‘Courageous and uncomfortable’: high school English language arts teachers using shared leadership qualities in virtual and hybrid classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Shared leadership research shows that it could be beneficial in the high school classroom. During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were looking for best-practice strategies to move their curriculum online and to hybrid. This worldwide crisis provided a moment in time to rethink traditional education in unprecedented mandatory mass virtual and hybrid learning. For this study, data was collected using a three-interview approach on Zoom in conjunction with virtual observations of classrooms, teacher and student artifacts, and researcher reflections. The selected teachers reported that they worked to foster an environment of trust, interdependence, collaboration, and collectivism at the beginning of school year 2020 which allowed aspects of shared leadership and student voice to flourish, even within multiple, changing modalities. Students felt more confident to take safe risks in discussion and thinking because everyone was experiencing change, a shared collectivism. The participants found success using student voice consistently to help create engagement, creativity, and other shared leadership qualities in the classroom. All of the qualities were reciprocal, as trust increased, student voice also increased, and likewise for many of the other qualities. Because of this reciprocity, students were able to discuss and reflect knowledge in new ways that many times they directed. Teachers reported a sense of self-efficacy through students’ engagement in their course work and their willingness to take risks. Many times, the teachers felt like students themselves as they took risks and adapted to the changing requirements.

KEYWORDS:

• Virtual learning
• shared leadership
• student voice
• trust
• student choice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Gibbons

Jessica Gibbons graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with a Bachelor of Science in English Education and a minor in Spanish. She then earned her Master of Arts in English from there too. In June of 2021, she earned a PhD in Leadership from Drake University. She has taught for 23 years. She is an English Instructor/Dept. Head at Winterset High School and an Adjunct English Instructor at Des Moines Area Community College. Twitter: @JessGibbons79