. The study found that knowledge and organizational factors were most evident in
current gaps within the school, while motivation factors were less evident. The main knowledge
factors were around leadership capacity building, goal-setting processes, professional
development, and professional learning communities. The motivation factors included self-
efficacy and positive emotions. Finally, organizational factors revolved around the cultural
models of accountability and empowerment and the cultural settings of incentives and contextual
variables in employee turnover. The study provided recommendations for leadership to help
support teacher leaders in reaching their stakeholder goal, including job-aid, training, mentoring,
and education. It also proposed a developed and integrated implementation and evaluation plan.

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CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Introduction of the Problem of Practice
Teacher leaders are teachers who have taken some leadership responsibility within their
school and play a role beyond their classroom walls, within the school community. They are an
increasingly driving force in school improvement and performance (Barth, 2001; Muijs & Harris,
2005; Murphy, 2006; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). They lead beyond their classrooms,
contributing to the development of a collaborative culture within the organization (Hallinger &
Heck, 2010; Marzano, Hefleblower, Hoegh, Warrick, & Grift, 2016; Scribner, Sawyer, Watson,
& Myers, 2007) and the professional learning of other teachers (Frost, 2012; Lieberman & Mace,
2009; Webster-Wright, 2010). Their work ultimately results in improvement of student learning
experience and student outcomes (Murphy, 2006). Fullan (2001) suggested that quality of
leadership influences teacher motivation and, therefore, teaching and learning in the classroom.
Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom (2004) expressed a similar view when they wrote:
“Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that
contribute to what students learn at school” (p. 5). York-Barr and Duke (2004) see teacher
leaders as accomplished teachers, respected by their peers, who “extend their knowledge, skills
and influence to others in their school communities” (p. 288). As such, they share the
responsibility and the role for leadership within the school.
Increased accountability in education (Black & William, 2010; Darling-Hammond &
Snyder, 2015) and a trend away from hierarchical and vertical leadership structures toward
transformational and distributed approaches to leadership within schools (Magno, 2014) resulted
in principals and Heads of School relying on shared leadership with teachers who are ready and
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willing to face increased tasks and responsibilities. This applies to international schools abroad,
where pressures for student success and performance parallel or exceed those undergone in a
national context (Blandford & Shaw, 2001; Hayden & Thompson, 2001). International schools
are private institutions, either non-profit or for-profit, whose mission is to educate both expatriate
and local students in countries all over the world (Hayden, 2006). American international
schools are a subset of international schools that specialize in offering an American curriculum.
International schools face a unique challenge in the form of typically much higher staff attrition
rates than in the U.S. (Cambridge, 2001; Guarino, Santibanez, & Glenn, 2006; Mancuso,
Roberts, & White, 2010). Wenner and Campbell (2017) suggested teacher leadership as a
possible solution to high staff turnover in schools.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the way teacher leaders at an international
American school in Asia contribute to developing leadership capacity within their teams, helping
to prepare succession in their roles when they leave the school. This chapter will look at the
background of the problem, related literature, importance of the evaluation, organizational
context and mission of the organization, description of the stakeholders, methodology
framework, purpose of the project, and pertinent definitions.
Background of the Problem
Spurred by societal and educational forces, international schools are growing at a fast
rate. Over the last 25 years, the International School Consultancy group (ISC) has recorded a
sevenfold increase in their provision, growing from under 1,000 to more than 7,000 schools
between 1990 and 2015. By 2025, international schools are forecast to represent $65 billion in
fee income, 8.26 million students, and 15,100 schools worldwide (Hallgarten, Tabberer, &
McCarthy, 2015). As Brummitt and Keelling (2013) note, the growth of the international school
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market creates a potential problem: how will international schools develop and sustain a
sufficient pool of well-trained, competent, and effective teacher leaders to ensure quality
education within their walls?
A critical element for international schools is the quality of its educational staff (Hayden,
2006). Search agencies such as Search Associates (searchassociates.com), Carney, Sandoe, &
Associates (carneysandoe.com), International School Services (iss.edu), and others play a key
role in helping schools recruit competent and skilled professionals. Nonetheless, international
schools run a systemic risk of decrease in quality and viability if they do not find an alternative
to their reliance on current search agencies in their recruitment of educational staff (Blandford &
Shaw, 2001). The recent development of graduate programs dedicated to growing teacher
leaders could spur the development of a pool of skilled professionals in which international
schools may recruit (Bradley-Levine, 2011; Coughlan, 2015; Leonard, Petta, & Porter, 2012;
Watt, Huerta, & Mills, 2010). But these programs’ outcomes have not been proven yet and
competition for recruitment between international schools will be fierce. Thus, schools must
also explore their role and responsibility in growing internal capacity to develop teacher
leadership and improve staff retention. Research is scarce on the effectiveness of leadership
capacity building at an international level, and no data publicly available relating to the
recruitment or retention of teacher leaders in international schools.
Related Literature
This study is rooted in two main threads of literature: research on teacher leadership on
one side grew exponentially in the last two decades, especially since the publication of Barth’s
(2001) article and York-Barr and Duke’s (2004) seminal literature review. Wenner and
Campbell’s (2017) recent literature review updated the understanding of research on teacher
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leaders up to 2013. Chapter 2 in this study will also refer to literature produced since 2013.
Research on international schools remains comparatively limited in comparison, especially when
looking at capacity building and the role of teachers and teacher leaders in international school
performance. The Journal of Research in International Education and the International School
Journals are valuable publications that were used in the work leading to this study’s research
design.
In their review of school effectiveness research, Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore
(1995) determined eleven factors contributing to a good school and ranked professional
leadership and a shared vision and goals at the top. In other lists produced by researchers, major
factors contributing to school effectiveness included outstanding leadership (Levine & Lezotte,
1990) and strong educational leadership (Creemers, 1996; Fleming & Raptis, 2003). These
findings support the importance of teacher leadership for school effectiveness, since “leading
school improvement can’t be done by one person alone: developing leadership capacity is
essential” (Stoll, 2009, p. 122). It explains why Spillane, Halverson, and Diamond (1999)
offered a distributed perspective towards a theory of leadership practice in schools. Within such
a distributed leadership framework, teacher leaders may contribute to the development of a
collaborative culture within the school, which has been linked to teachers’ attitude toward their
professional development plan (Sullivan, 2010). Teachers’ perception of leadership (Weston,
2013) and collaboration through professional learning communities (Troutt, 2014) are also linked
to retention, an important factor for stability and performance in an international school context.
Importance of Addressing the Problem
The problem of developing capacity in international school so that teachers may in turn
become teacher leaders is important to address for a variety of reasons. In an era of ever-
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increasing globalization, international schools fulfill several significant needs (Hayden, 2006;
Held, McGrew, Goldblatt, & Perraton, 1998). In a globalist and free-market perspective,
international schools are essential to globally mobile expatriates seeking quality education
preserving pathways to higher education in their home country (Cambridge, 2002). They also
cater to members of the socio-economic elite of host countries, eager to allow their children to
benefit from the social and cultural capital necessary to a competitive edge in a fast-changing
economy (Lowe, 2000). This free-market perspective can be criticized for its emphasis on the
needs of wealthy and already privileged strata of the world population. A competing view of
international education emphasizes the importance of preparing globally minded citizens
(Murakami-Ramalho & Benham, 2010) and the promotion of peace, international understanding,
cooperation, and international-mindedness (Hayden, 2006). This view is exemplified by United
World Colleges (UWC), as well as the International Baccalaureate Organization. UWC’s
mission is: “to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a
sustainable future” (United World Colleges, 2017, n.p.). The International Baccalaureate strives
to create a “better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect”
(International Baccalaureate Organization, 2017, n.p.). The site of study for this dissertation
offers the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) and its mission borrows
elements from the IB philosophy.
Therefore, international schools need well-trained, highly-skilled, and motivated teachers
to serve these diverse needs. This includes teachers who are ready and willing to take on some
leadership responsibility. It is important for international schools to develop capacity within
their teaching staff. Because teacher leaders already endorse significant leadership
responsibilities, they have a role to play in helping teachers set goals for themselves in that
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regard. Teacher leaders share a responsibility with the school’s leadership and administration in
preparing teachers to lead.
Organizational Context and Mission
The American School Above the Sea (pseudonym) (ASAS) is at once the oldest
American school and the largest international school in its country, located in Asia. It welcomes
2,800 students on two state-of-the-art campuses, from Kindergarten to 12th grade. With over
100 years of history, it serves its city’s expatriate community, as well as local students who hold
foreign passports. The mission of the school is to educate students in the American curriculum
with an international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students. The
school offers a comprehensive, American standards-based curriculum, culminating in a high
school diploma with Advanced Placement (AP) courses, the International Baccalaureate
Diploma Programme (IBDP), or a mix of both. The aim is to create an environment of high
achievement without antagonistic competitiveness, where academic rigor and creativity are
celebrated side by side. The school also provides students with opportunities to participate in
interscholastic athletics, music, and drama, as well as cultural exchange programs and trips.
After graduation, most students elect to matriculate in an English-speaking university, with the
majority going to the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom.
To provide these services, the school employs over 600 persons, including 380 teachers,
70 teacher aides, and 40 educator administrators. A sizable proportion of the educational staff is
international in nature and relocates to the school’s country from overseas to work there.
Because of the turnover inherent to its international nature, the school dedicates important
resources to the recruitment of highly-skilled teaching and administrative staff.
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Organizational Performance Goal and Current Performance
To fulfill its mission toward students, the school needs to ensure capacity building within
its staff, including leadership skills and behaviors, so that teachers may take on leadership
responsibilities as formally recognized teacher leaders. The goal of ASAS will be, by 2019, to
have the ability if it so wishes to nominate 100% of its teacher leaders internally (as opposed to
recruiting externally), resulting from careful succession planning. In a context of high staff
turnover and increased competition for hiring, achieving this goal would ensure continuity in
support for the development of a collaborative culture, professional learning, professional
accountability, and ultimately improve student learning and performance. Progress toward the
achievement of that goal will be assessed by the Deputy Heads of School as they appraise the
performance of administrative leadership, responsible for these nominations.
Currently, ASAS is not achieving this goal. The recent recruitment of ten instructional
coaches for its Western campus was open to internal as well as external candidates. Ultimately,
only 70% of the positions were filled internally. In some cases, it was due to the relative
superiority of external candidates over qualified internal candidates. But in other cases, the pool
of qualified internal candidates was shallow, and did not result in any internal viable application.
Similarly, the school had to recruit an IB coordinator externally, for lack of sufficient internal
expertise, despite numerous applications from current teaching staff.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
Four main stakeholder groups are involved in the realization of the organization’s
performance goals: the leadership of the school, its administration, teacher leaders, and teachers
themselves.
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The school leadership is consolidated in a Leadership team, composed of the Head of
School, three Deputy Heads (one for the West campus, one for the East campus, and one for
Educational Programs), the Chief Financial Officer, the Human Resources Director, the Director
of Technology, the Director of Marketing, the Director of Admissions, and the Director of
Advancement. The Leadership team is responsible for the strategic direction of the school. The
administration is essentially composed of six principals and nine vice-principals, with their
support staff. It is responsible for the management of school operations. The school employs
close to 400 teachers, each of whom may plays a role in the realization of the organizational
performance goal, either as a participant in further professional development, or as an expert
involved in training. Approximately 60 teachers are formally recognized for having taken some
kind of leadership role, with varying degrees of commitment and responsibility. They constitute
the stakeholder group of focus for this study.
Stakeholder Group of the Study — Stakeholder Goal
While all stakeholders mentioned above will contribute to achieving the school’s
organizational goal of having the ability to have 100% of nominations to teacher leadership
positions made internally, this study focused on evaluating teacher leaders’ performance in
regards to their specific goal. Therefore, the stakeholders of focus for the study will be the
teacher leaders. The stakeholders’ goal is, by June 2018, to include professional growth
planning as an item in at least one of their interactions with their teams each year. Failure to
accomplish this goal would hinder capacity building within the larger group of teachers, and
limit the chances for the school to recruit highly skilled teacher leaders internally. Also, the lack
of opportunities to grow professionally is a factor in attrition, so failure to accomplish the goal
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could potentially lead to lower staff stability. Table 1 presents the organizational mission and
performance goals of each stakeholder group, including teacher leaders.

Table 1
Organizational Mission and Performance Goals
Organizational Mission
The mission of the school is to educate students in the American curriculum with an
international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students.
Organizational Performance Goal
The school’s global goal is to build its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher
leaders. By 2019, 100% of nominations to teacher leadership positions within the school
could be internal and result from careful succession planning.
Leadership Team and
Administration Teacher Leaders Teachers
By June 2019, the school
leadership team and building
principals will have adopted a
performance appraisal system that
includes demonstration of teacher
leadership.
By June 2018, teacher
leaders will include
professional growth
planning as an item in at
least one of their interactions
with their teams each year.
By June 2018, all
teachers will have
included some level of
leadership growth in
their professional
growth plan.

Purpose of the Project and Questions
The purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which ASAS is achieving its
goal of building capacity within its teaching staff to reach the capacity of 100% of internal
nominations to teacher leadership roles. The analysis focused on knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences related to achieving this organizational goal. While a complete
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evaluation project would have focused on all ASAS stakeholders, for practical purposes the
stakeholders focused on in this analysis were teacher leaders at ASAS.
As such, this study was guided by the following questions:
1. What are international school teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation in relation
to helping teachers develop their professional growth plan?
2. How do teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation interact with the school’s context
to shape their ability to help other teachers develop their professional growth plan?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Methodological Framework
Using a mixed-methods research design, this study relied on Clark and Estes’s (2008) gap
analysis framework of knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational barriers to evaluate
the organization’s performance with respect to its goals. An in-depth explanation of Clark and
Estes’s framework is given in Chapter 2. A literature review, a survey, interviews, and
documents analysis were used to assess how teacher leaders perform in their role of leadership
capacity builders within the school. These methods allowed to propose and evaluate research-
based recommendations for the organization.
Definitions
Below are literature-based definitions of some of the key terms used to designate
concepts or constructs within the study.
Teacher leaders: For this study, two major decisions were made in defining teacher
leaders, that are based on the specific context of the organization:
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(1) Are considered as teacher leaders, teachers who have received formal recognition
through a job title, such as department head, K-12 coordinator, instructional coach, or PLC
leader. ASAS offers extensive formal opportunities to lead and formalize teacher leadership, and
due to time constraints, it made sense for the research design to limit our study to formal teacher
leaders. Research recognizes however the existence of informal teacher leadership, the exercise
of leadership regardless of position (Muijs & Harris, 2005). Barth (2001) goes as far as
suggesting that “all teachers must lead” (p. 444), seeing limitations to this assertion as limiting
and destructive.
(2) Instructional coaches are considered as teacher leaders, even though they do no longer
have classroom responsibilities. This choice is supported by recent research by Tomal, Schilling,
and Wilhite (2014) and Woods (2016), who see the shift from administrative to instructional
leadership, with involvement in curriculum, assessment, and instructional strategies, as the main
characteristic of recent teacher leadership. This contradicts the most recent definition of teacher
leaders though, given by Wenner and Campbell (2017) in their extensive literature review:
“Teachers who maintain K-12 classroom-based teaching responsibilities, while also taking on
leadership responsibilities outside of the classroom” (p. 140). At ASAS, the role of instructional
coaches is anchored in their teaching and subject-area expertise as teachers and they continue to
teach when they model for colleagues. Hence, a decision was made to include them in the study.
This is especially relevant in an international school context, where coaches necessarily
understand “the affordances and constraints of teaching in a particular setting” (Wenner &
Campbell, 2017, p. 139), as opposed to a district-based leader in the U.S.
Teacher leadership: York-Barr and Duke (2004) defined teacher leadership as “the
process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and
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other members of school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of
increased student learning and achievement” (pp. 287–288).
Distributed leadership: Theoretically, Spillane et al. (1999) defined distributed leadership
as “practice distributed over leaders, followers, and their situation and [that] incorporates the
activities of multiple groups and individuals” (p. 20). In a more applied sense, Yukl (2002)
defined distributed leadership as:
a shared process of enhancing the individual and collective capacity of people to
accomplish their work effectively. Instead of a heroic leader who can perform all
essential leadership functions, the functions are distributed among different members of
the team or organization. (p. 4)
Self-efficacy: Bandura (1986) defined self-efficacy beliefs as “people’s judgments of their
capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of
performances” (p. 391).
Cultural models: Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001) called cultural models, “a shared
mental schema or normative understandings of how the world works, or ought to work” (p. 47).
Cultural settings: Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001) called cultural settings “those
occasions when people come together to carry out joint activity that accomplishes something
they value” (p. 48). According to Rueda (2011), they are visible, concrete manifestations of
cultural models that appear within activity settings.
Intercultural competency: “The ability of an individual or organization to effectively and
appropriately communicate and achieve goals in a culturally diverse environment” (Hirsch,
2016, p. 13)
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Organization of the Dissertation
This dissertation is organized in five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the problem of
practice, the importance of addressing this problem of practice, a presentation of stakeholders
and organizational goals, the purpose of the project and research questions, the methodological
framework, and key terminology around teacher leadership in international schools. In Chapter
2, a literature review addresses both general literature related to the study and literature specific
to the knowledge, motivation, and organizational assumed influences. General research on
teacher leadership focuses on leadership theory, capacity-building in schools, and teacher
leadership in the context of international schools. Chapter 3 unfolds the conceptual framework
of the study, as well as the methodology for selection of participants, data collection, and data
analysis. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the analysis and assessments of research results. Finally,
Chapter 5 provides solutions and recommendations based on this research and literature to close
the performance gaps assessed in Chapters 2 and 4.

