Developing middle leadership practices to promote collaborative instance An experience based on the Chinese school leaders model

Abstract

This text describes an action-research project that aims to develop intermediate leadership practices in cycle coordinators, in order to generate structural, cultural and relational conditions conducive to the implementation of a space for collaboration between teachers. To this end, an action plan was generated based on the experiences developed by school leaders in China (Qian & Walker, 2021) as well as the procedures to facilitate collaborative work declared by the Education Quality Agency (2016). In relation to the model used, the cycles proposed by Kemmis & McTaggart (1989) were followed and data collection techniques based on two instruments were used: semi-structured interviews applied to cycle coordinators, and surveys to teachers who were part of the collaborative practice. Regarding the results obtained, progress is observed in the effectiveness of collaboration when developing intermediate leadership practices. After the intervention, the cycle coordinators assumed a leadership role that included more activities related to management, and perceived its importance in generating conditions that promote collaboration as well as systematic and frequent spaces for collaboration between participating teachers. In the case of teachers, they considered a positive growth in the role played by intermediate leaders to generate collaboration, placing the dimensions of promotion and design of the practice as those that had the greatest change in the leaders after the action plan was applied.