The Role of Teacher Leadership in Professional Learning Community (PLC) in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools: A Social Network Approach

Abstract

This study aims to illuminate how professional interactions among teachers form different types of teacher leadership in schools, which, in turn, shape different levels of teachers’ involvement in activities related to their professional learning community (PLC). To investigate certain patterns of teachers’ interactions that contribute to the formation of teacher leadership and thereby the development of PLC, two international schools that offer a full continuum of three International Baccalaureate (IB) programs were purposively chosen. The schools have similar numbers of students and are located in two different countries in East Asia. Using a mixed-methods research approach, the patterns of teacher professional interactions were first examined using social network analysis. Next, the degree to which teachers in the case study schools enact practices related to PLCs was assessed and compared through a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test. Further, based on findings from social network analysis, in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with selected key participants to understand the linkage between teacher leadership and teachers’ involvement in their PLC in each case school. From the findings, we propose four conceptual types of teacher leadership that explain how teacher leadership shapes different levels of teachers’ engagement in PLC in the two case schools.

Notes

1 The IB offers a continuum of international education that covers three major programs: Primary Years Program (for age range 3–12), Middle Years Program (for age range 11–16), and Diploma Program (for age range 16–19). As of July 2016, there are 4,527 schools offering IB programs around the world. The programs have been offered to more than one million students worldwide as of 2017.

2 The distinction between international secondary department and bilingual secondary department is that the former prepares students for overseas study after graduation and the latter prepares students for national entrance examination to enter the universities in Taiwan.

3 According to Lawshe (1975), judgment from experts, here as experienced teachers, would assist in demonstrating that the survey items are appropriately sampled the content domain. The content validity ratio (CVR) was calculated for each survey question. Based on Lawshe (1975), a minimum CVR value of 0.59 is required to satisfy the 5% level when there are 11 experts rating the questionnaire. Only 3 out of 23 items in the survey did not meet the required minimum CVR value of 0.59 (see Appendix).

4 Centrality is the degree to which one network member interacts with his or her peers.

5 The degree to which a particular teacher lies “between” the various other points in the network (Scott, 1991). In other words, it is regarded as a measure of the degree to which one actor can control the flow of information.

6 The degree to which an individual teacher is being sought or approached by their professional colleagues (Wasserman & Faust, 2007).

7 The degree to which an individual teacher actively seeks instructional advice/information from certain teachers in the network (Wasserman & Faust, 2007).

8 The degree to which one individual teacher gets to other teachers along the shortest path in the network (Wasserman & Faust, 2007).

9 The strength of the tie was measured by three components: (a) frequency of interaction between two teachers, (b) depth of interaction between two teachers, and (c) presence of reciprocity between two focal teachers. The frequency of interaction represents how frequently two teachers interact. The depth of interaction refers to the degree to which a certain type of interaction is relevant to teaching and learning. The presence of reciprocity shows whether the relationship between two teachers is reciprocal. In sum, the strength of tie (e.g., thick or thin) between two focal teachers is determined by a composite value of the aforementioned three components.

10 Based on our literature review, PLC includes four major constructs: OL, SR, RD, and DP.

11 CAS is one of the three essential elements that every student must complete as part of the Diploma Program.

12 The East Asia Regional Council of Schools (EARCOS) is an organization of 158 member schools in East Asia. These schools have a total of more than 132,000 pre-K to 12th-grade students.

13 On another note, the low engagement of teachers in deprivatized practice in both schools, despite the different types of teacher leadership being exercised, suggests that teachers in international schools in East Asia are also conventional in terms of that particular PLC practice, similar to many teachers in local schools in East Asia.