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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Review of the Literature
This literature review will examine the role played by teacher leaders in school
improvement, especially in the context of international schools worldwide. The review begins
with general research on leadership theory, especially teacher leadership and distributed
leadership theory in diverse educational settings. An overview of methods and principles of
capacity-building in schools follows. The review will also present challenges and opportunities
around teacher leadership in the specific context of international schools. It concludes with an
in-depth exploration of the Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework. It will
explore knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences on the ability of teacher leaders to
contribute to school improvement, especially to the development of a new pool of highly
effective teacher leaders.
Teacher Leadership in International Schools
As mentioned in Chapter 1, the number of international schools is expected to double
between 2015 and 2025 (Hallgarten et al., 2015). Even though international schools’ growth is
far from being concentrated in the top-tier, type A international schools to which the site of this
study belongs (Hayden & Thompson, 2016), this fast growth raises the issue of the availability of
highly qualified staff to meet the needs of these schools. This is especially true of teacher
leaders, and one can ask how international schools will develop and sustain a sufficient pool of
well-trained, competent, and effective teacher leaders to ensure quality education within their
walls.
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Teacher leadership is now widely seen as a key element of school performance
(Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009; Lambert, 2003, 2007; Reeves, 2006). Teacher leaders have the
potential to serve as role models for their colleagues (Barth, 2001; Liebermann, Saxl, & Miles,
1988). They foster a collaborative approach to teaching and learning in the classroom that can
positively impact student outcomes (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997; Yarger & Lee, 1994). They also
participate in a climate of healthy professional accountability within the institution (Sullivan,
2010). How do teacher leaders contribute to building capacity in their colleagues and in schools,
so as to be replaceable? The answer to this question is key in an international school
environment, where turnover rates are higher than in regular schools.
General Research about Teacher Leadership in International Schools
Leadership Theory and Teacher Leadership
Research on teacher leadership sits within the larger umbrella of leadership theory. Grint
(2011) designates leadership theory as an emerging and ever-expanding field that, at the same
time, inherits from 3,000 years of history. Despite that long history, researchers have difficulties
gaining scientific credentials for the field of leadership theory, and even giving an agreed-upon
definition of leadership (Roth, 1993). As stated by Kellerman (2012), “we don’t have much
better an idea of how to grow good leaders, or of how to stop or at least slow bad leaders, than
we did a hundred or even a thousand years ago” (p. xiv). Nonetheless, the education literature on
school improvement benefited from and is informed by advances in leadership theory.
Leadership theory in education. Educational leadership models evolved with time and,
as in any other industry or area, moved from individual, traits-based theories to more collective
and shared approaches to leadership (Hallinger, 2003; Spillane et al., 1999). Spillane et al.
(1999) explained how leadership theory in education initially focused on people in formal school
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leadership positions, first in the context of leadership traits theory, then of leadership behaviors.
Later, leadership theory acknowledged the need to move beyond those at the top of organizations
to understand leadership. The researchers contended that “if leadership is an organizational
quality, then, investigations of leadership practice that focus exclusively on the work of
individual positional leaders are unlikely to generate comprehensive understandings of the
practice of school leadership” (Spillane et al., 1999, p. 7). Hallinger (2003) equates the model of
strong, directive leadership focused on curriculum and instruction with the instructional
leadership model that dominated leadership education research in the 1980s. Because of the
criticisms it received in the 1990s, it was replaced by the concept of transformational leadership,
which allows for empowerment, shared leadership, and organizational learning. This paved the
way for distributed leadership theory.
Distributed leadership theory. According to Wenner and Campbell’s (2017) recent
literature review, distributed leadership is the most cited theory in research literature on teacher
leadership, ahead of transformational / transactional leadership. Distributed leadership derives
from the transformational leadership model and, as such, relies heavily on shared leadership. It
also takes roots in distributed cognition and activity theory as well as team leadership theory
(Aime, Humphrey, DeRue, & Paul, 2014; Bergman, Rentsch, Small, Davenport, & Bergman,
2012; Spillane & Diamond, 2012; Spillane et al., 1999). Spillane et al. (1999) recognized how
social context is an essential component, not just a backdrop, of any intelligent activity,
providing a new framework to describe how leaders think and practice. Bergman et al. (2012)
asserted that shared team leadership occurs when members of the team take on leadership
behaviors to influence the team and maximize team effectiveness. In their study of 45 decision
making teams, they found that shared leadership led to less conflicts and more intra-group trust,
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an important element to consider when thinking about the role of teacher leadership in schools.
Aime et al. (2014) referred to the concept of “heterarchy.” Heterarchy describes the dynamic
and fluid power shifting in teams that do not rely on traditional vertical decision making of the
kind that occurs in a hierarchy based on rank or position within the organization.
Therefore, distributed leadership requires to rethink hierarchy and organizational
structures, especially within a school context (Elmore, 2000; Gronn, 2000; Magno, 2014). It
provides an alternative to top-down and autocratic approaches to leadership that dominated the
educational field until the 1980s. By embedding governance in the school’s social and
situational context, distributed leadership allows to acknowledge and maximize the expertise that
preexists within the school (Magno, 2014). Elmore (2000) stressed before Magno that
responsibility for leadership had to be distributed between roles within the organization to allow
leaders to perform complex tasks in an industry so heavily based on knowledge. Gronn (2000)
showed how a distributed leadership model transforms power relationships within the school and
how distinctions between leaders and followers tend to disappear. Overall, a distributed
leadership model may also contribute to create stability in an international context where
turnover of traditional leaders is high (Mott, 2011; Roberts & Mancuso, 2014).
Murphy, Smylie, Mayrowetz, and Louis (2009) helped conceptualize the role of the
principal in fostering distributed leadership within schools. Principals and Heads shape the
organizational culture that is conducive to distributed leadership and create opportunities for
teachers to take leadership within this context. Murphy (2006) categorized the actions of
administrators in support of distributed leadership as follows: building strong relationships,
rethinking conceptions of power, and fashioning organizational cultures.
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Finally, Leithwood et al. (2004) and Spillane and Diamond (2012) warned against the
risk of emptying distributed leadership of its meaning by not giving it proper consideration.
Both pointed to the considerable overlap with other well-established conceptions of leadership
such as shared, collaborative, and participative leadership. They also emphasized the danger of
confusing distributed leadership with the mere distribution of management responsibilities within
the school.
Teacher leadership. Research literature offers a series of definitions of teacher
leadership (Harris, 2005; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009; Muijs & Harris, 2003, 2005; Pruitt,
2008; Wenner & Campbell, 2017; York-Barr & Duke, 2004) that often share common
characteristics and sometimes offer unique insights into the role of teacher leaders. Thus, most
researchers placed school improvement, improved educational practice (Katzenmeyer & Moller,
2009) and increased student learning (York-Barr & Duke, 2004) at the heart of their definitions
of teacher leadership. They also emphasized the cultural change that goes with moving from a
leadership centered around the principal to a shared and more democratic culture within the
school, centered around a community approach (Harris, 2005; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009;
Pruitt, 2008; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Hence, Harris (2005) mentioned “collegial norms”
(p. 206) and the association of teacher leadership with the fact of re-culturing schools based on a
leadership that stems from the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Pruitt (2008) saw teacher
leadership as the outcome of a democratic culture. Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) placed the
teacher leader at the center of a “community of teacher learners and leaders” (p. 5), while York-
Barr and Duke (2004) described teacher leadership as “a process by which teachers, individually
or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of the school
communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student
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learning and achievement” (pp. 287–288). Wenner and Campbell (2017) surveyed 19 pieces of
literature spanning the 2004–2013 period that give a definition of teacher leadership, and found
five main themes: teacher leadership goes beyond the classroom walls; teacher leaders should
support professional learning in their schools; teacher leaders should be involved in policy and/or
decision making at some level; the ultimate goal of teacher leadership is improving student
learning and success; and teacher leaders work toward improvement and change for the whole
school organization.
In their updated definition of teacher leadership, Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) added
an original element of accountability, claiming that teacher leaders agree they should answer of
the results of their leadership. As with principals, effective teacher leaders follow through on
their leadership responsibilities so that they may gain the trust of their colleagues (Katzenmeyer
& Moller, 2009).
Finally, Harris (2005) included in her definition of teacher leadership the idea that teacher
leadership is akin to providing teachers with opportunities to lead. Therefore, the principal
retains a critical role in developing a culture of teacher leadership in the school. In his seminal
article on the topic, Barth (2001) expects the following from principals as culture builders:
expect; relinquish; trust; empower; include; protect; recognize; share responsibility for failure;
and give credit for success.
Capacity-Building and Collaborative Culture in Schools
High-leadership capacity schools. In a typically dialectical fashion, high capacity and a
collaborative culture are necessary conditions to develop a teacher leadership, which will in turn
contribute to building capacity and fostering collaboration within the school. Lambert (2003,
2007) helped spread the concept of high leadership capacity in schools, defined as a broad-based,
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skillful participation in the work of leadership. In line with definitions of teacher leadership
discussed above, Lambert (2003) recognizes a high leadership capacity school when teachers
choose to lead because their environment has allowed them to do so, an environment in which
everyone has the potential and right to work as a leader and where leadership is a shared
endeavor (Lambert, 2003). In such a school, principal and teachers, as well as several parents
and students, become skillful leaders; there is a shared vision that produces program coherence;
the culture allows for an inquiry-based use of information; and reflective practice leads to
innovation. Thus, student achievement is high or improving (Lambert, 2007).
The importance of professional learning. Ever since Senge (1990a, 1990b) formalized
the importance of building learning organizations as a source of performance and ongoing
improvement, his concept of learning organization has been used in an educational context to
emphasize the importance of professional learning and a collaborative culture in school
improvement. Ongoing professional learning is a cornerstone for building capacity in schools
and will develop teachers’ self-reflection and attention to their own professional growth (Pruitt,
2008; Sullivan, 2010).
In his qualitative study, Pruitt (2008) suggested that professional development, especially
training through a partnership between the school and a university, had the potential to change
the role of teachers in schools and to help transition to teacher leadership. Accordingly, Sullivan
(2010) emphasized the importance of a school culture that properly values professional learning
as a key influencer in teacher’s attitudes toward their professional development plan. Webster-
Wright contributed to define the parameters of what she deems as “authentic professional
learning” (2009, 2010). Authentic professional learning focuses on learning rather than
development because it claims to move away from a transmission model of teaching and learning
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to adopt a practitioner approach that keeps learning situated in context. The goal is to
conceptualize learning “as embedded and constructed in the experience of being a professional in
practice” (Webster-Wright, 2009, p. 724). The separation between practice and the professional
is removed and practice becomes an integral part of the experience of working professionally in
the current context. This view is congruent with prevalent models of collaborative cultures
within schools.
Models of teacher leadership capacity-building through collaboration. A
collaborative culture in the school is conducive of teacher leadership capacity building (Muijs &
Harris, 2007; Sullivan, 2010). Sullivan (2010) found collaborative leadership and teacher
collaboration to be key factors associated with teachers’ attitudes toward their professional
development plan. In their case study of three schools in the UK, Muijs and Harris (2007) found
that a culture of trust and collaboration was required to foster teacher leadership. Professional
learning communities (PLCs) and instructional coaching are two distinct approaches to capacity-
building through collaboration.
Professional learning communities. The term professional learning community (PLC)
became popular in education at the end of the 20th century, but as with teacher leadership, does
not find a single or easy definition. Dufour, Dufour, and Eaker (2008) played an important role
in launching the PLC movement and proposed to define a professional learning community “as
educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and
action research to achieve better results for the students they serve” (p. 14). Marzano et al.
(2016) reviewed the definitions of PLCs in the literature and noted that they all share the
following characteristics: mutual support and trust among teachers, shared vision and values, a
focus on improving student learning, a focus on teacher growth and professional development,
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an intentional and systematic support of collaborative model, and an inquiry-based approach and
use of evidence. These characteristics are consistent with the notions of high leadership capacity
schools, the importance of professional learning mentioned above, and some recent in-depth
doctoral research (Mansour, 2011; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006).
Instructional coaches. In parallel to PLCs, the hiring and use of on-site staff developers,
labeled instructional coaches, has the potential to build capacity within teachers’ teams,
contributing to increases in teaching and learning quality and student success (Hall & Simeral,
2008; Knight, 2004; McCrary, 2011). Instructional coaches are a promising practice in
education that still carries some associated risks. McCrary (2011) acknowledged that many
schools implementing an instructional coaching model have yet to see significant improvement
in teachers’ practices and student achievement. Nonetheless, her own study of 144 teachers and
19 coaches supported the expected relationships between instructional coaching and positive
outcomes. McCrary suggested that the variance in outcomes may be due to school context and
individual instructional coach qualities. Hall and Simeral (2008) clearly delineated the
prerequisites for a successful instructional coaching model: a specific job description,
meaningful framework for action, and guidance, without which instructional coaching can
become divisive and build more resistance to change than engagement in school improvement.
Knight (2004) insisted that coach-teacher partnership is key to success and that success can only
happen if coaches offer teachers choice, respect their time, provide support, and model
instructional practice.
Teacher Leadership in the Context of International Schools
Leadership in international schools. Empirical research examining leadership in
international schools is scarce. Nonetheless, international schools offer a unique context to study
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distributed instructional leadership (Blandford & Shaw, 2001; Lee, Hallinger, & Walker, 2012a,
2012b).
Blandford and Shaw (2001) offered some valuable insight in the specificity of school
leadership in an international school context. They drew a list of the unique aspects of
international schools that influence the leader’s role: differing parental expectations; staff and
student turnover; the Head’s own precarious position; over-involvement of board members in
school business; in-country laws / education policies; ephemeral and itinerant membership of the
board of governors; mixed-culture nature of staff, students and board; choosing the right balance
of curriculum; and the Head’s relationship with the board of governors. These distinct
challenges awaiting the international school leader helped to explain why leadership in
international schools requires certain knowledge and skills that are unique to this context.
Lee et al. (2012b) built upon Blandford and Shaw’s list to develop a conceptual
framework revolving around environmental factors (parents and community, external
assessment) and organizational factors (private self-funded status, organizational structures,
human resource management, and curriculum, teaching and learning) to explain the specific
context of leadership challenges in international schools. These authors also acknowledged the
limited number of empirical studies, especially when one looks at schools in the Asia Pacific
region, as compared to Western schools.
In a separate empirical study (Lee et al., 2012a), the same authors concluded that in the
context of the International Baccalaureate program, which often leads to a segmentation within
the school between primary, middle, and high school, distributed instructional leadership
contributed to sustained professional interactions among staff members located or acting in
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different programs and divisions. Therefore, the distributed model of teacher leadership seemed
especially helpful in the context of international schools.
Specific challenges for teacher leadership in international schools. As international
schools recognize the value of teacher leadership for educational improvement, they face some
realities and challenges that are unique to their context (Hayden, 2006). Staff recruitment,
training, and retention (Hardman, 2001; Odland & Ruzicka, 2009), as well cultural diversity and
cultural competency (Dimmock & Walker, 2005; Hirsch, 2016), pose specific threats to the
ability to develop a distributed model of teacher leadership in international schools.
Staff recruitment, training, and retention. Staffing and retention represent specific
challenges in an international school context. Hayden (2006) highlighted particular issues that
come with recruiting both teachers and administrators in a highly volatile international school
context. Some of these challenges are associated with internal factors, such as compensation
levels and administrative support, others with external factors (political stability in a country,
issuance of travel advisory warnings, quality of life) (Hayden, 2006). Concerns about hiring and
turnover among administrators are latent, as hiring is perceived as being the most important role
for principals and Heads and strategic deployment of staff is a major responsibility for leadership
(Lee et al., 2012b). Wenner and Campbell (2017) saw teacher leadership as a possible solution
for the problem of attrition, as taking on additional leadership responsibilities can satisfy the
teacher’s desire for new and different challenges as their career progress.
While turnover can have positive consequences, such as influx of new ideas and
expertise, more often consequences are negative. Teacher turnover impacts student learning. It
threatens curricular continuity and coherence, the efficacy of professional development
initiatives, the efforts for organizational improvement, and the fabric of the community (Odland
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35
& Ruzicka, 2009). Hardman (2001) suggested that due to the specific needs of international
school students and the role that teachers play in expatriate communities, the importance of
strong student-teacher relationships increases and schools feel more acutely the effects of
turnover. Schools need to maintain the continuity and quality of instructional programs.
Therefore, schools should know the factors that support teacher retention (Mancuso et al., 2010;
Odland & Ruzicka, 2009). In a study of 22 school Heads and 248 international school teachers,
the turnover rate was found to be 17% (Mancuso et al., 2010). The study suggested that age,
satisfaction with salary, but mostly perception of a supportive leadership were key correlates of
high turnover. This supportive leadership was closely linked in respondents’ answers to
transformational and distributed leadership. In a study of 289 international school teachers, the
findings of Odland and Ruzicka (2009) were similar, with administrative leadership,
compensation, and personal circumstances presented as the main factors in turnover. And
finally, in his study of 200 teachers in the NESA region, Weston (2013) found that the Head’s
transformational leadership was a strong predictor of the most effective teachers’ retention.
Ultimately, fostering a collaborative culture within the school may contribute to a
decrease in teacher turnover, as suggested by Troutt (2014). By building teacher efficacy,
providing professional development, increasing job satisfaction, increasing teacher morale and
enthusiasm, decreasing feelings of isolation, and providing shared responsibility for the
education of all students, PLCs may assist in the retention of a vibrant teaching staff (Troutt,
2014). All of this supports the importance of developing more collaborative leadership teams,
representing diverse perspectives on the school’s affairs.
Cultural diversity and intercultural competency. Cultural diversity represents a strength
for international schools, but also brings some challenges (Dimmock & Walker, 2005; Lee et al.,
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36
2012b, Shaw, 2001). Lee et al. (2012b) suggested that it can be difficult to manage culturally
diverse staff. It requires intercultural competency in all areas of the organization. Intercultural
competency can be defined as “the ability of an individual or organization to effectively and
appropriately communicate and achieve goals in a culturally diverse environment” (Hirsch,
2016, p. 13). Intercultural competent individuals have developed a set of skills and behaviors
that may include acquisition of a different language, some context-based non-verbal
communication skills, and cultural background and knowledge (Deardoff, 2009). Managers in
international schools have an important role to play by providing relevant and culture-sensitive
professional development experiences, as well developing a distinctive organizational climate for
the school (Shaw, 2001).
Dimmock and Walker (2005) demonstrate how differences between social cultures exert
divergent forces on leadership, while a globalizing environment on the contrary pushes for
convergence. Comparing collaboration and staff harmony in three different international
contexts (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia), the authors found that while principals valued
these in all three contexts, they did so for very different reasons explained by culture: face
keeping and loyalty to school in Hong Kong, expression of opinion within a multicultural society
in Singapore, individual’s right to expression of views in Australia (Dimmock & Walker, 2005).
The Clark and Estes (2008) Gap Analysis Conceptual Framework
Clark and Estes (2008) provided a framework that allows practitioner researchers to
diagnose and find solutions to performance gaps in organizations. The authors framed these
gaps in three main areas: knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational barriers.
Knowledge and skills refer to whether people know how to achieve their performance goals
(Clark & Estes, 2008). In his revision of Bloom’s taxonomy, Krathwohl (2002) defined four
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types of knowledge (factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive), helpful to understand
whether stakeholders know how to meet a performance goal. Motivation is the internal,
psychological process that gets people going, keeps them moving, and tells them how much
effort to spend on tasks (Pintrich & Schunk, 1996). Motivation influences revolve around the
concepts of choice, persistence, and effort (Clark, 1998; Clark & Estes, 2008; Rueda, 2011).
When lack of performance cannot be attributed to knowledge or motivation gaps, organizational
barriers are often to blame. Organizational barriers can refer to inadequate resources, work
processes, or organizational culture (Clark & Estes, 2008; Schein, 2004).
Applied to teacher leaders in this study, Clark and Estes’s gap analysis allowed to
understand the knowledge, motivation, and organizational needs to meet their goal of helping
teachers set and reach their own professional growth objectives. First, the gap analysis revealed
assumed influences on teacher leaders’ performance goal from the perspective of knowledge and
skills. It then considered the role of motivation influences. Finally, it explored how
organizational factors influence teacher leaders’ performance.
Stakeholder Knowledge, Motivation and Organizational Influences
Knowledge and Skills
In light of the global organizational goal of building staff capacity to face the increasing
demand for teacher leadership in international schools, teacher leaders are the stakeholder group
of focus of this study. Their goal, by June 2018, is to include professional growth planning as an
item in at least one of their interactions with their teams. This process will help build both
teachers’ and teacher leaders’ capacity in the organization, contributing to the growth of a high
capacity school (Lambert, 2007). Clark and Estes (2008) suggested that knowledge and skills
enhancement were needed for job performance if (a) people do not know how to reach their
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performance goal, and (b) if future challenges will need novel problem solving. In the
meantime, Feeney’s (2009) research suggested that teacher leaders are often characterized by a
high level of engagement, but a low level of skills. Therefore, one must carefully study
knowledge influences to determine whether teacher leaders at the school need to acquire
knowledge and skills to meet their goal. The objective of this literature review is to study the
knowledge dimensions teacher leaders need to help teachers grow professionally.
Knowledge influences. Bloom’s revised taxonomy of educational objectives (Anderson
& Krathwohl, 2001; Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011) is a framework that classifies and allows to
understand knowledge influences that may affect teacher leaders’ performance. This framework
is conceptualized as a matrix with a knowledge dimension and a cognitive process dimension.
Knowledge is classified into four types: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive.
Cognitive processes are spread on six different levels: remember, understand, apply, analyze,
evaluate, and create (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Krathwohl, 2002). To meet their
stakeholder goal, teacher leaders at the school are under knowledge influences that can be
categorized in each of the four types. Understanding which type of knowledge is involved, and
at what level of cognitive process, is important. It will help establish appropriate implementation
strategies to close the gap between the current and desired state of knowledge and skills for the
stakeholder group of focus (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Leadership capacity building in schools. Teacher leaders need to know about leadership
capacity building, for themselves and for the teachers they support and collaborate with.
Research on leadership theory has considerably evolved in the last 30 years, with more and more
emphasis put on transformational (Aguirre & Martinez, 2002; Diaz-Saenz, 2011), distributed
(Northouse, 2016), collaborative (Yukl, 1989), strategic (Denis, Kiskalvi, Langley, & Rouleau,
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2011), and pluralistic (Kezar, 2000) modalities of leadership, as opposed to more transactional,
hierarchical, and skills or traits theories of leadership (Northouse, 2016). Relying on Yukl
(2002), Katyal and Evers (2014) defined leadership as an influence process, allowing to separate
the concept of leadership from strict and formal hierarchical roles. Current research on teacher
leaders as agents of sustained school improvement suggests that leadership is a shared endeavor
that requires collaboration and redistribution of power and authority (Feeney, 2009; Lambert,
2007). Advocating an approach to leadership that emphasizes problem-solving processes over
decision-making, Evers and Katyal (2008) suggested that leadership in schools is now happening
at the micro rather than macro level. Decision-making was often related to the trait theory of
individual leaders. With problem-solving processes, the role of middle management is
reinforced (Blandford, 2001). Through their educational leadership, teacher leaders have
become a decisive agent in building school capacity for reform and school improvement. This
review demonstrates that teacher capacity building in schools requires elaborate and complex
conceptual knowledge from teacher leaders. Therefore, the acquisition of this kind of knowledge
will require education more than mere information, job aid, or training (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Acquiring this inherently complex conceptual knowledge will become a metacognitive
learning experience for teacher leaders. They themselves are burgeoning leaders to whom the
principles stemming from this knowledge directly apply. Metacognitive knowledge is one’s
awareness of one’s own cognition and cognitive processes (Rueda, 2011). It encompasses
“knowledge about, reflection on, and regulation of one’s cognitive activities” (Butler, 2015,
p. 294). It allows the individual to adapt his or her ways to think and operate according to this
awareness (Krathwohl, 2002). The metacognitive character of this knowledge will contribute to
effective self-reflection on the part of teacher leaders. It will fuel their reflection-in-action and
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reflection-on-action, which Schön (1983) designated as critical elements for successful
practitioners.
With the framework of leadership capacity building in mind, teacher leaders will be well
equipped to meet with their teachers and collaborate with them on the design of a meaningful
personal professional growth plan. Teacher leaders will ensure that these plans not only benefit
the employee, but also contribute to the school by increasing leadership capacity.
Knowledge of goal-setting process. Teacher leaders need to know how to set goals
(goal-setting process) to help teachers set goals for themselves. Seen from the perspective of
teachers, goals would be a motivation influence, for goal orientation is one of the leading
motivation theories (Harackiewicz, Barron, Pintrich, Elliot, & Thrash, 2002; Pintrich, 2000;
Urdan, Ryan, Anderman, & Gheen, 2002). Seen from the perspective of teacher leaders though,
whose role is to support teachers in reflecting on their professional growth, it becomes a
knowledge influence. Teacher leaders need to acquire factual knowledge about goals, as well as
the procedural knowledge of how to set goals and help others setting goals.
Goal orientation theory has served to study the reasons why students participate in
academic work (Rueda, 2011), but its findings are also applicable to adults in an organizational
setting such as a school (Clark, 1998; Clark & Estes, 2008; Latham, Daghighi, & Locke, 1997;
Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002, 2013). Locke and Latham (1990) defined a goal simply as
“something that the person wants to achieve” (p. 2). Clear goals and feedback are necessary so
that people commit to work and target organizational goals with their best efforts (Locke &
Latham, 1990). In a social cognitive perspective, Bandura (2001) proposed that goal content
plays an important role in motivating behavior. Goals’ benefits include an increase in
performance, an explicit ground for assessing success, a rise in one’s subjective well-being, a
BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

41
sense of shared purpose, and a way to improve self-management (Latham & Locke, 2006). To
be effective though, goals should be current, concrete, and challenging (Rueda, 2011). In
education, since the beginning of the professional learning communities (PLCs) movement, this
approach takes the form of SMART goals: goals are meant be specific, measurable, action-
oriented, realistic, and timely (O’Neill & Conzemius, 2006; Smith, 2009). The role of teacher
leaders then is to help support teachers to set such SMART goals for themselves in light of their
professional growth plan. The literature may help to avoid some of the pitfalls of goal-setting,
such as (a) goal conflicts due to lack of alignment between goals and the vision and mission of
the school, (b) goals being viewed as a threat, or (c) the increase in stress related to goal-setting
(Latham & Locke, 2006).
Knowledge of principles of professional development and PLCs. Teacher leaders also
need to know how to improve teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions through professional
development and professional learning communities. To achieve their goal of helping teachers
set their professional growth plans, teacher leaders need to understand how to build a supportive
environment conducive to professional learning. This knowledge will require to reach high in
the cognitive processes of Bloom’s taxonomy, at the level of analysis and creation.
Social resources and relational trust are important to build effective professional growth
in a school context (King & Newmann, 2001; Scagliarini, 2011). This relational trust is a
connective tissue (Bryk & Schneider, 2002) that contributes to school change and improvement
and a valuable resource that connects and empowers teachers as learners (Scagliarini, 2011). In
a context of distributed leadership, teacher leaders are at the core of the development of this
interpersonal trust. Scagliarini (2011) observed how an East Asian school used a PLC to foster
trust and build capacity and pointed to the important role of educational leaders. Therefore,
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42
teacher leaders should be well versed in the principles and development of PLCs to develop
professional growth goals with teachers.
King and Newmann (2001) already noted the importance to focus professional
development on reflective inquiry rather than compliance with predetermined practices. They
underlined that professional development has historically been focused on teachers’ knowledge
and skills, rather than the building of professional community, a culture of inquiry, and a search
for program coherence. Quality of instruction will improve only through an approach that
balances these different approaches to building school capacity (King & Newmann, 2001).
Again, teacher leaders play a pivotal role in finding this balance. This reflective component
should be part of the conversations held with teachers around professional growth.
Table 2 presents the three main knowledge influences, the knowledge types that they
relate to, and the methods of assessing the gaps in knowledge.
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43
Table 2
Stakeholder Goal and Knowledge Influence, Type, and Influence Assessment for Knowledge Gap
Analysis
Organizational Mission
The mission of the school is to educate students in the American curriculum with an
international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students.
Organizational Global Goal
The school’s global goal is to build its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher
leaders. By 2019, 100% of nominations to teacher leadership positions within the school
could be internal and result from careful succession planning.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2018, teacher leaders will include professional growth planning as an item in at
least one of their interactions with their teams.
Knowledge Influence
Knowledge Type
(i.e., declarative
(factual or
conceptual),
procedural, or
metacognitive) Knowledge Influence Assessment
Teacher leaders need to
know how to build
leadership capacity in
schools
Conceptual Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following
statements:
• Through my work in my leadership role, I
contribute to developing a culture of
inquiry within the organization.
Interview questions:
• In your perspective, describe what
distributed leadership is.
• Please describe your role as a teacher
leader.

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44
Table 2, continued
Knowledge Influence
Knowledge Type
(i.e., declarative
(factual or
conceptual),
procedural, or
metacognitive) Knowledge Influence Assessment
Teacher leaders need to
know how to set goals
(goal-setting process)
in order to help
teachers set goals for
themselves
Factual,
procedural
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following
statements:
• I received training in how to set individual
short-term goals.
• I received training in how to set collective
short-term goals for a team.
Please rate the importance of the following
when you think of effective personal goals:
• Goals should be current.
• Goals should be concrete.
• Goals should be challenging.
• Goals should be specific.
• Goals should be measurable.
• Goals should be action-oriented.
• Goals should be realistic.
• Goals should be aligned with the
organization’s goals.
Interview questions:
• Please describe how teachers in your
teams set their professional growth goals.
• Please describe the role, if any, you play
in helping teachers set their professional
growth goals.
Documents and artifacts:
• Look for evidence of teacher leader
involvement in professional growth plans
process.

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Table 2, continued
Knowledge Influence
Knowledge Type
(i.e., declarative
(factual or
conceptual),
procedural, or
metacognitive) Knowledge Influence Assessment
Teacher leaders need to
know how to improve
teachers’ knowledge,
skills, and dispositions
through professional
development and
professional learning
communities
Conceptual,
metacognitive
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following
statements:
• The school functions as a professional
learning community.
• I know how to foster a professional
learning community.
• I know how to lead a professional
development workshop.
How many professional development
workshops have you led (within and outside
of school) in the last two years?
Interview questions:
• Please describe the importance of trust in
your relationship with your colleagues.
• Please share the strategies, if any, you
used to build trust with your colleagues.
• Please share an instance, if any, where
building trust proved especially
challenging.
Documents and artifacts:
• Look for best practice in professional
development artifacts (online resources,
workshop evidence, etc.)

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Motivation
Motivation is what “gets us going, keeps us moving, and tells us how much effort to
spend on work tasks” (Clark & Estes, 2008, p. 80). Active choice, persistence, and mental effort
are the three indexes of motivation (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2009). Therefore, motivation is
important to study to understand performance and achievement in any organization, including
schools (Rueda, 2011). The development of motivational theory benefited from social cognitive
theory (Bandura, 1986) and sociocultural influences have become a main area of focus for
researchers working in this field (McInerney & Van Etten, 2001, 2002; Pajares, 2007; Rueda,
2011). Motivational theory will help better understand what stands in the way of teacher leaders
achieving their stakeholder goal in the context of a social organization. In the context of this
study and based on the stakeholder group of focus, self-efficacy and emotions are two key
motivational constructs to study.
Self-efficacy theory. Bandura (1986, 1997, 2013) contributed greatly to motivational
theory by developing the constructs of self-efficacy — the belief that one can accomplish a
certain task — and self-efficacy beliefs. Bandura (1986) defined self-efficacy beliefs as
“people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to
attain designated types of performances” (p. 391). Rueda listed prior knowledge of an activity or
a task, the amount and quality of feedback received, and past successes and failures as the main
factors contributing to self-efficacy (Rueda, 2011).
Self-efficacy has significant consequences in terms of task choice and avoidance: people
usually participate in tasks which they feel they can accomplish successfully, and circumvent
other tasks (Pajares, 2006). Self-efficacy beliefs also impact persistence, as studies on academic
persistence have shown (Liao, Edlin, & Ferdenzi, 2014; Pajares, 1996). Finally, self-efficacy is
BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

47
positively linked to other motivational factors such as interest, value, and utility and negatively
related to negative emotions (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003). Self-efficacy theory will help
explain teacher leaders’ motivation in their school setting.
Teacher leaders’ self-efficacy. Research suggests that to work effectively, teacher
leaders need to be confident about their ability to help other teachers’ reflection on their
professional growth plan. Bandura (1993) showed that high self-efficacy improved cognitive,
motivational, and affective processes in schools. He insisted on the role that exercise of control
on the environment plays in self-efficacy. Therefore, if teacher leaders believe they can control
the environment to influence and create change in other teachers, they will have a vitalizing
effect in their school. In a longitudinal study taking place among student teacher leaders in
Holland, Beverborg, Sleegers, Maaike, and van Veen (2015) observed the interconnection
between self-efficacy and organizational factors in teacher leaders’ learning: sustained self-
reflection and sustained beliefs in self-efficacy resulted in educational improvements. A
transformational leader could be helpful in that process. Runhaar, Sanders, and Yang (2010)
investigated the direct link between high self-efficacy and goal orientation and validated the
following hypothesis: “learning goal orientation mediates the relationship between occupational
self-efficacy and reflection and asking feedback” (p. 1156). In a research on how leaders support
the goal setting of teachers in a middle school setting, Sieller (2011) found that supervisory
support enhanced quality of learning and the nature of the goals teachers set for themselves.
This finding is consistent with the results of a study by Latham and Saari (1979) who, in the
context of higher education, found that college students set more challenging goals when
supervised by people they deemed as more supportive.
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48
Teacher leaders’ approach to the motivational construct of self-efficacy also entails a
self-reflective and metacognitive aspect: teacher leaders need to understand how to build self-
efficacy for themselves and for their teachers. Self-efficacy will be critical in teacher leaders’
ability to articulate clear goals for themselves and for their teachers (Bandura, 2013; Runhaar et
al., 2010). Hence, it will inform teacher leaders’ ability to fulfill their stakeholder goal.
Emotions theory. In recent years, a growing body of studies contributed to the
recognition of the role of emotions in an individual’s effort, motivation to persist, and cognitive
development (Pekrun, 2011; Schutz & Pekrun, 2007). Emotions can also influence
organizational behavior, personal commitment to organizational goals, and impact the
accomplishment of complex and longer-term goals (Lord & Kanter, 2002). A categorization
according to valence and activation allowed to distinguish between four different categories of
emotions: positive activating, positive deactivating, negative activating, and negative
deactivating (Pekrun, 2006). Activating emotions can have a positive influence on persistence
and achievement, while deactivating emotions can be a hindrance. Also, emotions may be
categorized as either achievement, epistemic, topic, or social emotions (Pekrun, 2011).
Achievement and social emotions seem especially relevant to focus on when studying the role
emotions play in teacher leaders’ motivations.
Teacher leaders’ emotions. To support teachers’ articulation of their professional
growth plan, teacher leaders need to feel positive achievement and social emotions in their role.
Emotions are often seen as a feature of the individual, yet they also result contingently from
social influences. The way school is organized shapes an educator’s emotions as much as the
individual’s biological traits (Hargreaves, 1998; White, 1993). In the case of department chairs,
emotional hardships may stem from their role’s high ambiguity and lack of clear definition
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49
(Hannay & Denby, 1993; Siskin, 1995). Schmidt (2000) diagnosed breakdowns in relationships
of emotional understanding and feelings of powerlessness as two major causes of negative
emotions. Siskin (1995) coined the expression “hermaphroditic role” (p. 5) to express the fact
that teacher leaders are neither fully teachers, nor fully administrators. This shift in role status
usually has a strong emotional impact and is seen by Feeney (2009) as a major cause for teacher
leader’s inefficacy in his empirical case study of a single high school.
Table 3 presents the two motivation influences, as well as the methods used to assess the
gaps in motivation.

Table 3
Stakeholder Goal and Motivational Influence and Assessment for Motivation Gap Analysis
Organizational Mission
The mission of the school is to educate students in the American curriculum with an
international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students.
Organizational Global Goal
The school’s global goal is to build its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher
leaders. By 2019, 100% of nominations to teacher leadership positions within the school
could be internal and result from careful succession planning.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2018, teacher leaders will include professional growth planning as an item in at
least one of their interactions with their teams.

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Table 3, continued
Assumed Motivation
Influences Motivational Influence Assessment
Self-efficacy:
Teacher leaders should
feel confident about
their ability to build
professional growth
plans with teachers.
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• I feel confident in my ability to help other teachers grow
professionally.
• I set formal goals for myself in my work as a teacher leader.
• Reflection on my growth in my leadership role is inherently
part of my thinking process.
Interview questions:
• Please describe how you help other teachers grow
professionally.
• Probing question: how confident do you fell in your ability to
help other teachers grow?
Emotions:
To support teacher’s
articulation of their
professional growth
plan, teacher leaders
need to feel positive
achievement and social
emotions in their role.
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• Since I started in my leadership role, my relationships with
other teachers has changed.
• Since I started in my leadership role, I feel empowered to
make a difference within the school.
• I feel understood by my colleagues in my role as a teacher
leader.
• I feel my work as a teacher leader contributes to improved
student learning and outcomes.
Interview questions:
• Please describe your relationships with the teachers with
whom you work in your teacher leadership position.
• In what ways did your colleagues react to the announcement
that you were taking on a teacher leadership position within
the school?
• Probing question: how did this reaction make you feel?

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Organizational Influences
This section of the review will examine potential organizational influences on teacher
leaders’ ability to help teachers create their professional growth plan. It will look at cultural
models and cultural settings, first through the lens of general theory, then in the context of
teacher leaders in international schools. Cultural models and settings are important to take into
consideration, for a good understanding of organizational culture is key to successful
organizational change and improvement (Clark & Estes, 2008; Schein, 2004; Schneider, Brief, &
Guzzo, 1996).
Cultural models. When describing organizational culture, Schein (2004) differentiated
several levels of analysis, defined by the degree to which the cultural phenomenon is visible to
the observer. Least visible are the deeply embedded, unconscious, basic underlying assumptions
(Schein, 2004). According to seminal studies by Argyris, these assumptions guide behavior and
mandate the thoughts and perceptions of group members (Argyris, 1976; Argyris & Schön,
1974). They also constitute what Gallimore and Goldenberg call cultural models, “a shared
mental schema or normative understandings of how the world works, or ought to work”
(Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001, p. 47). The type and degree of accountability and the
conception of the role of teacher leaders both relate to cultural models within the school.
Cultural model: accountability and teacher leaders. Accountability is a complex
multidimensional construct, that has been criticized for having become little more than a
contemporary cultural keyword (Dubnick, 2014). Nonetheless, there is an abundance of
complementary frameworks in the literature, which are helpful to understand key relationships in
an international school setting (Burke, 2005; Firestone & Shipps, 2005; Romzek & Dubnick,
1987). Accountability can be defined as a contractual relationship between a director and a
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52
provider, where the provider is held responsible for providing service and reaching specific
goals, and provider’s performance is assessed on whether goals are achieved. This relationship
can also be framed as between agent, principal, and beneficiary of the service (Burke, 2005).
Two types of accountability are especially relevant in an international school context:
bureaucratic and professional accountability. Bureaucratic accountability is based on
supervision and a vertical relationship between a superior and a subordinate (Romzek &
Dubnick, 1987). It emphasizes compliance and alignment over autonomy and the use of goals
and incentives (Firestone & Shipps, 2005). This sort of accountability reflects the traditional
view of a principal-teacher relationship in schools. On the other end, in a model of professional
accountability, peers work collegially as main agents toward the goal of increasing product
quality (Burke, 2005). Control is placed in the hands of the employees, whose pedagogical and
subject expertise allows them to deliver an educational experience to the student (Romzek &
Dubnick, 1987). Milanowski, Kimball, and Odden (2005) suggested the need to hold teachers
accountable for behaviors and teaching strategies that are research-based and have a causal link
with student achievement. Therefore, since teacher leaders play an important role in shaping
teachers’ behaviors and teaching strategies, they also need to partake of accountability
mechanisms in schools, especially professional accountability.
Cultural model: teacher leaders, collaboration and empowerment. Collaborative
leaders typically play a facilitative role, encouraging and enabling stakeholders to work together
effectively (Ansell & Gash, 2012). Management and business literature showed that
encouraging a collaborative environment promotes an ongoing integration of ideas and
interdependency among multiple stakeholders and suggested a collective rather than individual
approach to leadership within an organization (Raelin, 2016; VanVactor, 2012).
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53
Without the active support of their supervisor, teacher leaders are seldom effective
(Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003). Waters et al. (2003) used 30 years of literature to
demonstrate the role that leadership style plays on teacher leaders’ effectiveness and by
extension student achievement. When teacher leaders function within a collaborative leadership
model and are empowered by their principals, they find more meaning and persist in their role
(Davidhizar Birky, Shelton, & Headley, 2006). In a report, Carter (2004) showed that a collegial
approach to decision-making characterizes high-performing schools. And a study of 192
elementary schools found significant direct effects of collaborative leadership on change in the
schools’ academic capacity, especially at the teacher leadership level through the construct of
school capacity (Hallinger & Heck, 2010). Thus, to meet the stakeholder goal of helping
teachers develop their professional growth plan, teacher leaders at ASAS must be encouraged,
valued, and empowered by their principals.
Cultural settings. Cultural settings differ from cultural models. They are visible,
concrete manifestations of cultural models that appear within activity settings (Rueda, 2011).
They are closer to what Schein defined as artifacts, which are easier to observe than underlying
assumptions (Schein, 2004). Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001), borrowing from Sarason (1972)
and Tharp and Gallimore (1988), defined settings as “those occasions when people come
together to carry out joint activity that accomplishes something they value” (Gallimore &
Goldenberg, 2001, p. 48). Rueda (2011) emphasized the importance of understanding the
reciprocal relationships of cultural models and cultural settings (or social context): cultural
settings have the potential to impact individuals and groups’ behaviors. They themselves are
also shaped by these individuals and groups, who operate within the framework of cultural
models that determine their behavior.
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Cultural setting: the role of incentives in schools, and implications for teacher leaders.
As noted by Reilly (2005), too little time and effort are spent on considering non-monetary
sources of motivation. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation was
delineated long ago by Maslow (1954), Herzberg (1966), and Deci (1975). Since then, empirical
studies have demonstrated that non-monetary rewards enhance intrinsic motivation of knowledge
workers, leading to better performance and innovation (Markova & Ford, 2011). Hansen, Smith,
and Hansen (2002) recommended distinguishing recognition (intrinsic) and rewards (extrinsic) in
compensation programs, to avoid seeing employees’ motivation and satisfaction remain low
despite bonuses and merit pay. The role of incentives may seem like a motivation influence
rather than an organizational influence, but in the context of a school, an excessive emphasis
placed on financial incentives becomes a cultural setting factor that influences behavior.
The link between extrinsic monetary rewards and teacher performance is difficult to
establish (Springer et al., 2010). Due to the limited motivational power of the bonus, effects on
teacher reported attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors are not asserted (Marsh et al., 2011). On
the contrary, several studies have established a positive relationship between non-financial
incentives and job satisfaction of teachers (Johnson, 1986; Sabina, Okibo, Nyang’au, &
Ondimas, 2015). Teachers tend to value professional efficacy over financial rewards as the
primary motivator in their work (Johnson, 1986). This applies to teacher leaders: if given only
financial rewards, rather than tools allowing them to succeed and feel efficacy in their work
(such as time, resources, professional development), teacher leaders may feel a disincentive to
undertake a leadership role within their school.
Cultural setting: employee turnover in international schools, and the role of teacher
leaders. General literature on employee turnover is massive and the field continues to grow
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55
(Hancock, Allen, Bosco, McDaniel, & Pierce, 2013). Major trends in recent literature include an
increased emphasis on contextual variables, especially the importance of interpersonal
relationships, and a focus on factors for retention (Holtom, Mitchell, Lee, & Eberly, 2008). Most
studies show a negative relationship between turnover and organizational performance, but the
relationship is often mediated by other variables or factors, such as workforce performance
(Hancock et al., 2013; Shaw, Gupta, & Delery, 2005).
The negative relationship between staff turnover and school performance is also well
established (Odland & Ruzicka, 2009). Several studies emphasize the role teachers’ perception
of the school administration and leadership plays in teacher retention decisions (Boyd et al.,
2011; Mancuso et al., 2010; Odland & Ruzicka, 2009). In a setting of distributed leadership,
teacher leaders are perceived as leaders within the schools (Harris, 2010) and play a role in
teachers’ ultimate choice to leave a school or stay. Schools that provide mentoring, induction,
and administrative support have comparatively lower levels of teacher attrition and migration
(Guarino et al., 2006). Since teacher leaders contribute to these characteristics, they have the
potential to impact teacher retention. Finally, as educators and staff members, teacher leaders
also make attrition or retention decisions, and these decisions impact stability and leadership
continuity within the school (Mancuso et al., 2010). So, to meet its organizational goal, the
school needs to recognize contextual variables that lead to high employee turnover, even if these
variables are not the only factors to take into account in international schools.
Table 4 presents the four organizational influences, as well as the methods used to assess
the gaps in organization.

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Table 4
Stakeholder Goal and Organizational Influence and Assessment for Organizational Gap
Analysis
Organizational Mission
The mission of the school is to educate students in the American curriculum with an
international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students.
Organizational Global Goal
The school’s global goal is to build its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher
leaders. By 2019, 100% of nominations to teacher leadership positions within the school
could be internal and result from careful succession planning.
Stakeholder Goal
By June 2018, teacher leaders will include professional growth planning as an item in at
least one of their interactions with their teams.
Assumed Organizational
Influences Organizational Influence Assessment
Cultural Model
Influence 1: Teacher
leaders need to be held
accountable for working
closely with teachers
within the school.
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• Helping other teachers develop their professional growth plan
is part of my responsibility as a teacher leader.
• My supervisors meet with me to review my work as a teacher
leader.
• I am held accountable by my supervisor for working closely
with other teachers.
Interview questions:
• In your opinion, what role are you expected to play in
teachers’ professional growth?
Documents and artifacts:
• Look for evidence of accountability in teacher leaders’
evaluation procedure, climate survey results

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Table 4, continued
Assumed Organizational
Influences Organizational Influence Assessment
Cultural Model
Influence 2: Teacher
leaders need to be
encouraged, valued, and
empowered by their
principals, who involve
them in collaborative
decision-making
processes. This includes
providing time, clear
expectations and
description of
responsibilities, and a
favorable climate.

Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• I have a clear job description for my role as a teacher leader.
• My role as a teacher leader is clearly understood by the
teachers I am responsible to work with.
• The professional development workshops I attended since I
started in my leadership position at the school helped me
acquire important knowledge in relation to my leadership role.
• The professional development workshops I attended since I
started in my leadership position at the school helped me
acquire important skills in relation to my leadership role.
• Initial induction in my leadership role was effective
Interview questions:
• In what ways, if any, is your expertise recognized within the
school?
• Tell me of a situation in which time either enabled or impeded
your ability to fulfill the expectations of your position.
• Probing question: What were some contributing factors to
this situation?
• Please describe the dynamic between you and your
supervisor.
• Probing question: In what ways, if any, does your supervisor
play a mentoring role?
• Please explain whether your job description provides the
clarity needed to fulfill your role.
• Describe your colleagues’ understanding of your role as a
teacher leader.
Documents and artifacts:
• Look for evidence in job descriptions, climate survey results,
timetables.

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Table 4, continued
Assumed Organizational
Influences Organizational Influence Assessment
Cultural Setting
Influence 1: The school
needs to recognize that
current incentives in
place for teacher
leadership create a
disincentive for teachers
to undertake a
leadership role.
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• My leadership role within the school brings me satisfaction.
• My motivation to fulfill my leadership role is essentially
intrinsic.
• I am adequately compensated for my leadership role.
• Monetary compensation is important to me in my leadership
role.
• Other forms of compensation (non-monetary) are important to
me in my leadership role.
Interview questions:
• What are the main factors that influenced your decision to
take on a leadership role?
• Probing question: What role did compensation play in your
decision?
Documents and artifacts:
• Review of stipends structure, job descriptions, contract
templates.

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Table 4, continued
Assumed Organizational
Influences Organizational Influence Assessment
Cultural Setting
Influence 2: The school
needs to recognize
contextual variables that
result in high employee
turnover.
Survey items:
Please rate how you feel about the following statements:
• I receive the appropriate level of administrative support to
fulfill my leadership role
• I feel comfortable working with people from different cultures
and backgrounds
• I make efforts to understand the host country’s language and
culture
Please rate the importance of the following when you think of the
reasons why you would leave the school one day:
• Financial reasons
• Leadership of the school
• State of administrative support
• Length of stay
• Host country context
• Desire to repatriate
Interview questions:
• What are the main factors that would influence your decision
to remain in your teacher leadership role within the school?
• What are the main factors that would influence your decision
to leave your teacher leadership role within the school?
Documents and artifacts:
• Review of exit interviews results, climate survey results.

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Conclusion
This literature review examined the role played by teacher leaders in school
improvement, especially in the context of international schools worldwide. If properly
empowered within a distributed leadership framework, teacher leaders can contribute to building
capacity for high performing schools. The context of international schools offers a specific set of
challenges revolving around recruitment and retention, as well as diversity and cultural
competency. The methodological framework of the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis allowed
to delineate the assumed influences on teacher leaders in international schools in terms of
knowledge, motivation, and organizational barriers. Assumed knowledge influences revolve
around capacity building, goal-setting, and the development of professional learning
communities. Assumed motivation influences are in the domain of teacher leaders’ self-efficacy
and emotions. Finally, organizational influences involve accountability, empowerment,
incentives for leadership, and contextual variables leading to high turnover.
The next chapter will present the research methodology used to assess these needs within
the context of the site of study.

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CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
This study of teacher leadership in the context of an international school in Asia explored
the role played by teacher leaders in building capacity within their teams. It sought to answer the
following research questions:
1. What are international school teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation in relation
to helping teachers develop their professional growth plan?
2. How do teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation interact with the school’s context
to shape their ability to help other teachers develop their professional growth plan?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Based on the study’s conceptual framework, this chapter presents the research design of
the study and methods for data collection and analysis. First, the sampling criteria and rationale
of participating stakeholders for surveys, interviews, and observations are presented. The data
collection and instrumentation process follow, both for the quantitative and qualitative part of the
study, as well as methods for data analysis. Finally, credibility, trustworthiness, and validity of
the study are defended, as well as the ethics of the proposed research design. In several
appendices, the reader will find the instruments used for the research.
Conceptual Framework: The Interaction of Teacher Leaders’ Knowledge
and Motivation and the Organizational Context
The stakeholder influences presented discretely in the previous chapter do not function in
isolation from one another. Understanding their interactions is key to the design of a study on
the role of international school teacher leaders in helping faculty develop their professional
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growth plans. The role of the conceptual framework, defined by Maxwell (2013) as “system
concepts, assumptions, beliefs, and theories that supports and inform our research” (p. 39) is to
present these interactions. The conceptual framework presents the constructs explored in the
study. It helps inform the creation of tools that will be used to conduct the study, as well as the
theory that underpins its results’ analysis. As Merriam and Tisdell (2016) stated, theory
permeates every aspect of the research. It is therefore critical to establish the conceptual
framework that undergirds it.
Creating a pool of highly skilled teacher leaders requires a conscious effort on the part of
the institution, especially school leadership, and entails some organizational commitments. This
study used the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework to assess how knowledge,
motivation, and organizational gaps affect ASAS’s ability to meet its organizational goal of
building its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher leaders.
In each school, teacher leaders operate within certain cultural models and cultural
settings. At ASAS, are teacher leaders held accountable for supporting the development of a
pool of highly skilled teacher leaders (Milanowski et al., 2005)? Are they valued and
empowered by principals, in the framework of a truly distributed leadership model (Raelin,
2016; VanVactor, 2012)? Are incentives carefully designed, especially in a setting that is prone
to teacher turnover (Johnson, 1986)?

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Figure 1. Interactions between teacher leaders’ knowledge, motivation, and organizational
context

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The organizational context determines whether a school is committed to becoming a high
leadership capacity school, and putting in place structures to build leadership capacity within its
ranks. This study assessed whether the leadership philosophy at ASAS is one of distributed
leadership, where opportunities are given to faculty to take ownership of learning (Magno, 2014;
Murphy et al., 2009). The adoption of an instructional coaching model to support teachers in
their professional growth seemed to point in that direction.
The context also determines whether teacher leaders can work with their peers on their
professional growth plan. If so, the relationship becomes dialectical, since knowledge of the
goal-setting process will also contribute to a rise in accountability, and hopefully a reduction of
teacher turnover (Rueda, 2011).
School must be committed to a culture of collaboration to provide authentic professional
learning experiences to faculty and staff. Wishing to become a true “learning organization”
(Senge, 1990a), ASAS committed in 2016 to apply a model of professional learning
communities (PLCs). Thus, teacher leaders need to know about PLCs and be trained facilitators
(Marzano et al., 2016).
Teacher leaders’ motivation to participate in this process of perpetual upkeep of the pool
of new teacher leaders is dependent upon their feelings of self-efficacy (Bandura, 2013; Runhaar
et al., 2010) and positive achievement within their role (Feeney, 2009; Siskin, 1995). The social-
emotional aspect of their work is key to meaningful accomplishment. The study measured the
level of self-efficacy and positive achievement felt by teacher leaders at ASAS, to assess whether
they should contribute to the school meeting its organizational goal.
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Participating Stakeholders
The stakeholder group of focus for this study was composed of teacher leaders at ASAS.
This group comprised heads of department, team leaders, PLC leaders, K-12 coordinators, and
instructional coaches. Most teacher leaders retained classroom duties, with varying amounts of
release periods, except for coaches who were full-time in their position. Teacher leaders had a
variety of background and experience within their role.
Survey Sampling Criteria and Rationale
Criterion 1. Teachers who are employed at the school for the current school year. It
would have been impractical to locate and survey employees who previously served as teacher
leaders but left the organization.
Criterion 2. Teachers identified as holding a teacher leadership responsibility in the
inventory of capacity structures led by the office of Educational Programs. This criterion strictly
defines what teacher leadership means at the school.
Survey Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
There were 60 teacher leaders in the school who were identified following an inventory
of capacity structures within the organization. The survey was sent to all of them to seek full
participation. A high participation rate allows for quantitative analysis of the results, and reduces
standard error in data analysis (Fink, 2013). In an exploratory approach, it also allows to inform
the qualitative interview questions that follow. Therefore, the survey was conducted at the
beginning of the data collection process, before interviews. It was created using an online
platform and shared electronically with prospective participants, using their school email
address.
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Interview Sampling Criteria and Rationale
To decide who to invite for interviews from the larger stakeholder group, it was
important to define which attributes (or criteria) were crucial to the study (Merriam & Tisdell,
2016).
Criterion 1. Only individuals having taken a teacher leadership responsibility within the
school, either as a department head, instructional coach, PLC leader, or K-12 coordinator were
selected for interview.
Criterion 2. Teacher leaders having been in a leadership position for more than a year
were interviewed, for they needed some hindsight to reflect on the knowledge and motivation
influences at play.
Interview Sampling (Recruitment) Strategy and Rationale
Merriam and Tisdell (2016) see nonprobability sampling as the best method for most
qualitative research. Hence a purposeful sampling was used to conduct interviews for this
research. This method allowed to find the sample from which most can be learned, because of
the special experience or competence of the people sampled. The sort of purposeful sampling
used was typical purposeful sampling, one which “reflects the average person, situation, or
instance of the phenomenon of interest” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 97). Typical purposeful
sampling is appropriate here, for the goal of the study was to uncover the knowledge and
motivation influences for the average teacher leader in the school setting.
A sample size of nine persons felt adequate, for it allowed to retain at least two teacher
leaders per division (elementary, middle, and high school) and to add two cross-divisional
teacher leaders. It exceeds the limit under which research was excluded from review in Wenner
and Campbell’s (2017) literature review (n<=5). Participants were a subset of the group of
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stakeholders initially surveyed, who volunteered in the survey to be contacted for further
investigation. The survey asked whether the participants agreed to be contacted for an interview.
Data Collection and Instrumentation
This research on teacher leaders in international schools relied on survey, interviews, and
study of documents and artifacts as means for data collection. This allowed for proper
triangulation and reduced validity threats (Maxwell, 2013). It also helped gain information about
different aspects of the studied phenomenon.
Surveys
A cross-sectional survey produced valuable data to answer our research questions. A
survey design provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes, or opinions of a
population by studying a sample of that population (Creswell, 2014).
For this research study, all persons who held a teacher leadership position at the school
received an invitation to answer an 18-item survey. Sample size was 60. Survey items were
designed to answer the research questions above, and to assess the following assumed influences
from the conceptual framework: teacher leaders know how to build trust and manage
interpersonal conflicts; teacher leaders are motivated to stay long term in their position; teacher
leaders are given appropriate time to engage in their leadership role; teacher leaders receive
adequate support and supervision from school leaders; financial incentives are adequate to retain
teacher leaders.
To help maximize the response rate, the following strategies suggested by Pazzaglia,
Stafford, and Rodriguez (2016) were used:
• Using anonymous responses to increase participant’s willingness to disclose
information
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• Sending advance letter to participants to explain the purpose and value of the research
• Considering the timing of the survey, ensuring it is not administered during an overly
busy period (exams, end of term, administration of other school surveys)
• Providing sufficient time, i.e. a two to four-week window, with a limited number of
reminders to non-respondents after four weeks
To improve content validity (Salkind, 2014), items were created within the context of a
university course with several opportunities for peer review and reviewed by the instructor. The
dissertation committee provided useful feedback during the proposal defense, leading to
significant improvements to the instrument. The survey was piloted with a small group of four
teacher leaders from another school, outside of the study, to gather feedback and suggestions for
improvement. The test-retest reliability method was used. The survey was given twice at a two-
week interval to these voluntary pilot teacher leaders, and scores from both tests correlated to
assess reliability (Salkind, 2014). Following this test, some items were reworded to better ensure
reliability.
Survey items were created using literature-based principles such as presented by Fink
(2013), Irwin and Stafford (2016), and Merriam and Tisdell (2016): including a few items on
respondents’ demographics to use in data analysis; making sure persons surveyed are informed
about the topic; asking only information that will be used and analyzed; using standard grammar
and syntax; keeping questions concrete and close to the respondent’s experience; and remaining
aware of words that may introduce bias, and checking our own bias.
Finally, scales of measurement as defined by Salkind (2014) (nominal, ordinal, interval,
and ratio) were selected for each item to allow for proper results analysis.
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Interviews
Weiss (1994) makes a compelling case for interviews as a valuable method of qualitative
data collection. Interviews give access to the observations of other individuals and allow a
window into peoples’ perceptions and interpretations of these perceptions (Weiss, 1994).
Reasons to conduct interviews include developing detailed descriptions, integrating multiple
perspectives, describing process, developing holistic descriptions, and learning how events are
interpreted (Weiss, 1994).
One interview was conducted with each participating teacher leader, for a total of nine
interviews. Each interview lasted approximately one hour. Participants were met in their own
office or classroom, at their convenience. The interview protocol was semi-structured, which is
especially adapted to this study. Having the same questions for each participant allowed for
consistency in collected data and to compare and contrast the respondent’s answers. It still left
enough freedom to probe per the respondents’ answers and to adapt the line of questioning to the
specific responses. According to Merriam and Tisdell (2016), the less-structured format respects
the assumption that individual respondents define the world in unique ways and avoids the pitfall
of having respondents react to the researcher’s preconceived notions of the world. Here, the
questions were created paying attention to the kind of data they would elicit, following the
typology established by Patton (2002): experience and behavior questions, opinion and values
questions, feeling questions, knowledge questions, sensory questions, and demographic
questions. Questions were also designed with the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
influences in mind. The goal was to solicit data geared at answering the research questions and
determine specific influences at play at ASAS, including: teacher leaders know how to build
trust and manage interpersonal conflicts; teacher leaders feel confident about their ability to build
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professional growth plan with teachers; teacher leaders feel positive achievement and social
emotions in their role; teacher leaders are encouraged, valued, and empowered by their
principals, who involve them in collaborative decision-making processes; and teacher leaders are
recognized for their level of expertise, not their place in the hierarchy.
Bogdan and Biklen (2007) noted that the goal to understand how the person interviewed
is thinking is at the center of the interview. Therefore, it was sometimes necessary to veer away
from the prepared interview protocol to follow an interviewee in his or her train of thought and
capture his or her thinking.
Documents and Artifacts
Documents and artifacts include public records, personal papers, popular culture
documents, visual documents, and physical material and artifacts (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
They provide useful data to answer the research questions and come prepared at interviews and
observations. They can potentially bring descriptive information and help verify emerging
hypotheses. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) see the lack of intrusion or alteration of the setting as
one of the main advantages of these sources of data, which differentiates them from observations
or interviews.
Teacher leaders’ activity produces many documents readily available for study, such as
meeting agendas and minutes, reports, observation notes, twitter feed, and occasionally videos.
The school itself also produces important documents, including job descriptions, performance
evaluations, schedules, accreditation reports, and promotional material. These documents were
gathered from the school’s website, institutional files to which access was given, as well as
voluntary submission by stakeholders. While authenticity of documents was easy to assess, their
reliability to address what is happening on the ground was more difficult to apprehend. For
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example, a job description helps understand expectations for a position, but only through
triangulation with interviews is it possible to assess whether the reality of a person’s
responsibilities matches what is written in the job description.
While documents and artifacts were not produced for the purpose of the research, many
documents mentioned above are directly connected with the conceptual framework of the study.
School records allow to study teacher turnover; performance evaluations give access to
information about teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation when it comes to their relationship
with other teachers; and meeting minutes help assess the degree to which professional growth is
present in the work between teachers and teacher leaders.
Data Analysis
The data analysis encompassed quantitative data from the survey, qualitative data from
the interview, as well as document analysis.
Alkin (2011) presents the different types of data produced by a survey tool: nominal,
ordinal, interval, and ratio, and the statistical analysis that can be applied to each of those. In this
study, Likert-scale items produced ordinal data that was subject to frequency calculation and,
when appropriate, a visual representation of these frequencies. Questions that produce interval
or ratio data were subject to descriptive statistical analysis, to include measures of central
tendency and standard deviations. Items with a high non-response rate deserved to be reflected
upon to establish the meaning of this rate: did teacher leaders think that the assumed influence
was not relevant? Was there a lack of knowledge to respond? Special attention was given to
effective visual representations of the data. Evergreen (2017) insists that how a study represents
data matters and suggests creative and impactful ways to make data more easily readable and
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understandable. While the survey was delivered using an online platform, Microsoft Excel was
the tool of choice for data analysis and data visualization.
For interviews and documents, data analysis began during data collection. Bogdan and
Biklen (2007) and Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2014) recommended writing analytic memos
during the process to make sense of the data while it is being collected. Therefore, such memos
were written after each interview. This allowed to document thoughts, concerns, and initial
conclusions about the data in relation to the conceptual framework and research questions.
Thereafter, interviews were transcribed and coded. Corbin and Strauss (2008), Harding (2013),
and Merriam and Tisdell (2016) provided useful strategies to analyze qualitative data collected
during interviews. The first phase of analysis consisted in using analytic tools (questioning,
making comparisons, thinking in terms of metaphors and similes, looking for the negative case,
and others) to annotate the transcripts and apply an initial critical lens to the content (Corbin &
Strauss, 2008). Open coding was then used, looking for empirical codes and applying a priori
codes from the conceptual framework (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Harding, 2013; Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). A second phase of analysis was conducted where empirical and a priori codes
were aggregated into analytic/axial codes. In the third phase of data analysis, pattern codes and
themes that emerged in relation to the conceptual framework and study questions were identified.
Writing data memos in this third phase helped develop these pattern codes and themes (Harding,
2013). Documents and artifacts were analyzed looking for evidence consistent with the concepts
in the conceptual framework and as a tool to triangulate data from the survey and interviews
(Patton, 2002). When appropriate, they led to the development of themes, such as in the open
coding of interviews.
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Credibility and Trustworthiness
The congruence between a researcher’s findings and reality defines the credibility of the
study (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Trustworthiness depends on a large part on the intellectual
rigor, demonstrated competence, and ethical stance of the researcher (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Maxwell (2013) states that validity of accounts does not necessarily rely on an observer-
independent gold-standard, but the researcher remains responsible for providing all necessary
efforts to increase the credibility and trustworthiness of the study.
Triangulation and reflexivity helped reinforce the credibility of the study. Triangulation
is defined as the use of multiple methods, multiple sources of data, multiples investigators, or of
multiple theories to confirm the findings (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The use of three different
methods of data collection for this study (survey, interviews, documents) ensured a certain
degree of methods triangulation. For each of these methods, there were several sources of data: a
significant number of respondents to the survey, nine interviewees, and documents coming from
different areas of the organization. It was important to ensure that constructs measured by each
of these methods aligned to claim the benefits of data triangulation. Patton (2002) explained that
“triangulation increases credibility and quality by countering the concern (or accusation) that a
study’s findings are simply an artifact of a single method, a single source, or a single
investigator’s blinders” (p. 674).
Reflexivity is defined as how the researcher affects or is affected by the research process
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This is also referred to in the literature as researcher bias (Maxwell,
2013). Pure objectivity on the researcher’s part is illusory. Maxwell (2013) specifies that
integrity, more than indifference, is the true bearer of validity. Consequently, the researcher
should detail assumptions, worldviews, biases, theoretical orientation, and relationship to the
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study that may affect the research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The conceptual framework
section of this dissertation allows readers to understand the lens through which to interpret the
study. Writing this framework was an important process to express the researcher’s worldview
and potential biases and demonstrate a self-reflective and critical approach to his own
orientations. This self-reflective ability was honed by keeping a journal during data collection
and analysis, in which thoughts, feelings, and reflections associated with the process were
recorded. As is advised for observations (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), time was spent shortly after
each interview to write in this journal paragraphs on the connection between the recording and
interpretation of respondent’s answers considering the study’s conceptual framework and try to
systematically question and second guess the researcher’s initial or instinctive reaction to these
answers. The goal was to test assumptions by exposing them on paper and systematically try to
consider at least two or three different possible interpretations of each main idea put forth in the
interviews. This is being open to rival hypotheses (Maxwell, 2013), alternative interpretations,
or other ways of understanding the data. Careful attention was given to considering discrepant
evidence when analyzing interview responses, instead of trying to reject it, as is too often the
case. Maxwell (2013) warned against this and invited the researcher to stay aware of the
pressures to ignore data that do not fit his or her conclusions, and to rigorously examine both
supporting and discrepant data when developing an interpretation. This process created an audit
trail, defined by Merriam and Tisdell (2016) as a “detailed account of the methods, procedures,
and decision points in carrying out the study” (p. 259). This is one of the strategies proposed by
Merriam and Tisdell to promote trustworthiness.
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Finally, the validity and reliability of a study depend upon the ethics of the investigator
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Therefore, informed consent and strategies developed in the Ethics
section contributed to the overall trustworthiness of the study.
Validity and Reliability
In quantitative research, Robinson Kurpius and Stafford (2006) defined validity as “how
well a test measures what it is designed to measure” (p. 141). In the case of this study, how can
the researcher provide evidence that the constructs set out to measure are indeed the ones that are
being measured during this data collection? As for reliability, it includes the idea of stability,
defined as “the degree to which a test measures the same thing at different times of in different
situations” (Robinson Kurpius & Stafford, 2006, p. 121). As with credibility and trustworthiness
in qualitative research, a researcher must acknowledge threats to validity and reliability and
make every effort to alleviate these threats.
Sampling bias is an important threat to validity: respondents may underrepresent or over
represent the phenomena under study and the researcher may over rely on accessible informants.
This may indeed prevent to access the constructs central to the study. Some strategies to avoid
this sampling bias have already been presented in the sampling section of this chapter: inviting
all teacher leaders in the organization to participate and applying strategies to ensure a high
participation rate.
Non-response also presents an inherent bias. Being a teacher leader presents challenges
that individuals may face with varying success, efficacy, and agency. People who struggle with
their position may be less inclined to take part in a study on teacher leadership. Since
participation is voluntary, this bias is challenging to suppress. Potential excess in participants’
sense of efficacy and agency should be factored in at the analysis stage.
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The means of survey administration should also be set up and monitored to avoid threats
to validity such as low response rate. Ensuring a high response rate is paramount to high
validity, for a low response rate limits the possibility to generalize results of the target population
to a larger sample (Pazzaglia et al., 2016). Anonymity and confidentiality are an asset in that
regard, in that they remove any sense of threat related to participation. Web survey platforms
also offer tools to monitor the date and time of responses, helping assess when to send effective
reminders for participation, and to measure these reminders’ effectiveness. Another threat to
validity is multiple responses from a same person. Since the online survey is anonymous, there
was no way to technically fully prevent this threat. A confirmation screen at the end helped
avoid persons thinking their first attempt did not register, then mistakenly filling the survey
twice.
No study, quantitative or qualitative, is entirely exempt from threats to credibility and
trustworthiness, or credibility and reliability. Nonetheless, the above-mentioned strategies were
geared toward acknowledging and limiting these threats, allowing the reader to assess whether or
not she can generalize the study’s results to her own situation.
Ethics
Qualitative research raises some ethical questions which deserve to be explored in details
to ensure validity and reliability of the research. In qualitative research, human subjects must be
protected from the harm that their participation in the research may create for them. The issues
span privacy and confidentiality (Krueger & Casey, 2009), informed consent (Glesne, 2011; U.S.
Department of Heath & Human Services, 2016), researcher-participant relationships (Glesne,
2011; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and incentives and coercion (Rubin & Rubin, 2012).
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Teacher leaders who participated in this study did it on a totally voluntary basis. They all
gave their informed consent, having been made aware (1) that participation was voluntary (2) of
any aspects of the research that might impact their well-being, and (3) that they may freely
choose to stop participation at any point in the study (Glesne, 2011). While the data collected in
interviews was not anonymous, its confidentiality was safeguarded: data was stored on a local
hard drive not shared by the researcher and names were not used in the data publication. As
recommended by Merriam and Tisdell (2016), participants were allowed to access record of the
data they submitted and to amend transcripts of their interviews if they so wished.
As Deputy Head of School, the researcher holds a top leadership position within the
organization to which the participants belong. It was critical for the researcher to consider
existing relationships and power dynamics within the organization (Glesne, 2011; Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016). The researcher is not in a direct supervisory position relative to the participants,
who report directly to either the vice-principals or principals. These administrators in turn do not
report to the researcher, but to the Deputy Heads for their respective campuses. As such, there
are no direct or indirect reporting lines between researcher and participants. Participants were
aware of the position of the researcher within the organization, of his status as one of the top four
leaders in this very large school, and of the influence he has on the strategic decisions made
within the school. Thus, all documents shared with participants prior to survey or interviews
stated very clearly that surveys and interviews were conducted in the context of academic
research and that decision to participate or not would not be shared with their administration.
Privacy and confidentiality of shared information were guaranteed by the researcher. Finally, no
incentives were used to stimulate participation in the research, nor were teacher leaders in any
way coerced to respond to surveys or participate in interviews.
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At the time of the study, the researcher had worked for more than a year in the school
setting. While this provided him with precious knowledge of the context, it also meant that he
had already made observations outside of his research framework that may have impacted and
skewed his perception of data collected within the research framework. Prior observations used
in data analysis and interpretation were acknowledged as such in reflective memos and a
researcher journal and recognized as having been collected not as a qualitative researcher, but as
administrator at the school at a given moment in time.
All the above-mentioned precautions helped the researcher remain aware of the ethical
issues that pervade the research process (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) and to preserve the
trustworthiness of the study.
Limitations and Delimitations
The design of this study entailed some limitations to the collected data. The sample size
for the survey was limited to 60 individuals and nine individuals for the interviews. Answers
were dependent upon the honesty, biases, and selective memory of participants, who may at
times have responded according to what they believed to be socially desirable. Document
analysis was limited to a sample that could be biased because of selection or lack of availability.
While every effort was made to create clear and simple survey-items, responses were still
dependent upon the respondent’s understanding of the meaning of these items, and this
understanding may have varied from one respondent to another. This is true of interview
questions, but the interview process allowed at times to assess these differing understandings and
to reframe and clarify questions through instant feedback.
Survey items and interview questions were created based on the conceptual framework
and knowledge, motivation, and organization influences developed in Chapter 2. As such, data
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collected was limited to this framework and did not purport to encompass all aspects relevant to
the role played by teacher leaders in international schools. Some factors and influences that have
been left out from the framework may be absent from respondent’s answers, not because they do
not exist, but because they were not taken in to account in developing the instruments.
One of the primary limitations of this study lies in the specificity of its context, that is the
American School Above the Sea, with its specific mission and organization goals. The study’s
findings cannot be generalized to other schools or settings. However, other international schools
may benefit from the use of Clark and Estes (2008) framework in this study to evaluate the role
teacher leaders play in their context.

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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The quantitative and qualitative data analysis in this section serves the purpose of this
study: evaluate the way teacher leaders at the American School Above the Sea contribute to
developing leadership capacity within their teams, helping to prepare succession in their roles
when they leave the school. It seeks to answer the research questions:
1. What are international school teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation in relation
to helping teachers develop their professional growth plan?
2. How do teacher leaders’ knowledge and motivation interact with the school’s context
to shape their ability to help other teachers develop their professional growth plan?
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources? (This research question is answered in
Chapter 5)
During this study, two sorts of data were collected to help validate the assumed
influences developed in Chapter 2: quantitative through a survey and qualitative through
interviews and document analysis.
In line with Clark and Estes’s (2008) framework, the results and findings in this chapter
were organized according to the knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences developed
in Chapter 2. Tables 2, 3, and 4 in Chapter 2 allowed to observe the alignment between survey
items, interview questions and influences. Each influence was first observed through survey
responses, and then through an analysis of the qualitative answers to interview. The answers to
research questions 1 and 2 were found in the analysis of these influences.
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Definition of Validation
Each of the influences studied in this chapter had gaps that were either validated, partially
validated, or not at all validated based on the data analyzed. An influence was considered as
validated when survey responses and interviews concurred that the gap in the area was
significant and needed to be addressed. An influence was considered as partially validated when
part of the data showed a significant gap to be addressed, and another part showed no gap in the
influence. An influence was considered as not validated when the data consistently showed no
gap to address in the influence.
Participating Stakeholders
Quantitative data was collected through a survey administered to a group of 60 teacher
leaders at ASAS. Thirty-nine persons responded to the survey for a response rate of 65%. Out
of these 39 teacher leaders, 17 agreed to a follow-up interview that would last between 45
minutes and one hour. A sample of nine teacher leaders was retained for interviews, selected for
balanced representation between campuses (East and West campus), divisions (elementary,
middle, and high school) and roles (department head, K-12 coordinator, instructional coaches).
This allowed to gather qualitative data to explore further the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences.
For more than a third of respondents to the survey, their current school was their first
posting in an international school (Figure 2). This information is significant, for this means they
had not known any other international school context and did not have any frame of comparison
in their role as an international school teacher leader. In contrast, almost two thirds of
responding teacher leaders had already had at least one other experience in an international
school context.
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Figure 2. Responses to item: “Is this your first posting in an international school?”

The relative majority of respondents held a teacher leadership position in the high school,
followed by middle school, and then cross-divisional roles. A very small minority (5%) hailed
from elementary school (Figure 3). A document analysis of the stipend list and interviews of
administrators revealed that the smaller number of teacher leaders in elementary school reflected
a much more distributed leadership model in this division, where all classroom teachers were
required to be part of a leadership structure at a certain level (committee), and very few received
a stipend to endorse a formal leadership role. There was no noticeable respondent bias in survey
responses. In terms of divisional representation and teacher leadership roles, the profile of
respondents mimics the profile of the overall teacher leader population. It should also be noted
that all 39 teacher leaders answered all the survey items, so for all tables and graphs below,
n=39.

38%
62%
Yes
No
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Figure 3. Responses to item: “Which division are you working in?”

Just under half of respondents to the survey were department heads, and 28% subject area
leaders (which corresponded to the department heads responsibilities in middle school and
elementary school). Just under a quarter of respondents (23%) had K-12 coordinator
responsibilities, while 21% were either instructional or technology coaches. The total was above
100% because the same respondent could have had department and K-12 leadership roles at the
same time (Figure 4).

5%
32%
45%
18%
Elementary school
Middle school
High school
Across divisions
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Figure 4. Responses to item: “What teacher leadership position are you currently holding at the
school?”

Finally, a vast majority (90%) of respondents became teacher leaders while they were
already working at the school (Figure 5). This information is significant, for it shows that the
gap this evaluation study is trying to assess might be narrower than expected, in that the school
already relied heavily on inside expertise when recruiting for teacher leaders. Ten percent of
outside recruitment for teacher leaders remains a significant number though.

44%
28%
23%
13%
8%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Department
head
Subject area
leader
K-12
coordinator
Instructional
coach
Technology
coach
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Figure 5. Responses to item: “Where you directly recruited in your teacher leadership position?”

In general, tenure in the teacher leadership position was relatively short in the group of
respondents, with an average of 3.4 years, a median of 2 years, and a mode of 1 year (Table 5).
A few outliers with very long tenures in the role compensated for a high number of respondents
for whom it was the first year in the role. This limited the pool of candidates for interviews,
since a longevity of at least one year was a sampling criterion. This points to an issue of
continuity in teacher leadership roles and interview questions on the factors leading to leave
leadership roles was studied further in this section.

10%
90%
Directly recruited as
teacher leader
Became teacher leader
while already teaching at
the school
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Table 5
Longevity of Responding Teacher Leaders in Their Role
Measure Result
Mean 3.4
Median 2
Mode 1
Minimum 1
Maximum 11

The number of teachers in these teacher leaders’ teams varied greatly, from 2 to 120, as
shown in Table 6. Indeed, some department heads could lead a department of two, while a
technology coach may support up to two divisions (middle and high school on one campus).

Table 6
Number of Teachers with Whom the Responding Teacher Leaders Work
Measure Result
Mean 17
Median 9
Minimum 2
Maximum 120

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A total of nine (9) voluntary teacher leaders were interviewed for this research: three (3)
instructional coaches, two (2) K-12 coordinators, and three (3) department heads or subject area
leaders. The range of longevity in the role went from second year to 11 years. In order to ensure
confidentiality, the interviewees were referred to as R1 to R9 in the following sections.
Results and Findings for Knowledge Causes
Knowledge Influence 1: Teacher Leaders Need to Know How to Build Leadership Capacity
in Schools
Finding: With a few exceptions, teacher leaders at the school did not frame their work in
terms of capacity building and still exhibited gaps in their knowledge in this area.
To be well equipped to meet with teachers and collaborate with them on designing a
meaningful professional growth plan, teacher leaders need to know how to build capacity in the
school.
An understanding of inquiry is an important component of leadership capacity within a
school setting (DuFour et al., 2008; King & Newmann, 2001). According to the survey, 82% of
teacher leaders at ASAS agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that through their work in
their leadership role, they contributed to developing a culture of inquiry within the organization
(Figure 6). While this shows self-confidence in teacher leaders’ ability to build leadership
capacity within their teams, this self-assessment needs to be confronted to some other data to
assess the validity of this response.

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Figure 6. Responses to item: “Through my work in my leadership role, I contribute to
developing a culture of inquiry within the organization”

When asked to describe their teacher leadership roles, few interviewees included
leadership capacity building as part of their responsibilities. R3, an instructional coach, was the
only one to systematically frame his work in terms of capacity building:
My work with them, it’s not to help them, but to build capacity in them by working
together to improve student learning through various projects in action research […]. I
really try to build capacity in teachers by respecting them as people and rather using the
skills of coaching that I’ve been able to gain through professional development to build
capacity in them […]. I will use methods of questioning and metacognitive processes in
our conversation to build capacity in them to find out where they are psychologically,
whether they’re lacking in efficacy or craftsmanship, consciousness, flexibility, to help
them build capacity.
2.56%
15.38%
69.23%
12.82%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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R3 demonstrated strong capacity building skills by describing how he used metacognition
and reflection through action research as a way to develop teachers on his team. On the contrary,
when explicitly asked whether he intentionally built leadership skills in others, R4 replied: “Not
in an overt fashion, not really. No, that’s not something we are thinking about.”
When directly asked to describe their roles as teacher leaders, many respondents
mentioned liaison between administration and teachers, coordination, meeting facilitation, and
handling of logistics. This was especially true of department heads and K-12 coordinators. R1,
for example, first answered: “I am the liaison between administration and teachers.” R4
described his main responsibilities as follows:
I coordinate the logistic details throughout the year, our annual calendar of our testing, of
our assessment, of keeping deadlines, of upgrading and also informing the teachers how
to do this if they need the team, how to update the database systems and the back end
systems that we use after we assess.
Instructional coaches, who were in a full-time capacity in their leadership role, expressed a more
complex view of their roles that included capacity-building as a significant element. That was
the case of R3 quoted above, or of R8:
I would say the two main parts of my role would be, to support that curriculum
alignment, and that the curriculum is accessible for all of the teachers, and also to
enhance their teaching potential. To help them be better math teachers everyday.
Overall, the gap in teacher leaders’ knowledge in how to build leadership capacity within
the school was validated by the data.
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Knowledge Influence 2: Teacher Leaders Need to Know How to Set Goals (Goal-setting
Process) in Order to Help Teachers Set Goals for Themselves
Finding: Teacher leaders are not systematically trained on goal-setting processes. Even
when they are, there is little to no expectation from the administration that they be part of the
goal-setting process, which is still seen as a prerogative of divisional leadership.
To avoid the pitfalls of goal-setting (Latham & Locke, 2006), teacher leaders need to
know how to set goals. They will then be able to help other teachers set goals for themselves,
which will in turn contribute to increase motivation (Bandura, 2001).
On this topic, just over half of teacher leaders agreed or strongly agreed with the
statements that they received training to set individual or collective short-term goals (Figure 7
and Figure 8). The lack of consistent training on goals for all teacher leaders can be a barrier to
their efficacy in helping other teachers set their goals.

Figure 7. Responses to item: “I received training in how to set individual short-term goals”

10.26%
38.46%
43.59%
7.69%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 8. Responses to item: “I received training in how to set collective short-term goals for a
team”

Interviews showed that the level of expectation placed by leadership on teacher leaders in
this area is limited. If leadership does not expect teacher leaders to play a role in helping other
teachers set their professional growth goals, the motivation and impetus in teacher leaders to do
so is very limited.
Asked what role he is expected by his leadership to play in helping other teachers set
their professional growth goals, R1 answered: “I’ve asked that question, I’ve not had an answer
to that to be honest. So, I don’t think there’s a clear vision for that.” R6 did not see any
expectations on that front either: “On a personal level, I would say I don’t feel any pressure from
my administrator or my direct supervisors to do that. I would say, that impetus comes more from
within myself.” There was one exception within one division, with R8 answering: “I do think
that the principal really wanted us to be more part of it and he even asked us to go on the teams,
go in the classrooms and just make ourselves available [to help them set goals].”
10.26%
41.03%
43.59%
5.13%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Therefore, data points to a lack of expectation from leadership that teacher leaders
contribute to helping other teachers their professional growth goals. With one exception,
principals at ASAS saw teacher goal-setting as part of their own responsibility, something they
did not delegate and did not empower teacher leaders to do. This is a significant limitation to a
distributed leadership model in which, according to Barth (2001), the principal must relinquish
and empower teacher leaders.
As a result, the gap in teacher leaders’ knowledge of how to set goals in order to help
other teachers set goals for themselves was validated by the data.
Knowledge Influence 3: Teacher Leaders Need to Know How to Improve Teachers’
Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions through Professional Development and Professional
Learning Communities
Finding: Teacher leaders at SAS believe in the importance of building trust. They
sometimes struggle to find and apply the appropriate strategies to build that trust within the
teams. Trust is a key element of highly functioning professional learning communities. Teacher
leaders feel confident in their ability to lead professional development, however, facts do not
always support that self-confidence, as many teacher leaders do not lead such professional
development at the school.
Bryk and Schneider (2002) identified trust as a key source for school improvement and
called it a connective tissue. All teacher leaders interviewed emphasized the role of trust, some
of them even before being asked a specific question on the topic. When asked in the second
interview question to describe their relationships with their colleagues, R3, R6, and R8 all
mentioned trust spontaneously and explicitly, without being prompted. For R3, “that
relationship needs to be based on trust, on rapport.” R6 went further by awarding trust the role
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of number one tool for coaches, especially in a context where these coaches are not in the
classroom all the time and are perceived as fulfilling a middle management role:
Obviously, when we start talking about those relationships, and especially in a coaching
role, trust is very important. We know trust is probably the number one tool for coaches,
because we serve in this weird kind of what people would describe as a middle
management level, or mid administrator role, where we don’t have direct classes, and we
are in and out of classrooms all the time.
Finally, R8 explained: “I feel like it is more important that I spend time in the class with
them to build this relationship of trust.” Interestingly, these three respondents were all
instructional coaches, showing that people in this role were spontaneously more aware of the
importance of trust.
Once prompted, all teacher leaders emphasized and were able to elaborate on trust and
the role it played in their teams. R4 gave a response representative of other respondents’
viewpoints:
I think trust is essential. I need to hold up my end of the bargain. If I’m going to be a
group leader, I need to deliver on my promises and I also expect trust from the rest of the
group.
R8 went as far as repeating twice “trust is everything, trust is everything.”
Literature supports this claim. Scagliarini (2011) demonstrated the role educational
leaders played in building trust in a PLC in an East Asian school and how this contributed to
school improvement. Teacher leaders at ASAS seemed confident in their ability to build that
trust and foster a professional learning community within the school. Eighty-two percent agreed
or strongly agreed with the statement “I know how to foster a professional learning community”
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(Figure 9). In parallel, only 61% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that the school
currently functioned as a professional learning community (Figure 10), showing a gap between
the confidence expressed and the efficacy of teacher leaders’ work on the ground.

Figure 9. Responses to item: “The school functions as a professional learning community”

Figure 10. Responses to item: “I know how to foster a professional learning community”

strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
2.56%
15.38%
66.67%
15.38%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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This might reflect the strategies at teacher leaders’ disposal to establish the required trust
in a professional learning community. Through interviews, it became clear that coaches who had
followed either a cognitive coaching or adaptive schools training were able to articulate much
more clearly than other teacher leaders a range of trust-building strategies, such as: use of body
language, modeling, co-teaching, regular touch-base, use of meeting protocols. Other teacher
leaders seemed to rely heavily on interpersonal and social relationships, as exemplified by R1: “I
think the more you talk to someone, the more likely you are to share. So, I used just friendly
conversations as a starter to have trust.” R4 also mentioned that “trust can also be established by
having social relationships with people.” But R6, an instructional coach who exhibited a wider
range of strategies, deemed this approach as often superficial:
Building trust sometimes gets confused with superficial relationships, and this notion that
as a coach you’re going to get along with everyone that you work with. I think that’s
false. I also think there is some danger in that, because it’s unrealistic.
When asked whether they knew how to lead a professional development workshop, two
thirds of teacher leaders agreed or strongly agreed, while one third either disagreed or strongly
disagreed (Figure 11). A third of respondents had not led a single professional development
workshop at the school in the preceding two years. As a result, the mode to the corresponding
item in the survey was 0, with an average of 3 workshops and a median of 2, or just once a year
(Table 7). These results draw the picture of an environment in which a few outlying teacher
leaders led a large number of workshops (up to 10 a year), a majority led one or two, and many
did not lead any.

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Figure 11. Responses to item: “I know how to lead a professional development workshop”

Table 7
Number of Professional Development Workshops Led in the Preceding Two Years
Measure Result
Mean 3
Median 2
Mode 0
Minimum 0
Maximum 20

2.56%
30.77%
41.03%
25.64%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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In summary, the need for teacher leaders to know how to improve teachers’ knowledge,
skills, and dispositions through professional development and professional learning communities
was partially validated. Most teacher leaders understood the role of trust, and those of them who
had received training (essentially instructional coaches) had an adequate repertoire of strategies
to build that trust. Knowledge in how to build professional development and actual opportunities
to lead professional development should be increased to ensure that teacher leaders can meet
their goals.
Results and Findings for Motivation Causes
Motivation Influence 1: Teacher Leaders Should Feel Confident About Their Ability to
Build Professional Growth Plans with Teachers
Finding: Teacher leaders at ASAS have strong confidence in their ability to build
professional growth plans and support other teachers in their professional growth. This results
in high levels of self-efficacy, which have the potential to translate into effective support for
teachers.
Beverborg et al. (2015) observed that sustained self-reflection and sustained beliefs in
self-efficacy on teacher leaders’ part resulted in educational improvements. Teacher leaders at
ASAS overwhelmingly agreed or strongly agreed that they felt confident in their ability to help
other teachers grow professionally (Figure 12). This confidence was also evident in the
interviews. R6 claimed: “I feel very confident in helping teachers grow, who want to grow.”
Similarly, R1 expressed: “I think ability wise, I have, maybe it sounds arrogant, but I have a high
opinion of me being able to help other people in my department, should they wish to have help.”
In both cases then, there was a recognition that this is a two-way situation, and that there needed
to be a desire to grow on the teachers’ part in order for the teacher leader to support the growth.
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R2 went further and felt confident in his ability to support teachers who showed some resistance:
“I feel pretty confident in my listening skills and I feel pretty confident in my ability to have
those difficult conversations with people or to give them a nudge.” Respondents agreed that
being confident and being able to help required extensive preparation. R4 explained: “In terms
of helping people, once I’ve done my research, once I’ve done my work, I feel like I can help.”
Having the opportunity to practice outside of the current school setting also allowed to build that
confidence further. R9 had many opportunities to deliver professional development workshop in
other schools in the region, which had a positive effect on her ability to work with her team
within the school:
I feel very confident in that area. Yes. I do that with other schools. I will go and do two
days at this school and help them do an audit of their current program and then I do a
follow-up visit and help them set it up and work with them on that. I’ve done so many
workshops and presentations, that’s an area I feel very confident in.

Figure 12. Responses to item: “I feel confident in my ability to help other teachers grow
professionally”

0.00%
7.69%
51.28%
41.03%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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As mentioned in Chapter 2, teacher leaders’ approach to the motivational construct of
self-efficacy also entails a self-reflective and metacognitive aspect: teacher leaders need to
understand how to build self-efficacy for themselves and for their teachers. This was measured
by asking teacher leaders whether they set goals for themselves and whether they self-reflect on
their leadership growth (Figure 13 and Figure 14). Here again, responses were overwhelmingly
positive, with 84% and 92% respectively either agreeing or strongly agreeing with these
statements.
As a result, the data pointed to no significant gap in the area of self-efficacy. This
motivation influence on the need for teacher leaders to feel confident about their ability to build
professional growth plans with teachers was not validated in the context of ASAS.

Figure 13. Responses to item: “I set formal goals for myself in my work as a teacher leader”

0.00%
15.38%
51.28%
33.33%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 14. Responses to item: “Reflection on my growth in my leadership role is inherently part
of my thinking process”

Motivation Influence 2: Teacher Leaders Need to Feel Positive Achievement and Social
Emotions in Their Role
Finding: Many teacher leaders experienced a change in their relationships with other
colleagues when taking on a leadership role. This can be the source of tensions and affect
teacher leaders’ self-efficacy in their position, to the point of threatening their motivation to
remain in the role. Validation in the eyes of their colleagues, such as being perceived positively
at the time of the announcement of access to the leadership role, is an important factor in
building positive emotions in teacher leaders. Overall, teacher leaders feel understood in their
role, and this leads to positive achievement and a feeling of efficacy, with positive impact on
student learning outcomes.
0%
8%
36%
56%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Feeney (2009) showed that the shift in role status between teacher and leader, something
Siskin (1995) coined as the teacher leader’s hermaphroditic role, is a major cause for teacher
leaders’ inefficiency. The interview data allowed to explore the important of this construct in the
context of ASAS.
Half the teacher leaders (49%) acknowledged their relationships with other teachers had
changed since they started in their leadership role (Figure 15). For these teacher leaders,
negotiating these changes had often been one of the most challenging aspects of their role, as
revealed in the interviews. R8 reflected on this new reality for her. The change in attitude
among other teachers hit her especially hard when she took on her new responsibilities:
I have found this year that my relationship changed with teachers because I have now this
full-time leadership position. Sometimes it is difficult for teachers to see the difference
between a colleague that is willing to collaborate with them, and work with them to
develop their own teacher capacity, versus administration and somebody who is
evaluating.
Mentioning the grade-level team she was part of before being a teacher leader, she stated:
“I thought that I was doing great and all of a sudden when I got this position full time, I was not
part of them at all.” These negative emotions affect teacher leaders’ sense of self-efficacy, and
may lead them to doubt the validity and merits of them being in the position (Feeney, 2009;
Siskin, 1995). As explained by R8:
It made me feel horrible! To be honest, at the beginning of the year, after a month or a
month and a half, I was really struggling and really questioning if this is my role, if this is
where I’m at my best.

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Figure 15. Responses to item: “Since I started in my leadership role, my relationships with other
teachers have changed”

These reflections exemplify the impact that a change in perception and attitude in other
teachers has on teacher leaders when they take on this new hermaphroditic role (Siskin, 1995).
In response to the survey, teacher leaders nonetheless overwhelmingly expressed they felt
understood by their colleagues in their role as a teacher leader (Figure 16). Only 15% disagreed
with this statement. Interviews allowed to provide a more nuanced view though, showing that
the level of understanding varied depending on teams or individuals, on time spent on the job, as
well as the clarity of the role itself. R6, who had been the longest in a teacher leader role in the
sample, expressed this advantage clearly:
In terms of how others view my role, I have the luxury of quite a long organizational
history here and so I think that helps them see, especially for teachers who have been
here for a while, they know exactly what my role is […]. They understand I’m here to
support them”
0%
51%
41%
8%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 16. Responses to item: “I feel understood by my colleagues in my role as a teacher
leader”

In contrast, R8, who was in a similar coaching role, felt a different understanding depending on
the teams she worked with. Asked about her colleagues’ understanding of her role, she
answered:
I don’t know, it varies. Some teams look at me as a presenter. Some teams come to a
meeting and they get quiet and they look at me and they’re like, “Okay, what do you
want me to do?” or “What are you going to say to me?” or “What do you have?”
But R8 also admitted that time helped her spread and shape this understanding: “I think
that after three and a half months of working together collaboratively, and little by little using
protocols and strategies, I think they’re getting to understand a little bit more.” She was
conscious that building that understanding was part of her role and responsibilities, and that it
required work. When done well, it proved fruitful: “I do think that people see me as a leader and
0%
15%
72%
13%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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they trust that I have the knowledge to take that teaching to another level. It is not all of them
absolutely and that’s what I’m working on.”
R9 felt her colleagues’ understanding of her role was very limited, especially since the
role evolved the year of the interview by being split between some coordination and some
coaching. As a strategy, she published her job description on an online sharing platform and
explained that this was a helpful step to increase understanding. Similarly, R3 said that “the ones
who know more about what I do, know that I’m here to work in partnership with them to
improve student learning.” Therefore, knowledge of the role and clarity about what it entailed
helped build understanding of the teacher leader among other teachers. Through the tone and
language used in that part of the interview, it became clear that being understood played an
important part in building positive emotions in teacher leaders, and supported their motivation to
achieve in their role (Schmidt, 2000).
Overall, teacher leaders at the school felt efficacious, which also led to positive emotions.
Close to 80% of respondents to the survey felt empowered to make a difference within the school
and the same number felt their work contributed to improved student learning outcomes (Figures
17 and 18). Lord and Kanter (2002) showed that emotions influence organizational behavior,
personal commitment to organizational goals, and impact the accomplishment of complex and
longer-term goals. Therefore, the feelings expressed through the survey carried the potential of
positive individual and organizational outcomes.

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Figure 17. Responses to item: “Since I started in my leadership role, I feel empowered to make a
difference within the school”

Figure 18. Responses to item: “I feel my work as a teacher leader contributes to improved
student learning outcomes”

2.56%
17.95%
69.23%
10.26%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
0.00%
10.26%
51.28%
38.46%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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As demonstrated through this analysis, in many areas teacher leaders already felt positive
achievement and social emotions in their role, but threats to these feelings were real and facing
these threats required a great deal of effort and resilience. Therefore, the need for teacher leaders
to feel positive achievement and social emotions in their role was partially validated by the data.
Results and Findings for Organizational Causes
Cultural Model Influence 1: Teacher Leaders Need to Be Held Accountable for Working
Closely with Teachers Within the School
Finding: The level of accountability for teacher leaders to work closely with teachers
within the school is too low to ensure guaranteed and sustained efficacy.
Accountability is key to success in an educational setting (Burke, 2005). When exploring
bureaucratic and professional accountability (Romzek & Dubnik, 1987), the data pointed to a
gap at ASAS in the level of accountability for teacher leaders. More than half of teacher leaders
who responded to the survey disagreed or strongly disagreed with the fact that their supervisor
met with them on a regular basis to review their work as teacher leaders (Figure 19). Similarly,
more than 40% did not feel that they were being held accountable for working closely with other
teachers (Figure 20). As a result, more than a third did not feel that it was their responsibility to
help other teacher develop their professional growth plan, which points to a significant gap
toward achieving organizational goals (Figure 21).

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Figure 19. Responses to item: “My supervisor(s) meet(s) with me regularly to review my work
as a teacher leader”

Figure 20. Responses to item: “I am held accountable by my supervisor for working closely with
other teachers”

15.38%
38.46% 38.46%
7.69%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
10.26%
30.77%
48.72%
10.26%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 21. Responses to item: “Helping other teachers develop their professional growth plan is
part of my responsibility as a teacher leader”

In an interview, R2 recognized that lack of accountability:
No, I don’t think there is an expectation from the administration that I play a role in the
professional growth within my team and I don’t think there ever has been. At least it’s
not been explicitly stated. I think if I would have asked, my administration would say,
“Well, of course.” But I don’t think it’s anywhere in the description where I’ve been
asked or I’ve been given tools to do it or protocols to do it as well.
And later on, asked about distributed leadership, R2 added:
I think the piece that’s missing is the accountability to one another. I think we work in
isolated pockets and that’s an important component to making distributed leadership
work, is not losing the connectiveness of it and the unifying pieces of it.
0.00%
35.90% 35.90%
28.21%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Therefore, the interviews clarified the relative lack of accountability within the organization for
teacher leaders to either work with their peers or organize and lead professional development for
their peers.
Milanowski et al. (2005) suggested the need to hold teachers accountable for behaviors
and teaching strategies that are research-based and have a causal link with student achievement.
And in their definition of teacher leadership, Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) added an original
element of accountability, claiming that teacher leaders agree they should answer of the results
of their leadership. Here the apparent lack of bureaucratic accountability is a factor that may
limit the impact of teacher leaders on their teams. It does not mean this impact is non-existent:
interviews revealed that many teacher leaders felt a great sense of professional accountability
toward their colleagues and also that the level of expectation from these colleagues was quite
high. But the lack of systematic expectations on the part of the administration and of related
accountability made this influence especially significant.
Therefore, the data helped validate the cultural model influence according to which
teacher leaders need to be held accountable for working closely with teachers within the school.
Cultural Model Influence 2: Teacher Leaders Need to be Encouraged, Valued, and
Empowered by Their Principals, Who Involve Them in Collaborative Decision-Making
Processes. This Includes Providing Time, Clear Expectations and Description of
Responsibilities, and a Favorable Climate
Finding: The level of encouragement, valuation, and empowerment by teacher leaders’
supervisors varies within the school. Clarity of expectations and of responsibilities is sometimes
too limited to allow teacher leaders to feel fully empowered in their roles. The level of support
in terms of professional development to acquire knowledge and skills related to the role is
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uneven. The data did not allow to assess whether teacher leaders were involved enough in the
collaborative decision-making processes.
Waters et al. (2003) showed that without support from their supervisor, teacher leaders
were seldom effective in their role. In addition, Davidhizar Birky et al. (2006) expressed the
value of a collaborative leadership model and empowerment by the principal for teacher leaders’
effectiveness.
When asked to describe their relationship with their supervisor, teacher leaders painted
very different pictures depending on their position and division within the school. This points to
the fact that the approach to distributed leadership resulted more from specific leaders’
individual styles rather than from an institutional model or commitment. On one hand R2 could
share a story of empowerment in his relationship with his supervisor:
My relationship with my supervisors is really empowering, they do allow me and our
department to have a lot of power and decision over what we feel is best for us at that
time with the caveat that, it needs to be good for our school too and good for students.
So, they always bring me back to that.
On another hand, R8 described her relationship as one where the supervisor did not fulfill an
important role of support or mentoring for her:
My supervisor is a little bit absent to be honest with you. She doesn’t have the leadership
skills that — like when I’m in trouble, when I am struggling with a team or when I need
guidance, I don’t go to her because I don’t think . . . I think she’s very knowledgeable in
what is developmentally appropriate, but she doesn’t have the skills to deal with conflicts
in teams, with some teachers that are struggling to work together, the math is not there
either. So, I tend to go to other people. My relationship with her is good, but I don’t
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have an involvement with her as I would like. I would like to have a strong leader with
me that I could go to all the time and be like, “Hey, I had this team and this is how they
reacted. What do you think?” And that they could give me like an idea or a protocol that
I could use in a situation like that.
This tendency to go to other people when the supervisor was lacking was also shared by
R1, who tended to ask support from the IB coordinator rather than from his direct supervisor.
Feeling valued and empowered also means having one’s expertise recognized within the
school. Here the range of feelings among interviewed teacher leaders was wide, from downright
cynicism to satisfaction. Asked in what ways his expertise was recognized within the school, R1
answered:
I don’t know. You mean if I get a special recognition because I am department chair? I
think I get 2,200 dollars at the end of the year for it, so there is a monetary recognition for
it apparently. Other than that, no.
On the contrary, several teacher leaders felt their expertise was recognized, but usually more in
discrete or understated fashion than overtly. For example, R8 replied: “I think it’s recognized,
not necessarily that somebody comes and congratulates me or anything like that.” And R4:
“There’s implicit recognition or non-expressed, non-overt recognition and then there is explicit.”
Teacher leaders did not share occurrences where the administration overtly expressed
recognition for their expertise.
Clarity of role and of job description is also key to empower teacher leaders. On this
topic, almost half of all teacher leaders surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed with the
statement that they had a clear job description for their role as a teacher leader (Figure 22). This
was reinforced in the interviews. R1 almost jokingly said: “On paper, I think there is a job
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description.” In the same spirit, R2 smiled and commented: “That’s a great question because I
don’t think I actually read my job description.” Similarly, R4 answered: “I should have checked,
shouldn’t I? I believe there is a job description, but if you ask me what it said I would have no
idea.” As for R3:
Interviewer: Do you have a job description?
R3: I do.
Interviewer: Does it provide the clarity you need to fulfill your role?
R3: It absolutely does not.

Figure 22. Responses to item: “I have a clear job description for my role as a teacher leader”

5.13%
41.03%
35.90%
17.95%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Document analysis of several teacher leadership job descriptions pushed to nuance this
diagnosis. While some descriptions were outdated and no longer reflected the current situation
at the school, many had been updated in the previous months by conscientious administrators,
often following an inclusive process in which faculty and teacher leaders were involved.
Finally, in terms of acquisition of knowledge and skills through professional
development, which are also key elements to empower an individual to fulfill his or her role, the
results were mixed. Forty-three percent of survey respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed
with the statement that their professional development allowed them to acquire the knowledge
they need, and this number climbed to 55% in reference to the skills (Figure 23 and Figure 24).
Also, induction in the teacher leadership role seemed lacking, with more than half of teacher
leaders disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement that induction in their role was
effective and no teacher leader expressing strong agreement (Figure 25). Here again, a document
analysis of professional development funding spreadsheets showed that a significant effort was
made by principals and by the school to finance professional development opportunities for
teacher leaders, either in school or by sending them to available workshops in the region.
According to the analysis, the effort seemed consistent across the school and divisions, pointing
to a hiatus between perception and reality.

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Figure 23. Responses to item: “The professional development workshops I attended since I
started in my leadership position at the school helped me acquire important knowledge in
relation to my leadership role”

Figure 24. Responses to item: “The professional development workshops I attended since I
started in my leadership position at the school helped me acquire important skills in relation to
my leadership role”

8.11%
35.14%
40.54%
16.22%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
13.51%
40.54%
29.73%
16.22%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 25. Responses to item: “Initial induction in my leadership role was effective”

Consequently, on all the criteria retained to assess gaps in this cultural model influence
relative to value, encouragement, and empowerment of teacher leaders by their leadership, data
validated the influence.
Cultural Setting Influence 1: The School Needs to Recognize that Current Incentives in
Place for Teacher Leadership Create a Disincentive for Teachers to Undertake a
Leadership Role
Finding: Incentives for teachers to take on a leadership role are limited. Financial
rewards are inadequate and not commensurate to the work provided. Non-financial incentives
are valued by teacher leaders, but insufficient. Teacher leaders are mostly clamoring for
additional time to do their work and except for instructional coaches who are full-time in their
role, the school does not provide release to fulfill teacher leadership roles.
13.16%
44.74%
42.11%
0.00%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Teachers tend to value professional efficacy over financial rewards as the primary
motivator in their work (Johnson, 1986). If given only financial rewards, rather than tools
allowing them to succeed and feel efficacy in their work (such as time, resources, professional
development), teacher leaders may feel a disincentive to undertake a leadership role.
Almost every teacher leader (95%) expressed that their motivation was essentially
intrinsic (Figure 26). This was consistent with the fact that 60% of teacher leaders said that
monetary compensation was not important in their leadership role, and that half of teacher
leaders thought that they were not adequately compensated (Figures 27 and 28). As a result,
more than 80% of teacher leaders claimed that non-monetary forms of compensation were
important to them (Figure 29).

Figure 26. Responses to item: “My motivation to fulfill my leadership role is essentially
intrinsic”

0.00%
5.13%
38.46%
56.41%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 27. Responses to item: “I am adequately compensated for my leadership role”

Figure 28. Responses to item: “Monetary compensation is important to me in my leadership
role”

20.51%
25.64%
38.46%
15.38%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
12.82%
46.15%
33.33%
7.69%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Figure 29. Responses to item: “Other forms of compensation (non-monetary) are important to
me in my leadership role”

Interviews reinforced these findings. When asked whether compensation played a role in
their decision to take a leadership role, all but one of the respondents answered “no,” “zero,” or
“none whatsoever.” R7 actually went further to explain how the inadequate compensation
became a disincentive for the position:
On the other hand, you want to make sure that you’re respecting the whole department
and the role that is given. When I first looked at the compensation, it’s about six hours a
week which ends up being like $7 an hour or something. That felt like a slap in the face,
not to me, but to the department. That was one of the reasons I’d initially turned it down.
Only R8 expressed an opposite view:
I like the fact that we are paid really well here, I have to say, yes absolutely. When I’m
working really hard in the weekend I’m like, “Oh, my gosh,” but then I think, “Okay,
2.56%
15.38%
51.28%
30.77%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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well I’m making a lot of money so that’s good.” Honestly, if I was not making this much
money and if I didn’t have a nice house and my housekeeper to help me at home and
being able to buy the nice food and everything, I don’t think I would work as hard. I am
motivated. Compensation is important to work this hard.
This dissenting voice was nonetheless an exception, as all other interviewees shared the
feeling that monetary compensation played no role in their choice. As non-monetary forms of
recognition, R5 mentioned some administrators tweeting pictures of her leading a workshop as
important to her, as well as the occasional catered lunch or massage coupon. These gestures
played an important role in keeping her motivated. But the form of compensation teacher leaders
were clamoring for was time release. All teacher leaders interviewed expressed the lack of time
to fulfill their duties. Here were a few examples of comments on the issue of time and lack
thereof: R1: “There is not enough time allocated for it.” R3: “There wasn’t enough time in a 24-
hour period to do my job with all my teachers to the level that I like to do my job.” R4: “Lack of
time in terms of contact time with the team has impeded our ability to move our current
innovations or progress forward.” R7: “There is not much we can get accomplished in ten hours.
That’s another reason why I think to do something meaningful you’re given the time.” R8:
“Well, I don’t know if it’s an ASAS thing, but there is not enough time to do this job, if I wanted
to like leave at four o’clock or whatever.”
It should be noted that despite the comments on compensation, almost 85% of teacher
leaders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that their leadership role brings them
satisfaction (Figure 30).

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Figure 30. Responses to item: “My leadership role within the school brings me satisfaction”

Overall, the cultural setting influence of the need for the school to recognize that current
incentives in place for teacher leadership create a disincentive for teachers to undertake a
leadership role was validated by the data.
Cultural Setting Influence 2: The School Needs to Recognize Contextual Variables that
Result in High Employee Turnover
Finding: Contextual variables that result in high employee turnover in an international
school are known and openly discussed within the school and have the potential to significantly
impact retention. Teacher leaders themselves are very sensitive to internal factors such as
quality of leadership and the level of administrative support in their own decisions.
Several studies emphasized the role teachers’ perception of the school administration and
leadership plays in teacher retention decisions (Boyd et al., 2011; Mancuso et al., 2010; Odland
& Ruzicka, 2009). The data collected supports similar findings in regard to teacher leaders at
2.63%
13.16%
65.79%
18.42%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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ASAS. When asked what reasons could lead to leaving the current teacher leadership role,
teacher leaders put state of administrative support and school leadership first, with more than
90% of teacher leaders stating that these were important or extremely important (Table 8).
Nonetheless, contextual variables such as the host country context, in which restrictions on
individual freedoms, internet access, and high level of atmospheric pollution existed, also played
a significant role, with more than 80% of teacher leaders citing them as important or extremely
important. Financial reasons remained significant with 64% of teachers considering them as
important or extremely important, while length of stay and desire to repatriate were the relatively
least important variables.

Table 8
Responses to the Item: “Please Rate the Importance of the Following When You Think of the
Reasons Why You Would Leave the School One Day”
Item
Not important
at all (%)
Unimportant
(%)
Important
(%)
Extremely
important (%)
Leadership of the school 0 5 44 51
State of administrative support 0 8 46 46
Host-country context 3 15 59 23
Financial reasons 5 31 41 23
Length of stay 8 46 38 8
Desire to repatriate 26 29 15 0

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In interviews, teacher leaders cited support, having their voice heard, being involved in
decision-making, and having respect and understanding from supervisors as main factors that
would influence a decision to leave their leadership role. R2’s response was representative in
that respect: “Something that might cause me to leave is if that empowerment that I’m feeling
with my current administration were to go away and the role would just turn back into a
communication liaison, I wouldn’t want the role anymore.” Or R8: “Well, if I didn’t feel
support. If I didn’t feel that my contribution to school were recognized.” This last aspect could
be of concern at ASAS, for 41% of teacher leaders disagreed or strongly disagreed with the
statement “I receive the appropriate level of administrative support to fulfill my leadership role”
(Figure 31).

Figure 31. Responses to item: “I receive the appropriate level of administrative support to fulfill
my leadership role”

5.13%
35.90%
51.28%
7.69%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Despite the above-mentioned host country constraints, teacher leaders made a conscious
effort in intercultural understanding to integrate and adapt, elements which typically contribute
to retention. Ninety-seven percent of teacher leaders felt comfortable working with people from
different cultures and backgrounds (Figure 32) and 89% made efforts to understand the host
country’s language and culture (Figure 33).
While contextual factors seemed to have the potential to play a role in attrition, document
analysis of faculty council minutes showed that there was a willingness within the school to
discuss them openly and to work collaboratively toward mitigating their effects. Fluctuations of
the local currency for example, or newly imposed government restrictions on eligibility to work
in the country, were frequent topics for discussion that led to debate and strategies to find
solutions that served both the school’s and the employees’ needs.
Overall, this cultural setting influence was partially validated by the data. While
contextual factors should be acknowledged by the school, there was evidence that the school did
so and worked to mitigate them. Evident was also the fact that internal factors such as
administrative support and quality of leadership were more significant factors in retention
decisions than contextual factors.

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Figure 32. Responses to item: “I feel comfortable working with people from different cultures
and backgrounds”

Figure 33. Responses to item: “I make efforts to understand the host country’s language and
culture”

0.00%
2.56%
28.21%
69.23%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
2.56%
7.69%
56.41%
33.33%
strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree
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Summary
Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data allowed to validate, partially validate, or not
validate the influences established in Chapter 2. Table 9 summarizes the validation state of each
influence according to the KMO model.
While data collection and analysis allowed to identify areas of strength that support the
fulfillment of organizational goals by teacher leaders, it also pointed to significant gaps between
the current state and desired state within the organization to ensure more systematic success in
teacher leaders’ ability to help other teachers grow professionally and build leadership capacity
within their teams. The knowledge and organizational dimensions require more attention than
the motivation dimension. Overall, teacher leaders exhibited proper levels of motivation, self-
efficacy, and positive emotions in their role. The gaps lied more in their knowledge and skills in
relation to capacity building, goal setting, and professional development, and in the school’s
cultural models and settings, especially around accountability, collaborative leadership,
incentives, and internal variables that affect employee turnover.

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Table 9
Summary of Validated, Partially Validated, and Not Validated Influences
Assumed Influence Validated
Partially
Validated
Not
Validated
Teacher leaders need to know how to build leadership
capacity in schools. (Knowledge 1)
X
Teacher leaders need to know how to set goals (goal-
setting process) in order to help teachers set goals for
themselves. (Knowledge 2)
X
Teacher leaders need to know how to improve teachers’
knowledge, skills, and dispositions through professional
development and professional learning communities.
(Knowledge 3)
X
Teacher leaders should feel confident about their ability
to build professional growth plans with teachers.
(Motivation 1)
X
Teacher leaders need to feel positive achievement and
social emotions in their role. (Motivation 2)
X
Teacher leaders need to be held accountable for working
closely with teachers within the school. (Cultural model
1)
X
Teacher leaders need to be encouraged, valued, and
empowered by their principals, who involve them in
collaborative decision-making processes. (Cultural
model 2)
X
The school needs to recognize that current incentives in
place for teacher leadership create a disincentive for
teachers to undertake a leadership role. (Cultural setting
1)
X
The school needs to recognize contextual variables that
result in high employee turnover. (Cultural setting 2)
X

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CHAPTER 5
SOLUTIONS, IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
The previous chapter provided an analysis of the data collected in response to the first
two research questions of the study, which evaluated the extent to which teacher leaders at ASAS
were achieving their goal of building leadership capacity within their teams by helping other
teachers set their professional growth goals. It assessed the knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences that contribute to the goal according to the Clark and Estes (2008)
framework, and allowed to validate, partially validate, or not validate these influences. This
chapter answers the third research question:
3. What are the recommendations for organizational practice in the areas of knowledge,
motivation, and organizational resources?
Once more, the Clark and Estes (2008) conceptual framework was used to structure the
organization of the chapter according to the knowledge, motivation, and organizational
dimensions. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick’s (2016) New World Kirkpatrick Model then served as
the basis for recommendations and an integrated implementation and evaluation plan. Finally,
this chapter and dissertation close with a discussion of the study’s limitations, delimitations, and
possible areas for future research.
Purpose of the Project
As a reminder, the purpose of this project was to evaluate the degree to which ASAS is
achieving its goal of building capacity within its teaching staff to reach 100% of internal
nominations to teacher leadership roles. The analysis focused on knowledge, motivation, and
organizational influences related to achieving this organizational goal. The stakeholders focused
on in this analysis were teacher leaders at ASAS.
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Recommendations for Practice to Address KMO Influences
Knowledge Recommendations
Introduction. Data analysis allowed to validate all three assumed influences for this
section. These influences were in the realm of leadership capacity building, goal-setting, and
knowledge of principles of professional learning communities. They are discussed here in the
framework of Bloom’s revised taxonomy of educational objectives (Anderson & Krathwohl,
2001; Krathwohl, 2002; Rueda, 2011), with a slight adaptation: factual and procedural
knowledge dimensions were united in one declarative knowledge dimension. Table 10 presents
the knowledge influences as well as literature-based principles that guide a list of context-
specific recommendations, which are developed in the sections that follow.

Table 10
Summary of Knowledge Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Motivation
Influence*
Validated:
Yes,
Partially, No
(V, P, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Teacher leaders
need to know how to
build leadership
capacity in schools
(D)
V Modeling to-be-learned strategies or
behaviors improves self-efficacy,
learning, and performance (Denler,
Wolters, & Benzon, 2009).
Effective observational learning is
achieved by first organizing and
rehearsing modeled behaviors, then
enacting them overtly (Mayer, 2011).
Behavior that is reinforced is
strengthened (Daly, Martens,
Skinner, & Noell, 2009).
Provide training in
the form of on-the-
job mentoring, with
observations of an
effective leader in
action.
Organize follow-up
practice with
leader’s feedback on
behavior.

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Table 10, continued
Assumed Motivation
Influence*
Validated:
Yes,
Partially, No
(V, P, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Teacher leaders
need to know how to
set goals (goal-
setting process) in
order to help
teachers set goals for
themselves (P)
V Learning is highly dependent on
“goal-directed practice” and “targeted
feedback” (Ambrose, Bridges,
DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010).
Use training when employees need
demonstration, guided practice, and
feedback to perfect a new procedure
(Clark & Estes, 2008).
Information learned meaningfully and
connected with prior knowledge is
stored more quickly and remembered
more accurately because it is
elaborated with prior learning
(Schraw & McCrudden, 2009).
Provide training that
utilizes case studies
to practice the goal-
setting process
required.
Provide job-aids in
the form of
templates and
exemplars for goal-
setting.
Teacher leaders
need to know how to
improve teachers’
knowledge, skills,
and dispositions
through professional
development and
professional learning
communities (D, M)
V Information learned meaningfully and
connected with prior knowledge is
stored more quickly and remembered
more accurately because it is
elaborated with prior learning
(Schraw & McCrudden, 2009).
Provide education for novel and
unanticipated problems (Clark &
Estes, 2008).
Provide education in
the form of
participation to a
Solution Tree 3-day
PLC Institute.
* Knowledge type for each influence listed uses these abbreviations: (D)eclarative; (P)rocedural;
(M)etacognitive

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Declarative knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. Teacher leaders
need to know how to build leadership capacity in schools (D). Declarative knowledge unites
factual and procedural knowledge. According to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy, factual
knowledge refers to the basic elements one must know to be acquainted with a discipline and
solve problems in it (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Conceptual knowledge refers to the
interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function
together (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). This would suggest that teacher leaders need to know
the basic elements of leadership capacity building and how to relate these basic elements within
the larger structure of the school. According to Denler et al. (2009), modeling to-be-learned
strategies or behaviors improves self-efficacy, learning, and performance. Therefore, the
recommendation is for teacher leaders to receive on-the-job training from a school leader
(principal, vice-principal, deputy head of school) on behaviors and strategies to build capacity
within a team, followed by guided practice and feedback on behavior. This school leader would
effectively serve as a coach for the teacher leader in this phase of his or her growth.
In their description of a leadership development program at the University of Maine,
MacKenzie and Marnik (2008) emphasized the importance of the leaders’ coaching role in
building leadership capacity within their teams. The coach is here to support the individual in
developing his or her expertise in planning, reflecting, problem solving, and decision making.
MacKenzie and Marnik (2008) found that coaching led to an Action-Reflection-Confidence
dynamic that was conducive to leadership capacity development within the individual and the
team. Hence the recommendation of having a school leader serve as a training coach for teacher
leaders: teacher leaders in this case study may also benefit from such a coaching relationship to
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build their knowledge in leadership capacity building, as well as their confidence in engaging in
the leadership behaviors necessary to build capacity within their own teams.
Procedural knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. Teacher leaders
need to know how to set goals (goal-setting process) in order to help teachers set goals for
themselves (P). Procedural knowledge refers to knowledge of specific skills, techniques,
methods, and criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures (Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001). Teacher leaders need to acquire the skills, techniques, and methods to help
other teachers set goals for themselves. Clark and Estes (2008) suggest training when the
employee has no experience but needs to use a routine procedure and when employees need
demonstration, guided practice, and feedback to perfect a new procedure. Therefore,
recommendation is to provide training that utilizes case studies to practice the goal-setting
process.
Worden (2014) studied the effects of training focused on improving SMART goal setting
for specific employee groups in an educational context in the Northern United States. According
to her results, enhanced training is needed to increase employee proficiency in goal setting. Such
an enhanced training has the potential to improve overall organizational effectiveness. Hence the
recommendation of having teacher leaders receive training on the goal-setting process with
targeted feedback (Ambrose et al., 2010). It also bears the potential of allowing the American
School Above the Sea to reach its organizational goal of developing capacity within its teams.
Metacognitive knowledge solutions, or description of needs or assets. Teacher
leaders need to know how to improve teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions through
professional development and professional learning communities (D, M). Metacognitive
knowledge is one’s awareness of one’s own cognition and cognitive processes (Rueda, 2011). It
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encompasses “knowledge about, reflection on, and regulation of one’s cognitive activities”
(Butler, 2015, p. 294). It allows the individual to adapt his or her ways to think and operate
according to this awareness (Krathwohl, 2002). Understanding the complexities and intricacies
related to running a professional learning community requires a high metacognitive ability from
teacher leaders. Clark and Estes (2008) suggested using education to prepare employees to face
novel and unanticipated problems. Therefore, recommendation is to provide education to teacher
leaders through their participation in an extended three-day Solution Tree Professional Learning
Community institute. These institutes are run by the most well-regarded consultants and
educators in the field and insist on participants’ metacognitive ability to reflect on their practice
as leaders in a school context.
Wilson and Bai (2010) studied a group of 105 students in education to explore the
importance of their metacognitive knowledge in their ability to teach metacognition to others.
They found that teachers who have rich understanding of metacognition report that a complex
understanding of the concept of metacognition and metacognitive thinking strategies allow for
teaching students to be metacognitive. Therefore, by allowing teacher leaders to receive
education through an extended workshop that insists on the use of metacognition and
metacognitive strategies, the school will hone teacher leaders’ ability to improve teachers’
knowledge, skills, and dispositions through professional development and professional learning
communities.
Finally, an overarching recommendation related to teacher leaders’ knowledge and skills
is for school leaders to take these into account when making recruitment decisions on new
teachers. If the organization’s goal is to recruit its teacher leaders from an internal pool of highly
qualified candidates, then consideration should be made of newly recruited teachers’ previous
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knowledge in the areas of capacity building, goal-setting, and professional development.
Recruiting already qualified teachers with knowledge and skills and potentially experience in this
area would ensure a stronger pool of internal candidates when a teacher leadership position is
vacated.
Motivation Recommendations
Introduction. Data analysis allowed to invalidate the first assumed influence for this
section, and to partially validate the second one. These influences are in the realm of self-
efficacy and emotions. Influences will be discussed with the help of motivation literature such as
Clark and Estes (2008) and Rueda (2011). More specifically, Bandura (1997, 2013) for self-
efficacy and Schutz and Pekrun (2007) for emotions will also support the reflections on
motivation influences. Table 11 presents these influences as well as literature-based principles
that guide a list of context-specific recommendations, which will be developed in the sections
that follow.

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Table 11
Summary of Motivation Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Motivation
Influence
Validated:
Yes,
Partially, No
(V, P, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Self-efficacy:
Teacher leaders should
feel confident about
their ability to build
professional growth
plans with teachers.
N Self-efficacy is increased
as individuals succeed in a
task (Bandura, 1997).
Provide instructional
support (scaffolding) early
on, build in multiple
opportunities for practice
and gradually remove
supports (Pajares, 2006).
Provide opportunities to
observe a credible, similar
model engaging in
behavior that has
functional value (Pajares,
2006).
Allow teacher leaders
to attend the goal
setting part of teacher
appraisal meeting
between a teacher and
administrator. Follow
up with conversation
between administrator
and teacher leaders to
analyze and reflect on
the meeting.
Emotions:
To support teachers’
articulation of their
professional growth
plan, teacher leaders
need to feel positive
achievement and
social emotions in
their role.
P Positive emotional
environments support
motivation (Clark &
Estes, 2008).
Increase individual
outcome expectancies and
sense of control by
avoiding competitive
structure (Goette,
Huffman, Meier, & Sutter,
2012).
Provide time and
opportunities for team
building activities,
celebration of
successes, and social
interactions between
teachers and teacher
leaders in a non-
competitive context.
Embed these
opportunities through
the use of Adaptive
School protocols.

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Self-efficacy. Teacher leaders should feel confident about their ability to build
professional growth plans with teachers. Pajares (2006) claimed that people usually participate
in tasks which they feel they can accomplish successfully and circumvent other tasks. He
suggested that to build self-efficacy, an organization should provide instructional support early
on and build in multiple opportunities for practice and gradually remove supports. It could also
provide opportunities to observe a credible, similar model engaging in behavior that has
functional value. Bandura (1997, 2013) also suggested that self-efficacy is increased as
individuals succeed in a task. Finally, Rueda (2011) identified the amount and quality of
feedback received as one of the main factors contributing to self-efficacy. Therefore, the
recommendation is to allow teacher leaders to attend the goal setting part of teacher performance
appraisal meeting between a teacher and administrator. A follow up with a conversation
between administrator and teacher leaders would allow to analyze and reflect on the meeting.
Sieller (2011) conducted research on how leaders support the goal setting of teachers in a
middle school setting. According to his findings, supervisory support enhances the quality of
learning and the nature of the goals teachers set for themselves. Runhaar, Sanders, and Yang
(2010) investigated the direct link between high self-efficacy and goal orientation and showed
that learning goal orientation mediates the relationship between occupational self-efficacy and
reflection and asking feedback. Hence, allowing teacher leaders to attend teacher performance
appraisal meeting would increase their confidence and self-efficacy and consequently their
ability to help teachers develop meaningful goals for themselves. This would ultimately
contribute to the stakeholder goal of building capacity within the teacher leaders’ teams. While
data analysis has shown that teacher leaders’ self-efficacy is high at ASAS and that the influence
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was not validated in the school’s context, this recommendation could contribute to increasing
teacher leader performance even more.
Emotions. To support teachers’ articulation of their professional growth plan, teacher
leaders need to feel positive achievement and social emotions in their role. Siskin (1995)
described the role of teacher leaders as hermaphroditic, in that they are neither fully teachers, nor
fully administrators. Clark and Estes (2008) suggested that positive emotional environments
support motivation. They proposed to encourage everyone to be enthusiastic, positive, and
supportive. Goette et al. (2012) also advised to avoid competitive structures in order to increase
individual outcome expectancies and sense of control. Therefore, the recommendation is to
provide time and opportunities for team building activities, celebration of successes, and social
interactions between teachers and teacher leaders in a non-competitive context. Protocols such
as developed in the framework of the Adaptive Schools Foundation (2017) can help shape and
embed these opportunities on an almost daily basis within the context of a Professional Learning
Community.
Schutz and Pekrun (2007) contributed to the recognition of the role of emotions in an
individual’s effort, motivation to persist, and cognitive development. Clark and Estes (2008)
defined the three elements of effort, persistence, and active choice as the three facets of
motivated performance. Hence, if teacher leaders lose motivation because of the hermaphroditic
nature of their role, their ability to fulfill the stakeholder goal will be hindered. Giving them
time and opportunities to strengthen relationships with their colleagues, using proven strategies
and protocols, may help them feel positive achievement in their role.
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Organization Recommendations
Introduction. As a result of data analysis, three out of four assumed organizational
influences were validated and one was partially validated. These influences revolve around the
topics of accountability, empowerment, incentives, and contextual variables around turnover.
Clark and Estes (2008) identified the lack of efficient and effective organizational work
processes and material resources as a main cause for performance gaps. Organizational culture
plays an important role in the development of these processes and allocation of resources.
Recommendations were structured around the notions of cultural models and cultural settings as
defined by Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001). Cultural models are the shared mental schema
and normative understanding of how organizations work or ought to work. Cultural settings are
the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the daily routines within the organization
(Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). Rueda (2011) demonstrated that the relationships between
cultural models and settings were reciprocal. In the case of ASAS, attention to gaps in these
areas is key to closing the gap in performance for our stakeholder group of focus. Table 12
presents the validated and partially validated influences, as well as literature-based principles
that guide a list of context-specific recommendations, which will be developed in the sections
that follow.

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Table 12
Summary of Organizational Influences and Recommendations
Assumed Organization
Influence: Cause, Need,
or Asset*
Validated:
Yes, Partially,
No
(V, P, N) Principle and Citation
Context-Specific
Recommendation
Teacher leaders need to
be held accountable for
working closely with
teachers within the
school. (CM)
V Accountability serves as a contract between
leaders, who determine performance
objectives, and supervisees, who are
responsible for carrying them out. (Hentschke
& Wohlstetter, 2004).
When accountability is avoided, the
consequences for organizations are low
performance standards and inattention to
results (Lencioni, 2002).
Include measurable
objectives in terms of
contact time with
teachers and presence
in the classroom as
part of the teacher
leader performance
appraisal process.
Teacher leaders need to
be encouraged, valued,
and empowered by their
principals, who involve
them in collaborative
decision-making
processes. This includes
providing time, clear
expectations and
description of
responsibilities, and a
favorable climate. (CM)
V Effective organizations insure that
organizational messages, rewards, policies and
procedures that govern the work of the
organization are aligned with or are supportive
of organizational goals and values (Clark &
Estes, 2008).
Organizational performance increases and
trust is promoted when individuals and leaders
communicate openly and constantly about
plans and progress (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Review all current
teacher leader job
descriptions and
ensure alignment
with actual tasks and
responsibilities.
The school needs to
recognize that current
incentives in place for
teacher leadership create
a disincentive for
teachers to undertake a
leadership role. (CS)
V Effective change efforts ensure that everyone
has the resources (equipment, personnel, time)
needed to do their job (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Organizational effectiveness increases when
leaders insure that stakeholders have the
resources needed to achieve the organization’s
goals (Waters et al., 2003).
Accountability is increased when individual
roles and expectations are aligned with
organizational goals and mission. Incentives
and rewards systems need to reflect this
relationship (Elmore, 2002).
Review and overhaul
the current
inadequate stipends
structure, with a
focus on time release
rather than monetary
incentives.
The school needs to
recognize contextual
variables that result in
high employee turnover.
(CS)
P Open communication and concern for fellow
colleagues builds trust (Korsgaard, Brodt, &
Whitener, 2002; Schein, 2004).
Increase
administrative
support by requiring
more regular one-on-
one meetings
between teacher
leaders and
supervisors.

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Cultural model 1. Teacher leaders need to be held accountable for working closely with
teachers within the school. Hentschke and Wohlstetter (2004) defined accountability as a
contract between leaders, who determine performance objectives, and supervisees, who are
responsible for carrying them out. In his study of highly functioning teams, Lencioni (2002)
suggested that when accountability is avoided, the consequences for organizations are low
performance standards and inattention to results. Therefore, the recommendation is made to
include measurable objectives in terms of contact time with teachers and presence in the
classroom as part of the teacher leader performance appraisal process.
In her phenomenological study of eight teacher leaders, O’Connor (2013) found that
support of principals was critical in developing and sustaining leadership for all participants.
This support also entailed negotiating accountability practices in a teacher leadership context.
By providing short-term measurable objectives, supervisors may help guide teacher leaders in
the frequency of their interactions with colleagues, providing an environment conducive to
improvement.
Cultural model 2. Teacher leaders need to be encouraged, valued, and empowered by
their principals, who involve them in collaborative decision-making processes. This includes
providing time, clear expectations and description of responsibilities, and a favorable climate.
Clark and Estes (2008) noted that organizational performance increases and trust is promoted
when individuals and leaders communicate openly and constantly about plans and progress.
Having clarity on teacher leaders’ role is a critical aspect of teacher leadership efficacy.
Therefore, recommendation is made that all current job descriptions be reviewed to ensure
alignment between actual and expected tasks and responsibilities. These descriptions should be
clearly communicated to teacher leaders and discussed with the supervisor in a meeting.
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Mangin (2007) studied interactions between principals and teacher leaders in 15
elementary schools and found that teacher leaders perceived principals who had better
knowledge of their role as more supportive, leading to higher teacher leader efficacy.
Knowledge of a teacher leader role starts with clarity of tasks and responsibilities. Clark and
Estes (2008) also insisted that effective organizations ensure that organizational messages,
rewards, policies and procedures that govern the work of the organization are aligned with or are
supportive of organizational goals and values. Having clearly shared and delineated job
descriptions that align with the school’s goals will facilitate teacher leader’s role within the
organization.
Cultural setting 1. The school needs to recognize that current incentives in place for
teacher leadership create a disincentive for teachers to undertake a leadership role. This cultural
setting influence is closely connected to the topic of accountability. Elmore (2002) suggested
that accountability is increased when individual roles and expectations are aligned with
organizational goals and mission and that incentives and rewards systems need to reflect this
relationship. This means ensuring that resources are appropriately allocated to allow for an
effective incentives and rewards systems to be in place. Indeed, organizational effectiveness
increases when leaders ensure that stakeholders have the resources needed to achieve the
organization’s goals (Waters et al., 2003). Therefore, the recommendation is to review and
overhaul the current inadequate stipends structure, with a focus on time release rather than
monetary incentives.
In a study of sources of satisfaction for teacher leaders, Ribbens (2002) found that
stipends only had a symbolic importance to teacher leaders and that the topic of compensation
almost did not appear in his interviews. Sources of satisfaction in the workplace were more
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intrinsic and other forms of compensation, such as obtaining release time to engage in the teacher
leadership work, were more important to teacher leaders. Current compensation structures at
ASAS rely too heavily on stipends, which are nonetheless perceived as inadequate by recipients.
Hence, a review of the compensation structure would help align incentives with the goals of the
organization.
Cultural setting 2. It was assumed in Chapter 2 that the school needed to recognize
contextual variables that result in high employee turnover. The school’s host country presents a
series of contextual challenges that may create barriers to recruitment and contribute to employee
attrition. These challenges encompass but are not limited to currency fluctuation, high cost of
access to quality healthcare, atmospheric pollution, and internet access control. Survey and
interviews allowed to partially validate this assumed influence. Korsgaard et al. (2002) claimed
that open communication and concern for fellow colleagues builds trust. It appeared that these
topics actually were openly discussed in the organization and were not necessarily a significant
factor of attrition for teacher leaders. Internal factors such as quality of leadership and of
administrative support were seen as more significant factors in attrition. Therefore,
recommendation is made to increase administrative support by requiring that principals and
directors schedule and attend regular meetings with the teacher leaders they supervise and play a
more systematic mentoring role.
Integrated Implementation and Evaluation Plan
Implementation and Evaluation Framework
In the early 1960s, Donald Kirkpatrick created a four-level framework for training
evaluation (Kirkpatrick, 2001; Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006). This framework identified the
following four levels of evaluation: reaction, learning, behaviors (or transfer), and results.
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Recently, his successors updated his approach by proposing to design the evaluation process
backward from the goals of the organization (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Thus, when
creating an improvement integrated package or action plan, trainers should focus on the
following: (a) the results expected from the plan and the leading indicators allowing to assess
progress toward these results (level 4); then (b) the critical behaviors expected from the
stakeholder group of focus (level 3); then (c) the degree to which participants acquire the
knowledge and skills imparted in the training (level 2, learning); and finally (d) the degree to
which participants find the training favorable, engaging, and relevant to their jobs (level 1). Too
often, training strategies focus on levels 1 and 2 and forego levels 3 and 4. By keeping the end in
mind, this approach ensures that resources and time are dedicated to all four levels within the
evaluation process (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016).
Organizational Purpose, Needs and Expectations
The mission of ASAS is to educate students in the American curriculum with an
international mindset and inspire learning, integrity, and courage in all students. The
organizational goal is to build its staff capacity to create a pool of highly skilled teacher leaders,
so that by 2019, 100% of nominations to teacher leadership positions within the school could be
internal and result from careful succession planning. By working closely with the teachers on
the ground, teacher leaders can help build capacity within their teams and contribute to the
necessary leadership capacity building. Their goal is to include professional growth planning as
an item in at least one of their interactions with their teams each year. The proposed multilayer
recommendations above should produce the expected outcomes in terms of teacher growth in
their leadership capacity.
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Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators
Table 13 shows the proposed Level 4: Results and Leading Indicators in the form of
outcomes, metrics, and methods for both external and internal outcomes for ASAS. The
realization of the internal outcomes as a result of training, education, and job aids should lead to
the realization of external outcomes for stakeholders such as parents and students.
Level 3: Behavior
Critical behaviors. Teacher leaders are the stakeholder group of focus of this study.
The first critical behavior is that they use protocols and working agreements in their team
meetings. The second critical behavior is that they contribute to breaking down barriers between
classrooms by proposing and leading learning walks within and outside of their divisions. The
third critical behavior is that teacher leaders themselves model best practice in other teachers’
classrooms, demonstrating leadership by expertise. Finally, the fourth critical behavior is that
teacher leaders help teachers set their own goals. The specific metrics, methods, and timing for
each of these critical behaviors appear in Table 14.
Required drivers. Teacher leaders require the support of their direct supervisors and the
school to reinforce what they learn and encourage them to apply it in their interactions with
teachers. Appropriate rewards should help achieve teacher leaders’ performance goal and
enhance support for teacher leaders. Table 15 shows the recommended drivers to support critical
behaviors of teacher leaders.

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Table 13
Outcomes, Metrics, and Methods for External and Internal Outcomes
Outcome Metric(s) Method(s)
External Outcomes
Increased parent satisfaction with
quality of instruction in the
classroom.
Higher ratings on yearly
parent survey.
School to continue to implement
a semester parent satisfaction
survey.
Improved student perception of
quality of instruction.
Higher ratings on yearly
student survey.
Divisions to implement semester
student feedback survey.
Internal Outcomes
Increased number and frequency
of internal promotions to teacher
leadership role.
Number of new teacher
leaders recruited internally
rather than externally.
In the teacher leadership
inventory, keep track of teacher
leader’s school and role prior to
taking on the leadership position.
Increased frequency and duration
of interactions between teacher
leaders and their teams.
Number and duration of
weekly / monthly
interactions.
Teacher leaders record a log of
their interactions to be kept on a
folder within an Office 365
group.
Ensure teachers consider
professional growth within their
goals.
Existence of at least one
professional growth objective
within teachers’ yearly goals.
Capture teachers’ goals at the
divisional level and record
professional growth objectives.
Increased teacher leaders’
understanding of goal-setting
process.
One to two positive / negative
comments from supervisor.
Set aside regular time for
supervisors to meet with teacher
leaders and monitor their
understanding of the goal-setting
process.
Increased feelings of positive
achievement and social emotions
among teacher leaders.
Higher rate of “agree” and
“strongly agree” responses on
likert-scale items in yearly
surveys.
School administrates a yearly
anonymous teacher leader climate
survey.
Better structured incentives
system for teacher leaders.
Higher rate of “agree” and
“strongly agree” responses on
likert-scale items in yearly
surveys.
Administrators develop a better
incentive system, and survey
teacher leaders before / after
implementation to assess impact.

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Table 14
Critical Behaviors, Metrics, Methods, and Timing for New Reviewers
Critical Behavior Metric(s) Method(s) Timing
1. Teacher leaders use
protocols and working
agreements in team
meetings (such as
Adaptive Schools
protocols)
1. The number of
observations of described
critical behavior by
supervisors
1.a. Teacher leaders’
supervisors shall attend
some team meetings
1.a. At each team
meeting
1.b. Supervisors shall make
time to meet with teacher
leaders to review their use
of protocols and working
agreements
1.b. After each team
meeting attended by
supervisor
2. Teacher leaders
organize and participate
in learning walks in their
divisions and other
divisions
2. The number of
learning walks organized
within each team /
division
2.a. Teacher leaders post
learning walks opportunity
on common learning
management system
2.a. Two weeks before
learning walk
opportunity
2.b. Teacher leaders
facilitate and lead the
learning walk
2.b. On the date and
time of learning walk
2.c. Teacher leaders meet
briefly with participants to
debrief on observed
behaviors
2.c. No later than one
day after the learning
walk
2.d. Teacher leaders
document participation and
outcomes of learning walk
2.d. After each
learning walk
3. Teacher leaders model
best practice in other
teachers’ classrooms,
resulting in increased
professional capacity
3. The frequency of
teacher leaders’
opportunities to attend
and present in other
teachers’ classrooms
3.a. Administration creates
time for teacher leaders to
attend other teachers’
classes, and teacher leaders
model strategies
3.a. Scheduling at the
beginning of the school
year
3.b. Teacher leaders co-plan
lesson and model part of
delivery during class time
3.b. Before class visit
and during class visit
4. Teacher leaders help
individual teachers set
their own goals
4. The number of
teachers who benefit
from teacher leaders
support to create their
goals
4. Teacher leaders meet
once with individual
teachers to discuss their
yearly goals
4. Before teacher
meeting with divisional
principal

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Table 15
Required Drivers to Support New Reviewers’ Critical Behaviors
Method(s) Timing
Critical
Behaviors
Supported
1, 2, 3 Etc.
Reinforcing
Job Aid including access to bank of protocols and
exemplars of activities.
Ongoing 1
Team meetings with teacher leaders to share strategies
and establish common goals.
Monthly 1, 2, 3, 4
Use Office 365 and Schoology platforms to reinforce
communication outside of meeting times.
Ongoing 1, 2, 3, 4
Encouraging
Collaboration and peer modeling during team meetings. Monthly 1, 2, 3, 4
Feedback and coaching from supervisor and colleague
teacher leaders.
Ongoing 1, 2, 3, 4
Rewarding
Highlight learning walks in internal communication
tools, such as weekly newsletters, twitter, and wechat
accounts.
Weekly
(newsletters) and
ongoing (twitter
and webchat)
2
Recognition of exceptional services in yearly
performance appraisal report by supervisor.
Yearly 1, 2, 3, 4
Monitoring
Supervisor will sit on some of the teacher leader
interactions with teams to observe and advise.
Bi-annually 1, 2, 3, 4
Supervisor can ask teacher leaders to self-report their
confidence and self-efficacy in leading their teams.
At regular meetings
between supervisor
and teacher leader
1, 2, 3, 4

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Organizational support. To ensure that the required drivers are implemented, the
school will provide the following support. First, senior administration will ensure that time is
provided and protected for teacher leaders to work collaboratively among themselves in the form
of an at least monthly professional development meeting for small teacher leader groups. For
example, all K-12 coordinators will be scheduled so that they may meet once a month for 90
minutes to dedicate time to professional learning and self-reflective practice. Furthermore, the
school will invest to subscribe to all available data banks of protocols and tools for team
facilitation. Moreover, supervisors themselves will protect dedicated time to attend some of the
teacher leader meetings and contribute to discussions and feedback around teacher leader
practice.
Level 2: Learning
Learning goals. Following completion of the recommended solutions, teacher leaders
will:
1. know many protocols, or how to access these protocols (P)
2. be able to use protocols in team meetings (P)
3. know how to build working agreements (D)
4. be able to use working agreements in team meetings (P)
5. be able to organize learning walks (P)
6. be able to model best practice in the classroom (P, M)
7. know how to develop professional growth goals (D)
8. be able to help teachers set their individual growth goals (P)
9. feel confident in their ability to support teachers in their growth (confidence)
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10. be committed to helping teachers on their teams to grow professionally (commitment)
11. value trust in relationships with colleagues (value)
Program. The learning goals listed in the previous section will be achieved through a
combination of training, job-aids, and education that will increase the knowledge, skills and
motivation of teacher leaders to support other teachers’ professional growth. To develop their
knowledge and skills, teacher leaders will receive training, job aids, and participate in peer
observations. Since it is not possible to predict how long teacher leaders will stay within their
roles, the program will be ongoing, with some targeted participation in scheduled conferences.
First, each semester, teacher leaders will meet with their direct supervisor to establish
their own targets in terms of support for other teachers’ professional growth. Then, they will
participate at least once in two sorts of education programs through conferences: one from the
Thinking Collaborative on Adaptive Schools, another from Solution Tree on Professional
Learning Communities.
The training in Adaptive Schools seminar focuses on what makes teams effective and on
how to develop skills as facilitators in small and large groups. It provides specific strategies to
develop group member skills and allows teacher leaders to acquire the principles and
understandings to engage in a continuous cycle of team and individual improvement. It provides
critical skills to build trust within the team. The Solution Tree Institute on Professional Learning
Communities focuses on how to build the foundations of an authentic professional learning
community within the school to develop a collaborative culture.
To reduce their isolation and reinforce their sense of positive achievement, which will
increase their motivation to help other teachers grow professionally, teacher leaders will work
collaboratively with other teacher leaders. They will attend education opportunities in groups
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and reflect collectively on their learning. They will participate in each other’s learning walks
and observe their colleagues in their meetings. A monthly one-hour meeting focused on
professional development will be organized between groups of eight to ten teacher leaders.
Teacher leaders will also benefit from on-the-job aids in the form of templates and data
banks of protocols and working agreements to use in their work. Finally, they will be mentored
in their initial year by an experienced senior administrator, who will provide training for goal-
setting and support for professional growth.
Components of learning. To apply the knowledge and skills provided by the program
above, teacher leaders need to value the training and education opportunities and have the
motivation to enact and transfer their learning in their professional practice. Therefore, a well-
designed implementation plan must comprehend an assessment plan of the learning, value,
commitment, and confidence of teacher leaders. Table 16 lists the evaluation methods and
timing for these components of learning.

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Table 16
Components of Learning for the Program
Method(s) or Activity(ies) Timing
Declarative Knowledge “I know it.”
Report out on sessions attended. During the conference at short debriefing sessions at the end
of each day.
Knowledge checks during group discussions
among teacher leaders.
After the conference upon return during the monthly
professional development meetings.
Procedural Skills “I can do it right now.”
Demonstration of goal-setting ability. After on-the-job training and mentoring, in one-on-one
sessions with the supervisor.
Demonstration of facilitating skills. After the conferences, during actual teacher leader or other
administrative meetings.
Individual implementation of the skills. During actual meetings with the individual teacher leader’s
team, as observed by supervisor or other teacher leaders.
Attitude “I believe this is worthwhile.”
Group discussions among teacher leaders of
the value of what is being learned.
During training and conferences, and after in the monthly
professional development meeting.
Quality of the feedback from peers during
group sharing.
During training and conferences, and after in the monthly
professional development meeting.
Supervisor’s observation of teacher leaders’
statements and actions demonstrating that they
understand the benefit of the training or
education opportunity.
After the training or conferences.
Confidence “I think I can do it on the job.”
Feedback from peers and supervisor. After observations of strategies implementation in actual
meetings.
Dedicated time to discuss teacher leaders’
concerns about their ability to support other
teachers’ professional growth.
During regular meetings with supervisor.
Commitment “I will do it on the job.”
Ask teacher leaders to write and share how
they will implement learned strategies in their
professional practice.
During and after conferences.
One on one discussions with other teacher
leaders and supervisor.
After on-the-job observations.

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Level 1: Reaction
A solid implementation plan must measure how participants react to the learning
program. Level 1 is defined as the degree to which participants find the training favorable,
engaging, and relevant to their jobs (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Table 17 lists the
components to measure reactions to the program in the following order: engagement measures
whether teacher leaders are engaged in the learning experience; relevance measures whether the
learning is relevant to teacher leaders’ professional practice; and finally, customer satisfaction
measures the overall feelings teacher leaders have toward the professional learning opportunity.

Table 17
Components to Measure Reactions to the Program
Method(s) or Tool(s) Timing
Engagement
Peer observation and discussion Among teacher leaders at daily debrief
sessions during the conference.
Workshop evaluation Two weeks after the workshop.
Relevance
Brief pulse-check with participants Among teacher leaders at daily debrief
sessions during the conference.
Workshop evaluation Just after the conference.
Customer Satisfaction
One on one conversation between teacher
leaders and supervisor
Just after the conference.
Workshop evaluation Just after the conference.

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Evaluation Tools
Immediately following the program implementation. After teacher leaders participate
in one of the programs (PLC and/or Adaptive Schools training), the administration will
implement a survey (see Appendix E for survey questions). The survey will help assess the
relevance of the training and materials to the work, participant satisfaction, and teacher leaders’
commitment, attitude, and confidence in applying what was learned.
For level 1, pulse-checks will be assured during the conference or training by teacher
leaders themselves during short debriefs at the end of each day. It is critical that these
experiences be collective and not individual training, hence the recommendation to invite
institutions that offer these trainings to offer them on site to a large group of teacher leaders. For
level 2, feedback from peers and supervisors during observations happening briefly after the
training, as well as one-on-one exchanges and conversations between teacher leaders and their
supervisors, will also allow to measure attitude, commitment, and confidence.
Delayed for a period after the program implementation. Approximately twelve (12)
weeks after the implementation of the training or education opportunity, leadership will
administer a survey to measure satisfaction and relevance of the training (level 1), the confidence
and value of applying the training to the workplace (level 2), the actual application of knowledge
and skills acquired through the training to the teams (level 3), and finally the extent to which this
application had helped improve capacity building within the teams (level 4) (see Appendix F for
survey questions).
Data Analysis and Reporting
The level 4 goal for teacher leaders is measured by the increased number and frequency
of international nominations to teacher leadership positions. Most of these nominations are made
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on a yearly basis, at the end of the academic year. Leadership will track the number of
nominations made at teacher leadership positions and the proportion of these nominations that
are internal. A visual representation (dashboard) will be maintained and shared within the
leadership team and with the board of trustees to report the data as a monitoring and
accountability tool. Similar dashboards will be created for other measures at levels 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Figure 34. Proposed dashboard for nominations to teacher leadership positions

77%
23%
Nominations to Teacher Leadership Positions
School Year 2017-2018
Internal External
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Summary
The Kirkpatrick model for program implementation and evaluation served as the
framework for recommendations to improve the efficacy of teacher leaders in their support for
faculty professional growth. By working backwards from the desired outcomes (Level 4) to
chart the desired behaviors (Level 3), learning (Level 2), and reactions (Level 1), the model
increases the chances for transfer of learning from the training to the workplace. It takes many
aspects into consideration: knowledge, skills, attitude, commitment, confidence, engagement,
relevance, and satisfaction. It develops the idea of required drivers to support program
implementation and sustain the desired critical behaviors.
Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) insisted on the importance of gathering and analyzing
data during program implementation to maximize current and future program results. They
suggested to ask the following three questions: does the program meet expectations? If not, why
not? And if so, why? In the case of ASAS’s teacher leaders, the data analysis and reporting
tools presented in the previous section will allow to answer the first question. Reasons for the
program not to meet expectations may include:
• relative lower quality of external workshops attended
• lack of sustenance of required drivers, especially as it pertains to supervisor support
and adequacy of rewards
• resistance from faculty to teacher leader support and intervention
On the contrary, reasons for the program to meet expectations at all levels may include:
• intrinsic quality of the program, with relevance leading to full participant engagement
• high levels of motivation among teacher leaders
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155
• high level of administrative support, with coaching and mentoring behaviors from
supervisors
By ensuring teacher leaders have the knowledge, skills, and organizational support to
accomplish their goal, but also by changing the critical behaviors of teacher leaders in regards to
their role in teachers’ professional growth, the school can ensure some level of improvement in
the delivery of its mission.
Limitations and Delimitations
The study had some inherent limitations that the reader should take into account when
evaluating its relevance. Most of them were discussed in Chapter 3. The study was situated in a
single international school in Asia. Therefore, it does not reflect the reality of all international
schools in the region or in the world and its results and findings cannot be used to generalize its
recommendations to other schools without significant caution. The time constraint also limited
the number of teacher leaders interviewed to a sample of nine and analysis of interview
responses showed that redundancy in data collection was not attained. With more time, a larger
number of interviews could have elicited more data. In the initial stages of design, the researcher
considered adding observations as a means to collect data. Attending PLC meetings, grade-level
meetings, and teacher leader meetings would have been a valuable source of data for the
analysis. Again, the time constraint for data collection led the researcher to decide against using
observations as a means of data collection.
Some limitations were directly related to the researcher himself. Initially educated in
France and with limited previous professional exposure to educators from the U.S., U.K.,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand relative to his leadership experience, the researcher did not
share the common background with stakeholders that could be expected from a school leader in
BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

156
this international school setting. This more limited than usual shared background and experience
between researcher and stakeholders of the study may have resulted in misinterpretations and
misalignments in terms of vocabulary and concepts related to education and leadership. The
researcher learned a lot through the research and analysis process, but obviously this knowledge
and understanding gained through the process was not present at the initial stages of design. It
should be noted that this limitation is common to all research and not specific to this dissertation.
With these limitations and delimitations in mind, the methods used in this research could
prove valuable for other international schools who would benefit from applying the Clark and
Estes (2008) gap analysis process in a comparable manner.
Recommendations for Future Research
This study leaves ample room for future research. Its design could be adapted and used
in other international schools in Asia and beyond to expand the body of educators surveyed and
interviewed on the topic: the role of teacher leaders in building capacity within their teams. With
more time, a deeper research could include other stakeholder groups in the study, such as school
leaders and teachers, to record their perspective on the topic and confront it with the teacher
leaders’ input. It could also look beyond international schools to expand to teacher leaders in
public and independent schools in the U.S. or in other countries. Future research could also look
for ways to measure teacher leaders’ success in their role, and compare the efficacy of internally
and externally recruited teacher leaders. It would also be valuable to study the means of
identification of teachers who demonstrate potential for leadership within the organization.
Finally, future research could develop different conceptual frameworks to explore similar
data sets and elicit different findings and recommendations.
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Conclusion
International schools are complex institutions, first and foremost grounded in people:
students, teachers, administrators, parents, and trustees are the essential stakeholder groups that
compose schools and the complex interactions within and among these groups determine the
efficacy and education and the rate of change toward school improvement. This research
focused on a subset of the teachers group: teachers who have taken some leadership
responsibility within their school and play a role beyond their classroom walls, within the school
community, labeled as teacher leaders. Teacher leaders now play a key role in the school
ecosystem to lead improvements in student learning. This study focused on the concept of
distributed leadership, analyzing the role teacher leaders play in building capacity within their
teams to ensure sound succession planning in a high turnover context. It allowed to identify gaps
that hindered capacity-building by teacher leaders within their teams and demonstrated that
knowledge, skills, and organizational gaps were more significant than motivation gaps. Cultural
models and settings around accountability, collaborative leadership, incentives, and internal
variables that affect employee turnover were among the foremost organizational gaps identified.
The study developed an improvement plan based on the Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016)
model that has the potential to help the school improve how its teacher leaders may build
capacity within their teams.

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APPENDIX A
SURVEY INSTRUMENT PROTOCOL
I am contacting you today as a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California. I am
conducting a research study as part of my dissertation, examining the role of teacher leaders in
international schools, especially in regard to their contribution to building capacity and helping
professional growth within their teams. This survey is designed to study your role as a teacher
leader, and your ability to help other teachers develop their professional growth plan.

You are cordially invited to participate in the study. Participation in this study is
completely voluntary. Your identity as a participant will remain confidential at all times
during and after the study. Neither I nor anyone else will ever know whether you chose to
answer the survey.

The survey is anonymous, and only records the IP address of the respondent. Results will be
exported to an Excel file without the IP address information, and original responses destroyed
from the server.

Once submitted, you will not be able to modify your responses. You must complete the survey in
one seating, since there is no way to save your responses and return to it. Completion of the
survey should take about 15 to 20 minutes.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at xxx@usc.edu, or +86 152 2129 xxxx.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Emmanuel Bonin
Doctoral candidate. Rossier School of Education.
University of Southern California.

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Header: Demographic information
Question 1
Is the American School Above the Sea your first job in an international school?
a. Yes
b. No

Question 2
For how long, in years, have you been in a teacher leadership position at the school? (include
current year)
- [numeric box, integer]

Question 3
Which division are you working in?
a. Elementary school
b. Middle school
c. High school
d. Cross-division

Question 4
What teacher leadership position are you currently holding at the school? Check all that applies.
a. Department head
b. K-12 coordinator
c. PLC leader
d. Team leader
e. Instructional coach
f. Other (please specify): [text box]

Question 5
Were you directly recruited in your teacher leadership position, or did you become a teacher
leader while already teaching at the school?
- Directly recruited as teacher leader
- Became teacher leader while already teaching at the school

Header: Composition of the team and frequency of interactions
Question 6
How many teachers are you responsible for working with in your teacher leadership position at
the school?
- [numeric box, integer]

Question 7
On average, how many times per month do you meet individually with teachers with whom you
work in your teacher leadership position at the school? (please round up to the nearest integer)
- [numeric box, integer]

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Question 8
On average, how many times per month do you meet as a group with teachers with whom you
work in your teacher leadership position at the school? (please round up to the nearest integer)
- [numeric box, integer]

Header: Professional growth planning at American School Above the Sea
Question 9
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

I received training in how to set individual short-term goals.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I received training in how to set collective short-term goals for a team.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Through my work in my leadership role, I contribute to developing a culture of inquiry within
the organization.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

The school functions as a professional learning community.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I know how to foster a professional learning community.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I know how to lead a professional development workshop.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree
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Question 10
How many professional development workshops have you led (within and outside of school) in
the last two years?
- [numeric box, integer]

Question 11
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

I feel confident in my ability to help other teachers grow professionally.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I set formal goals for myself in my work as a teacher leader.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Reflection on my growth in my leadership role is inherently part of my thinking process.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Header: Factors influencing your work as a teacher leader
Question 12
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

Since I started in my leadership role, my relationships with other teachers have changed.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Since I started in my leadership role, I feel empowered to make a difference within the school.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

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I feel understood by my colleagues in my role as a teacher leader.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I feel my work as a teacher leader contributes to improved student learning and outcomes.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Question 13
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

Helping other teachers develop their professional growth plan is part of my responsibility as a
teacher leader.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

My supervisor(s) meet with me regularly to review my work as a teacher leader.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I am held accountable by my supervisor for working closely with other teachers.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Question 14
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

I have a clear job description for my role as a teacher leader.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

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My role as a teacher leader is clearly understood by the teachers I am responsible to work with.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

The professional development workshops I attended since I started in my leadership position at
the school helped me acquire important knowledge in relation to my leadership role.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

The professional development workshops I attended since I started in my leadership position at
the school helped me acquire important skills in relation to my leadership role.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Question 15
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

My leadership role within the school brings me satisfaction.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

My motivation to fulfill my leadership role is essentially intrinsic.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I am adequately compensated for my leadership role.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Monetary compensation is important to me in my leadership role.
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree
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Question 16
Please rate how you feel about the following statements.

I receive the appropriate level of administrative support to fulfill my leadership role
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Initial induction in my leadership role was effective
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I feel comfortable working with people from different cultures and backgrounds
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

I make efforts to understand the host country’s language and culture
- Strongly agree
- Agree
- Disagree
- Strongly disagree

Question 17
Please rate the importance of the following when you think of the reasons why you would leave
the school one day.

Financial reasons
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

Leadership of the school
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

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State of administrative support
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

Length of stay
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

Host country context
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

Desire to repatriate
- Not important at all
- Unimportant
- Important
- Extremely important

Question 18
Would you be willing to participate in a complementary one-hour follow-up interview on the
topic?
- Yes
- No

If yes, please click on this link to provide your name and email outside of this survey (this will
help keep your responses to the survey anonymous)

[After submission screen]
Thank you for submitting your responses to this survey. Your responses are valuable in the
creation of our data set.

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APPENDIX B
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Respondent: __________________
Date and time: ________________
Leadership role: _______________
Interview location: _____________

Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today. I will be asking you questions on teacher
leadership at the American School Above the Sea. I expect the interview will last no longer than
one hour and fifteen minutes, and I have 20 questions for you.

Your participation is completely voluntary. We can skip any question you want at any time, and
you may stop the interview at any time. Any identifiable information obtained in connection with
this study will remain confidential. I will not be sharing the fact that you participated in this
study with anyone. This includes your administration and supervisor. If you want your
participation to remain confidential, I also suggest that you refrain from sharing with anyone that
you took part in this study. For the purpose of collecting data for my dissertation, I will be
recording this interview and transcribing the conversation afterwards. The recording will then be
deleted, and the transcription stored safely on a computer that is not connected to the internet. Is
this fine with you? (…) Thank you.

(Knowledge influence 1)
1. Please describe your role as a teacher leader.
2. In your perspective, describe what distributed leadership is.

(Motivation influence 2)
3. Please describe your relationships with the teachers with whom you work in your teacher
leadership position.
4. In what ways did your colleagues react to the announcement that you were taking on a
teacher leadership position within the school?
Probing question: how did this reaction make you feel?

(Knowledge influence 3)
5. Please describe the importance of trust in your relationship with your colleagues.
6. Please share the strategies, if any, you used to build trust with your colleagues.
7. Please share an instance, if any, where building trust proved especially challenging.

(Knowledge influence 2)
8. Please describe how teachers in your teams set their professional growth goals.
9. Please describe the role, if any, you play in helping teachers set their professional growth
goals.

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(Cultural models influence 1)
10. In your opinion, what role are you expected to play in teachers’ professional growth?

(Motivation influence 1)
11. Please describe how you help other teachers grow professionally.
Probing question: how confident do you fell in your ability to help other teachers grow?

(Cultural models influence 2)
12. In what ways, if any, is your expertise recognized within the school?
13. Tell me of a situation in which time either enabled or impeded your ability to fulfill the
expectations of your position.
Probing question: What were some contributing factors to this situation?
14. Please describe the dynamic between you and your supervisor.
Probing question: In what ways, if any, does your supervisor play a mentoring role?
15. Please explain whether your job description provides the clarity needed to fulfill your
role.
16. Describe your colleagues’ understanding of your role as a teacher leader.

(Cultural settings influence 1)
17. What are the main factors that influenced your decision to take on a leadership role?
Probing question: What role did compensation play in your decision?

(Cultural settings influence 2)
18. What are the main factors that would influence your decision to remain in your teacher
leadership role within the school?
19. What are the main factors that would influence your decision to leave your teacher
leadership role within the school?
20. Is there anything you would like to add that was not discussed during this interview?

Thank you again for your time and for your valuable input. I look forward to sharing the results
of my study with you.
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APPENDIX C
INFORMED CONSENT/INFORMATION SHEET
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
Organizational Leadership and Change
Waite Phillips Hall
3470 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90069
INFORMATION/FACTS SHEET FOR EXEMPT NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

Teacher leaders’ role in helping other teachers’ professional growth
You are invited to participate in a research study. Research studies include only people who
voluntarily choose to take part. This document explains information about this study. You should
ask questions about anything that is unclear to you.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This research study is trying to understand how teacher leaders in an international school context
build capacity within their teams and help other teachers grow professionally, contributing to
careful succession planning.

PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
Participants who choose to participate in this study will be asked to complete an online survey
lasting approximately 20 minutes. During the survey, you will be able to answer only the
questions you desire to answer. In addition, participants who agree will be asked to participate in
an individual interview with the researcher lasting approximately one hour and fifteen minutes.
To aid in capturing the information shared, these interviews will be recorded and notes will be
taken, with the interviewee’s permission. You may choose not to respond to any question, for
any reason. You may also choose to end the survey or the interview at any time with no further
explanation.

ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
Participation in this study is voluntary. Your alternative is to not participate. Your relationship
with your employer will not be affected whether you participate or not in this study, and there is
no way for the researcher or your employer to be aware of who chose not to participate. The
researcher will not share any information regarding your participation or non participation in the
strudy.

CONFIDENTIALITY
There will be no identifiable information asked during the survey, nor will any identifying
information be kept with interview responses.

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

192
Your participation in the interview will remain confidential. It won’t be shared with anyone. This
includes your supervisor and your administration. If you want your participation to remain
confidential, it is suggested that you refrain yourself from sharing your participation with
anyone. You have a right to see or listen to all interview notes, transcripts, and recordings upon
request. After the recordings are transcribed, they will be destroyed and not kept as records.

Required language:
The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects
Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research
studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
Principal Investigator Emmanuel Bonin at ebonin@usc.edu or phone at (+86) 152 2129 5812 or
Faculty Advisor Dr. Monique Datta at mdatta@usc.edu

IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
University Park Institutional Review Board (UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los
Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or upirb@usc.edu

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

193
APPENDIX D
RECRUITMENT LETTER
Dear ASAS Teacher Leader,

In fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Education, I am conducting a study
on teacher leaders at ASAS. The goal of the research is to better understand the role teacher
leaders play or may play in building capacity within their teams, especially in regards to
teachers’ professional growth.

The study consists in:

• An anonymous survey, which takes approximately 20 minutes to complete
• Some one-hour and fifteen minutes in-person interviews with voluntary teacher leaders

Please note that all personal information from participants will remain confidential and will not
be used in the study. Every effort will be made to protect the identity of participants and the
organization.

Please fill out the following entirely anonymous survey: [link]. If you agree to be interviewed,
please check the appropriate box at the end of the survey. Note that your answers to the survey
will remain anonymous even if you agree to be interviewed.

If you have any questions, please contact me at xxxx@usc.edu, or call me at (+86) 152 2129
xxxx. I truly appreciate your willingness to participate.

Warm regards,
Emmanuel Bonin
Doctoral candidate, University of Southern California

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

194
APPENDIX E
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (AFTER TRAINING)
For each of the questions below, please circle the response that best characterized how you feel
about the statement.

Strongly
agree Agree Disagree
Strongly
disagree
The training was interesting 4 3 2 1
I will recommend the training to other teacher
leaders
4 3 2 1
I was fully engaged during the duration of the
training
4 3 2 1
I seized the opportunity to debrief with my
teacher leader colleagues at the end of each day
4 3 2 1
I acquired essential skills to better facilitate
meetings with my team
4 3 2 1
I acquired essential knowledge and skills to help
my colleagues grow professionally
4 3 2 1
I feel confident in my ability to implement the
strategies learned during the training
4 3 2 1
I can help other teachers set their professional
goals
4 3 2 1
I can effectively facilitate a team meeting 4 3 2 1
I believe the strategies learned are worth
implementing within my team
4 3 2 1

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY IN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS

195
APPENDIX F
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (DELAYED)
Three months ago, you attended an extensive Adaptive Schools / Solution Tree PLC conference.
For each of the questions below, please circle the response that best characterized how you feel
about the statement.

Strongly
agree Agree Disagree
Strongly
disagree
I have had the opportunity to use the
strategies presented in the conference
4 3 2 1
Reflecting back on this conference, I believe
it was a good use of my time
4 3 2 1
After the conference, I have successfully
facilitated team meetings using strategies
learned
4 3 2 1
I received support from my supervisor to
apply what I learned at the conference
4 3 2 1
I am seeing positive results from the training 4 3 2 1
This program has positively impacted my
ability to help teachers on my team grow
professionally
4 3 2 1

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bonin, Emmanuel (author)

Core Title The role of international school teacher leaders in building leadership capacity within their teams

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)

Publication Date 03/06/2018

Defense Date 02/09/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Clark,collaboration,cultural model,cultural setting,department head,distributed leadership,education,empowerment,Estes,goal setting,instructional coaches,instructional coaching,international school,international schools,KMO,leadership,leadership capacity,mentoring,OAI-PMH Harvest,principals,school improvement,subject leader,teacher leaders,Teacher Leadership,Training

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Datta, Monique (committee chair), Lillo, Sarah (committee member), Picus, Lawrence (committee member)

Creator Email ebonin@usc.edu,manubonin@hotmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-481935

Unique identifier UC11266494

Identifier etd-BoninEmman-6081.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-481935 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-BoninEmman-6081.pdf

Dmrecord 481935

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Bonin, Emmanuel

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA