Abstract
A positive teacher learning culture is important to effect meaningful changes in schools. Literature has established that successful school leaders can build and nurture learning cultures among teachers. However, less is known about how school leaders can shape the culture and make learning conditions happen at the schools in the Chinese education context. This paper reports an in-depth qualitative case study of a primary school in Shanghai. Using data collected from the principal, vice principal, mid-level leaders and teachers, the study attempts to answer these two questions: how do the school leaders build and nurture a positive teacher learning culture, and how does this culture affect teachers’ working lives?
Introduction
A rich body of literature attests to the importance of a positive teacher learning culture to improved learning and successful change in schools (e.g. Bryk et al., 1999, 2010; Lindahl, 2006; Peterson and Deal, 1998; Price, 2012; Schechter and Qadach, 2012). Research also suggests that school leaders influence the conditions needed to create such a culture (Day and Leithwood, 2007; Day et al., 2010; Hallinger and Heck, 1998). However, less is known about how school leaders nurture positive learning conditions among teachers in the Chinese context. This paper reports a case study to show how leaders have built and are sustaining a positive teacher learning culture in a Shanghai primary school.
The effects of a positive school culture are well established (Deal and Peterson, 1999; Fullan, 2001; Peterson, 2002). In positive learning cultures, the school community as a collective passionately pursues what is most important for the school (Walker, 2010). Teachers grow and develop as they find their efforts positively affecting students (Dinham and Scott, 1998; Newton et al., 2003). Conversely, the absence of a positive learning environment may result in a lack of coherence between what teachers know and how they work (Elmore, 2004), which is often cited as an explanation for why even the most carefully designed reforms sometimes fail to positively affect teacher practice (Bain, 2007; Walker, 2010; Walker and Qian, 2012).
A positive learning-oriented culture must be carefully and intentionally nurtured by school leaders. By working through and with others in the school, successful leaders shape the form, meaning and substance of key school conditions that have a direct, verifiable influence on teacher learning (Day and Leithwood, 2007; Southworth, 2004). When shared, these conditions hold the potential to create a positive culture among teachers and affect classroom practice (Walker, 2010). School leaders are thus builders and nurturers of positive teacher learning cultures (Bolman and Deal, 2008; Peterson, 2002).
It is worthwhile to pose several questions concerning how school leaders create conditions that encourage the teacher communities to want to learn, the strategies they use to nurture those conditions and how they affect teachers. We focus on specifically on these two research questions: How do school leaders build a positive teacher learning culture? How does this culture affect teachers’ working lives? Here, we address these questions using data collected from the principal, vice principal, mid-level leaders and teachers of a primary school in Shanghai. We use their experience to illustrate what school leaders can do to build and sustain a learning culture among teachers and how that culture affects teachers.
We select a school in Shanghai for two interrelated reasons. First, although the city is a relatively recent inclusion in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, it has topped the PISA tables in several areas, subsequently eliciting international interest (OECD, 2011; Tucker, 2011). Second, although research has identified several distinct organisational structures and practices adopted in Shanghai schools (Cheng, 2011; Wong, 2012), no study focuses explicitly on schools’ teacher learning culture. One of the structures identified is the adoption of the Teaching Research Group (TRG; jiaoyan zu) system (Qian and Walker, 2013; Wong, 2010), which provides structural conditions conducive to teacher collaboration and support. However, structures alone cannot explain the presence of a school-wide learning culture or how leaders nurture such a culture.
Here, we use one school (School M) to investigate how school leaders have sustained teachers’ commitment to and passion for continuous learning. We believe the study is important in at least three ways. First, it connects leadership practice with supportive organisational conditions and effective teacher learning. In other words, it explores and presents a new recipe for school leadership conducive to learning conditions. Second, although a number of measures have been proposed to create a positive learning culture among teachers (e.g. professional development programmes, shared goals, active commitment to continuous improvement, open culture, teacher leadership), they are not well understood in terms of the operational and structural realities of schools (Fullan, 2000; Silins and Mulford, 2002). This paper provides empirical evidence of what a learning-oriented culture looks like and how and why teachers learn within it. Third, education in Shanghai has attracted considerable research interest. Whilst we are reluctant to showcase Shanghai as an international model, this paper provides a useful look inside a successful Shanghai school and illuminates why it is successful within the Chinese educational context.
In the first section, we discuss some of what is known about teacher learning cultures and school leadership. The impact of traditional Confucian culture on leadership is also discussed. The second section explores the major contextual forces facing Shanghai schools. We explain these in order to locate the existing structures and resources that school leaders can harness and to explain new policy imperatives that challenge them. The third section introduces the background to the case study school and the research participants. In the fourth section, we present the major findings of the leadership strategies used to build a positive teacher learning culture, and the effects that culture has had on teachers. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for successful leadership.
Teacher learning culture and school leadership
Higher-performing schools are learning organisations in which school leadership plays a highly positive role (e.g. Schechter and Qadach, 2012; Silins and Mulford, 2002; Day et al., 2010; Margolis and Doring, 2012; Sebastian and Allensworth, 2012; Zhu et al., 2014). This section explores some of what we know about teacher learning cultures and leading them in schools.
Teacher learning culture
Culture is a highly complex phenomenon with no single commonly agreed definition. It is often described as intangible, and existing only for those who are part of a given collectivity (Hofstede, 1991; Mitchell and Willower, 1992). Schein’s (1985) model provides perhaps the most widely cited definition and analytic framework of culture. It comprises three distinct but closely related levels: artefacts, values and basic underlying assumptions. Artefacts are the visible signatures of a culture, whilst values are a visible yet intangible manifestation of an organisation’s driving beliefs and assumptions, and basic assumptions are the ‘invisible’ workings of organisations, consisting of unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs (Schein, 1985: 9).
The pervasive organisational culture influences and is influenced by each individual organisational member; in schools, learning cultures impact on both students and teachers. Our understanding of teacher learning cultures is influenced by general discussions of culture and by the diverse literature on such concepts as learning organisations, professional communities and professional learning communities (e.g. Dufour et al., 2006; Lieberman and Miller, 2008; Schechter and Qadach, 2012; Sullivan and Glanz, 2006; Wenger, 1999). Walker (2010: 179) argues that a learning culture constitutes ‘the synergistic effects generated through the establishment and embedment of a set of interrelated conditions that promote and encourage learning as a way of professional life’. A synthesis of the literature suggests a set of interrelated conditions comprising the following components.
Visible components. A positive teacher learning culture has visible features that can be seen in a school’s organisational structures. Such schools usually have formal rules enabling teachers to collectively process, understand, and apply knowledge on teaching and learning and share information in a sustained manner (Corcoran and Goertz, 1995; Fullan, 2000; Kruse, 2003).
Visible but intangible components. Schools with positive teacher learning cultures value school-wide learning and recognise that overall success is dependent on each group member. Such schools invest time and effort in teacher learning, and teachers are convinced that their input is welcome (Bryk et al., 2010; Louis et al., 2010).
Invisible components. Staff members working in schools with a positive learning culture have high levels of relational trust, loyalty, commitment (Bryk et al., 2010; Price, 2012) and staff satisfaction (Hulpia et al., 2009; Price, 2012; Zhu et al., 2014).
A positive teacher learning culture depends on the presence and alignment of three components – structures, values and relationships. It is the leaders’ job to connect and ensure that the proper learning conditions are in place across the school (Walker, 2010).
Leading learning cultures
School leaders ‘set the tone’ of the school (Price, 2012: 42), a proposition with widespread support in the school leadership literature. For example, what marks turnaround school leaders as successful is their ability to transform a toxic school culture (Murphy and Meyers, 2007; Steiner et al., 2008). Southworth (2004) suggests that school leaders shape or change a school culture primarily through and with teachers. They influence teachers in at least three ways.
First, school leaders influence what teachers can learn and how they learn. Their job is to design teacher learning-related rules and procedures, which may include teacher groupings, formal reporting and accountability lines, performance management systems and teacher development timetables (Leithwood, 2006; Walker, 2010). Whether leaders support and participate in professional learning with teachers makes a difference to school outcomes (Robinson et al., 2008). Second, school leaders influence the values that teachers adopt and the kind of professionals they want to be. A clear sense of direction and purpose is important to the school, and it is school leaders who set that direction/purpose (Leithwood et al., 2006; Day et al., 2010). School leadership thus has a direct effect on teachers’ expectations and standards, including the way they think about, plan, and conduct teaching and learning practices, self-efficacy, commitment and well-being (Day and Leithwood, 2007; Day et al., 2010). Finally, school leaders affect how school members relate to one another. Leader–member exchange theory posits that the amount of trust between supervisors and subordinates determines the quality of organisational relationships (Brower et al., 2000), and positive relationships can lead to better personal health, happiness and job devotion (Knapp et al., 2010).
Synthesis of the school culture and leadership literature suggests that a positive teacher learning culture depends on a number of interrelated factors, amongst the most important of which are formal systems that provide teachers with ample learning opportunities (structures), a shared purpose concerning what the school wants to achieve (values), and collaborative, open and trusting relationships that enhance collegial support and cohesion amongst staff (relationships). A school leaders’ task is to provide ample learning opportunities, articulate and champion values, and foster trusting relationships within the school.
Such expectations of school leadership resonate with Confucian traditions that have for many years influenced and continue to influence Chinese organisational behaviour and thinking (Chen and Lee, 2008). One widely practised leadership style among political and business leaders in Confucian heritage societies is paternalistic leadership (Farh and Cheng, 2000; Tan and Dimmock, 2014; Silin, 1976). In many organisations, the boss is viewed like a father figure who is expected to provide guidance and protection, and nurture and care for staff. The flipside is that organisational members of lower rank tend to be loyal and deferential to their superiors (Aycan, 2006; Farh et al., 2008).
Farh and Cheng (2000) use a three-dimensional model to describe paternalistic leadership in the Chinese societies. The dimensions are authoritarianism, benevolence and moral leadership. Authoritarianism refers to the leaders’ demand for unquestioned obedience from subordinates (Farh et al., 2008). Benevolence (ren) is one of the six major Confucian values and virtues 1 (Yang et al., 2008). Benevolence translates roughly to ‘loving others’ (Legge, 1971: 167) and refers to a leaders’ ‘individualised, holistic concern for subordinates’ personal and familial well-being’ (Farh et al., 2008: 173). Moral leadership involves leaders’ acting selflessly and leading by example (Farh et al., 2008). Thus, a central theme of Chinese leadership philosophies is that leaders assume a parental-type role and care for subordinates’ livelihood and social-psychological well-being (Chen and Lee, 2008).
Confucianism has also traditionally connected leadership with culture building (Chen and Lee, 2008). Traditional expectations place culture building squarely on the shoulders of organisational leaders. Organisations are expected to ‘be cultured in ways that go beyond achieving task efficiency and productivity’ (Chen and Lee, 2008: 18). For example, an important organisational goal is harmony (he) (Zhang et al., 2008). For most leaders in the Chinese societies, harmony is precious (he wei gui); they need to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships within organisations and avoid open conflicts (Walker and Qian, 2011; Zhang et al., 2008).
Despite widespread recognition of the key role of school leaders in building a positive teacher culture, and of how traditional Chinese cultural values continue to influence leadership and organisational behaviour, few empirical studies connecting these factors have been conducted in China. There are studies exploring how Chinese school leaders develop teachers (Qian and Walker, 2013), how teachers learn at school (Wong, 2010, 2012) and the characteristics of the Chinese school culture (Zhu et al., 2014). However, no single study was found in the English-language literature that focuses specifically on the role of Chinese school leaders in constructing a positive culture among teachers. While several Chinese-language papers have addressed the topic (e.g. Tao, 2011; Wei, 2008; Zheng, 2012), these tend to be what Walker et al. (2012) categorise as ‘commentaries’, and lack any empirical support. Whilst there has been ample discussion of the morality, values and virtues expected of school leaders (e.g. Li, 2011; Rui, 2008; Xu, 2011), little is known about how they embed important values in their schools to nurture a positive learning culture among teachers.
To better locate the understanding of school leadership in the Chinese context, the next section explores some of the significant educational change taking place in China.
Context
The structural settings in Chinese schools provide favourable preconditions for nurturing a positive teacher learning culture. However, the ongoing – quite radical – curriculum reform demands a fundamental shift in teaching and learning, which poses new challenges for school leaders. Chinese schools are home to institutionalised ‘contrived curriculum and teaching organisation(s)’ (Wang and Paine, 2003: 75), namely, the TRG (jiaoyanzu) within schools. Introduced from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, TRGs are employed to construct and disseminate pedagogical approaches (Wang and Paine, 2003; Wong, 2012). Each school has several subject-based TRGs, including Mathematics, English, Chinese and Integrated Subject TRGs, each of which organises regular weekly or bi-weekly learning activities (Wong, 2010, 2012). These activities may involve collaborative lesson preparation, class observation and mentoring support (Wong, 2010).
A teacher honour system is also instituted in Chinese schools. Teachers are classified according to a tiered ‘expertise’ ladder 2 ; those with recognised teaching expertise (yewu) receive the title of backbone (gugan) teachers at school, district, provincial (municipal) or national levels (Song et al., 2015). These expert teachers are identified so that they can share their expertise in practice and provide coaching and mentoring for their peers.
Thus, teacher learning strategies such as collaborative inquiry and peer coaching are not new to Chinese teachers. These teacher learning strategies are also congruent with the societal values such as collectivism and respect for hierarchy (Child, 1994; Hofstede, 2001). In collectivist societies, cultural norms press people to place group goals above personal goals and to think and behave within accepted social expectations (Lo et al., 2015). Respect for seniority and age is also encouraged (Chen and Lee, 2008; Child, 1994). TRGs operated almost as small families where the TRG heads and expert teachers are parents and senior family members. New teachers are regarded as children who need support and guidance.
The ongoing curriculum reform poses new challenges for schools, school leaders and teachers and thus raises higher expectations for TRGs to develop teachers and improve teaching and pedagogy (Qian and Walker, 2013). The national curriculum reform was launched in 2001 with the release of the milestone document Framework for the Curriculum Reform of Basic Education – The Trial Version (Ministry of Education, 2001). Shanghai is often given the ‘privilege’ of experimenting with reforms before their national endorsement (Cheng, 2011). In line with its pioneering role, Shanghai launched curriculum reform much earlier than other cities, with Phase-2 reform introduced in 1998.
The curriculum reform has entailed a shift from teacher- and text-centred to student-centred approaches to learning and teaching in which students participate actively, authentically and creatively in their own learning (Sargent et al., 2011). Hence, the primary role of teachers has shifted from conveyor of knowledge to facilitator of student learning, and school leaders need to move beyond monitoring school academic success to facilitating deeper learning through curriculum design (Yin, 2012).
These challenges have cast the spotlight on school leaders. For example, in a recent policy initiative to promote curriculum leadership in Shanghai, school leaders are called upon to ‘facilitate the professional growth of each individual teacher and teachers as a team…and boost teacher capacity of researching and implementing the curriculum’ (Shanghai Education Commission, 2010: 4). Some schools, including our focal school, School M, have responded to these challenges in a proactive way. The following section discusses the study’s background and process.
The study
School M, which is more than 100 years old, was selected in 1999 as a pilot school to implement the curriculum reform (Phase 2) launched one year earlier. The same year, it began formal collaboration with a major normal university in Shanghai in a university–school collaborative improvement scheme. School M is located in a suburban district with an expanding population. Under pressure of increased enrolment, it opened two new campuses in 2004 and 2008. Today, School M is a three-campus school with more than 300 teachers and 4500 students. Its current principal, Principal H, started working at the school in 1991 and became principal in 1998. He has been granted the title of Special-Class Principal 3 , the highest rank for any Shanghai principal.
Under Principal H, School M has won a number of awards and titles, and is widely recognised as a forerunner of educational change. For example, the school has won a competitive municipal-level research grant to pilot and explore the teacher learning system as one of 14 key projects funded by the Shanghai government to scale up successful practices. Although we were initially drawn to the school by these achievements, our reasons for choosing it for our case study went beyond public acclaim. In our earliest contacts with teachers of the school, almost all conveyed pride at being a part of School M. It was this strong sense of belonging and teachers’ absolute confidence in the school that prompted us to engage in deeper investigation. In this sense, School M was selected as an extreme case and it could provide the most outstanding examples of how school leaders could build a positive teacher learning culture.
We adopted a purposive sampling strategy to select participants within School M. Principal H recommended participants based on a set of criteria we provided. The criteria aimed to achieve maximum variation among the participants (Cohen et al., 2011; Teddlie and Yu, 2007). The criteria applied by Principal H included: (1) mid-level leaders who oversee teacher development and teacher learning; (2) 2–3 subject heads; (3) 5–7 teachers with varied work experience, subject backgrounds and at different career stages who work or have worked at different campuses 4 . Our aim was to intentionally include staff across a range of roles and capacities in order to explore the connections between leadership and learning culture from the perspective of both leaders and teachers.
Altogether 10 staff members participated in the study. Table 1 provides detailed demographic information on each.
Participants’ demographic information.
We conducted individual face-to-face interviews with each of the five formal leaders (principal, vice principal and three mid-level leaders) and two focus group interviews with the five teachers. We used focus group interviews to intentionally mix senior and younger teachers. For example, one focus group included a mentor and mentee pair. This allowed us to discuss teacher learning activities such as peer observation and collaborative lesson preparation from different angles in the same interview setting. All interviews lasted for at least an hour. We also collected relevant school documents, including different issues of the school newsletter and a book compiling the output of a school research project. The newsletter is issued twice a year; each issue has more than 100 pages and contains teacher reflective journals, reading reports and a record of important school events. The documents both complemented and helped triangulate evidence collected from interviews. For example, during the interview the English TRG Head mentioned how a team of senior English teachers devoted time to help a young teacher to prepare for an important teaching contest. In one issue of the newsletter we found an article written by this young teacher entitled Because of You where she expressed her gratitude for the support she received from colleagues.
Data were analysed using an informative framework comprising leadership strategies in three basic dimensions: structures, values and relationships (Schein, 1985; Walker, 2010, 2012). Analysis was performed in two phases: vertical analysis, in which participants’ voices were analysed separately, followed by comparative horizontal analysis seeking common themes and patterns across the interviews (Cohen et al., 2011). In applying common themes, we created such codes as actions related to structures, values and relationships and the effects of structure-, value- and relationship-related strategies. In addition, we bracketed off sections of text corresponding to a specific code in each transcript, field note and/or document. We then gathered key data within two thematic categories: (1) leadership strategies used to build a positive learning culture and (2) the effects of those strategies on teachers.
A number of interrelated limitations need to be acknowledged. The first was that the principal recommended the participants involved in the study. Given authority structures in Chinese schools, access to participants is almost always at the principal’s discretion. We believe that providing a set of selection criteria maximised the chances of getting good respondents. The second limitation was that the small number of participants might not be representative of the teachers across the school’s three campuses. In this regard we trusted that the principal knew the teachers and could select the most information-rich participants with respect to the purpose of the study (Cohen et al., 2011). In other words, the teachers and leaders were selected because they were more active teacher learners, or effective teacher learning organisers. The third limitation was our reliance on the self-reported interviews without the support of data collected from other sources, such as classroom observation. The problem here was that we could not make any firm connections between the respondents’ claims and classroom practice. While we acknowledge this weakness, this exploratory study sought only to identify the major leadership strategies used to build the teacher learning culture; further studies are needed to examine whether these strategies become rooted in teachers’ classroom practices.
Findings
This section reports the study’s major findings and answers two main questions: How do school leaders build a positive teacher learning culture? How does this culture affect teachers’ working lives?
Leadership strategies
Multiple leadership strategies were identified as being used in School M to construct and nurture learning conditions across the three components of structures, values and relationships: redesigning school structures to enhance teacher learning; promoting and valuing learning as a part of professional life; and creating an open and supportive climate conducive to trusting relationships.
Redesigning school structures to enhance teacher learning
School M’s leaders intentionally redesigned school policies and formal systems to guide teacher learning and stimulate teachers’ desire to learn more. Three broad strategies were identified. First, school leaders adopted a connective approach to reorganise school teaching and research activities (jiaoyan huodong). Second, they created ample opportunities for teachers to demonstrate and reflect upon their practices. Third, the school modified its teacher assessment policies to highlight the importance of continuous learning and reflection.
Strategy 1: Adopting a connective approach to reorganise school teaching and research activities
As in most Chinese schools, School M relied on TRGs to organise teaching and research activities. Teachers participated in these activities, which include lesson observation and after-lesson discussion, collaborative lesson planning and invited seminars, in a fixed timeslot each week or every two weeks. Principal H recognised that this traditional teacher learning system could produce limited effects even if teacher learning activities were well intended: For many schools the teaching and research activities are discrete. The heads of the TRGs are usually asked to submit the themes of the activities at the beginning of a semester. For the topics of these activities over the semester,…there may be some connections, but the connections are by no means strong. […] A commonly adopted form of teaching and research activity is to ask one teacher to teach and other members to observe. One senior staff is usually invited as the major commentator while feedbacks from other teachers are also encouraged. Thus…most teachers do not actually benefit from sitting in the class observation.
First, for each individual learning activity, the school required that TRG heads carefully design specific tasks for each member, which aided teacher preparation. The TRG heads were also asked to design post-learning tasks, allowing teachers to apply what they had learnt to their own practice. For example, if the planned activity was a demonstration class by a gugan teacher, all panel members would receive tailor-made tasks weeks before the formal gathering. It was then generally suggested that younger teachers teach the same lesson in their own classes, whilst more senior teachers might perform tasks such as helping their younger counterparts prepare the lesson and collect relevant teaching documents. In Vice Principal K’s words, every teacher ‘brought their own resources to the big group discussion, and each one had a different angle to contribute to the discussion’. This approach greatly improved the quality of TRG-organised formal collective learning activities.
Second, the connective approach was applied to the selection of major learning themes; the selection was usually based on identification of common problems or difficulties encountered by teachers. In the interviews, the school leaders emphasised vertical connections, pointing out that new learning must build upon teachers’ prior knowledge and experience. English TRG Head W provided an example from her panel: Our campus was a new one…and our team was relatively less experienced. We thus put our emphasis on improving teaching of the core lesson (hexin ke, the most important lesson in a unit). This was our theme over the two-year span; we organised lesson observation, collaborative lesson preparation and case analyses. Two years later we believed that teachers had less difficulty in teaching single lessons. We then expanded our teacher learning to improvement of a unit teaching.
Strategy 2: Creating ample opportunities for teachers to display and reflect on their practices
Principal H said he firmly believed that teachers needed to experience success, as it could boost their intrinsic motivation. Thus, the job of school leadership was to construct platforms and stages for teachers to showcase their practices and have opportunities to feel good about themselves.
First, the school strongly emphasised the role of gugan teachers and created opportunities for them to learn from external experts. The school regularly invited municipal-level experts and special-class teachers (teji jiaoshi) in each subject area to diagnose classroom teaching. It also co-organised teaching seminars and high-level demonstration activities. English TRG Head W cited some of the large-scale activities organised by her panel: This semester we had two municipal-level demonstration activities. Our school also co-hosted a national seminar on English textbooks and we presented teaching of one unit (three lessons) for nationwide visitors.
Second, the school also designed mechanisms to enhance the sense of achievement amongst experienced teachers who lack the gugan title. For example, within the learning activities organised by TRGs, these teachers were often assigned tasks to help their younger colleagues. Principal H recognised the importance of this arrangement: Before the formal learning activity experienced teachers are asked to collect relevant documents and explain these to young teachers. This helps these experienced teachers to gain a sense of pride. [They would feel proud that] my suggestions can be well-received.
Strategy 3: Modifying teacher assessment policies to highlight the importance of continuous learning and reflection
School M strongly advocated teacher participation in continuous learning and reflection, and has thus modified its teacher evaluation policies.
The teachers at School M needed to complete certain tasks that may not have been required in other schools. For example, every teacher was asked to complete a mini-research project relevant to classroom teaching and student learning each academic year and submit four reflective journals. Principal H believed that mini-research helped teachers to constantly reflect on their practices and develop the habit of collecting and utilising data. The school then made the institutional and manpower arrangements necessary to accommodate these requirements.
Furthermore, the school also encouraged teachers to participate in school-level research paper competitions. According to Research Coordinator Z, School M organised a research paper competition for 11 consecutive years. Teachers could select their best research paper or case report to enter in the competition, and the school then organised subject-based review committees to blindly review submissions. Teachers who received prizes were awarded a monetary bonus and a better performance appraisal. Most teachers were strongly motivated to submit their research output, Z said. In the 2013 competition, the school received more than 300 submissions, with some teachers submitting four papers.
In addition, the school encouraged teachers to apply for district-level research grants and provided those who intended to apply with support and resources. For example, part of Z’s job was to provide professional support to teachers writing research proposals. She also helped them to revise the format of proposals before they were submitted. In 2013, School M submitted more than 40 project applications, only seven of which did not receive funding. Teachers who were awarded district-level grants received better appraisal results.
These data show that the school leadership built structural conditions to promote teacher learning. However, structures alone cannot effect meaningful change, and the school leaders remained aware of the importance of values.
Promoting and valuing learning as a part of professional life
The leaders said they recognised their responsibility to establish and embed a set of conditions that promote and encourage learning as a part of professional life. By promoting learning, the school helped teachers to discover the meaning and value of their careers, as Principal H explained: Teachers’ incomes are similar no matter which school they work for. Then why do they want to stay in our school? Is there anything our school can offer while teachers may not get from other schools? I think our school has collective wisdom and also a harmonious and pro-innovation atmosphere. This is our strength.…Teachers feel that while working at School M is more demanding, it is worthwhile. They can really live as a teacher and as a professional. In some other schools they cannot find the value of being a teacher.
Strategy 1: Modelling the value of change and innovation
Principal H recognised the risk of being reluctant to change. If teachers were overly reliant on ‘what worked for me before’, he said, they would stop learning. Accordingly, he made it clear to teachers that they needed to update their lesson plans regardless of how many years they have taught the same textbooks. He was also highly aware that teachers would not engage in active experimentation if he did not model change and innovation as a principal: I am now thinking how I would present at our annual teachers’ gathering.…I want to have a new form of presentation. What I am thinking is to prepare a 20-minute-long video. I want to show this video to teachers to let them know what they have done over this academic year…What impressions will teachers get when they watch the video? They will see that the principal keeps embracing new ideas. Then they would be better motivated to change.
Strategy 2: Investing time and effort in teacher learning and accompanying teachers on their learning journeys
Learning is most effective when embedded in social interactions, and teachers are more likely to engage in meaningful learning when they witness others’ work and have someone witness theirs. At School M, the mid-level leaders, particularly the TRG heads, spent a lot of time with teachers on their learning journeys. These subject leaders expressed the strong belief that the success of the school is dependent on all teachers, not just on a few star teachers. For example, Mathematics TRG Head N volunteered to join the third campus when it opened and took on the difficult job of developing a new team. The new campus initially had only four maths teachers, and N spent a considerable amount of time in their classrooms: I went to observe their lessons. After observation, I immediately gave them my feedbacks and told them how they could improve. And then I asked them to teach the same lesson based on my suggestions. For example, if I observed their teaching during the 1st session in the morning, I would ask them to reconstruct the lesson in the 4th session (and sometimes even in the 2nd session). I worked very hard in 2009 and 2010. I was always the first to arrive at the school; I arrived at 7 am. When I went back home, it was usually 7 pm or 8 pm. I felt tired, but happy to witness the growth of my team members. It was similar to farmers who are contented to see the seeds sprout.
Strategy 3: Igniting teachers’ passion for better teaching by showing them students’ growth
Principal H believed that teachers would be better motivated when their inner passion for better teaching was ignited. Such passion would lead teachers to proactively seek learning and development opportunities. To ignite a passion for teaching, teachers needed to see that their own learning makes a difference to student learning. N recalled the first four members of her panel becoming devoted to learning: I gave them feedback after class observation. They found that after taking my suggestions, the teaching was different and the students’ reactions were different. They were very excited. They all asked me: ‘N, can we keep on doing this?’ They felt very happy and more confident.
A learning culture cannot thrive in an environment without trust and collaboration. In addition to building structural and value conditions, another important job for leaders is to construct trusting and collaborative relationships within the school.
Creating an open and supportive climate conducive to trusting relationships
Relationships grounded in trust are indispensable to a positive learning culture. Principal H expressed pride in his school’s open sharing atmosphere. The school’s leaders did not try to control or monitor teachers, he said, which helped to sustain positive relationships between them. Furthermore, these leaders encouraged and modelled the open sharing approach to promote collaboration amongst teachers. The following paragraphs describe some of their strategies.
Strategy 1: Understanding and caring for teachers rather than controlling and monitoring them
Several of School M’s mid-level leaders expressed gratitude for the trust the principal places in them. For example, Z said that working in the school gave her a strong sense of security because of the principal’s absolute trust in her. That trust gave her the security to experiment and try out different approaches.
Principal H trusted not only his mid-level leaders, but treasured every member of his staff. Z recalled this incident: We recruited a new English teacher several years ago. After she worked at the school for half a year, she decided to resign. She dreamed that working in a big company would be more exciting. She talked to the principal. The principal said that the school would like her to stay, but they would not stop her if she really wanted to leave. On the first night the girl started her new job, she decided to come back. And our principal again recruited her. [when he is asked why he allowed her to come back], he says that she is like his own child. It is natural that the children want to explore the world when they grow up. They will come back when they are hurt. He understands them.
As it seeks to understand and care for teachers, School M did not rely on top-down control policies to discipline teachers. For example, the school never checked on teachers’ attendance, and saw no need to monitor their schedules. On the contrary, the school adopted a number of humane policies to extend its care for teachers. For example, staff could ask for special leave when their children sat the senior secondary school entrance exam (zhongkao) or university entrance exam (gaokao), as the school understood that teachers needed to perform their parenting role on these important occasions.
Strategy 2: Promoting sharing, collaboration and collective wisdom
The school strongly advocated inter-colleague information sharing. In the interviews, school leaders expressed the strong belief that such sharing does not weaken individual wisdom, but develops collective wisdom. Principal H made this clear. He said he is often questioned about whether increasing the number of teachers might dilute the quality of teaching resources. His answer is that teaching resources are like seeds; they need to spread to flourish. His fellow leadership team members were also willing to share their experience and wisdom with teachers, as N noted: Since I took the post of the panel head, it has been my responsibility to develop my panel members (at least I cannot hinder their development). I really hope they can grow, thus I share with them without any reservation. I will teach them whatever I know and I can think about.
It is clear that School M’s leaders adopted multiple strategies to nurture a positive learning culture among teachers. The next section explores how the learning culture affects teachers’ work lives.
Impact of the positive learning culture on teachers
All of the teacher participants stated that School M had changed their perceptions of teaching and teacher learning. They said they believed that the school had established a very effective teacher learning system and that they were valued as professionals. The teachers also noted that the atmosphere of open sharing and selfless support amongst colleagues made working at School M an enjoyable experience. This section explores the effects of the aforementioned leadership strategies for building structural, value and relationship conditions on teachers’ work lives.
Conviction that learning and work are not mutually exclusive
The teacher interviewees all reported that the school’s ‘Leading forward and following-up’ teacher learning system had reshaped their perceptions of teacher learning and helped them to understand that learning is not additional work. Rather, it made their teaching more effective. Those with prior work experience were particularly convinced of this, as Teacher L noted: In my previous experience, school-based teacher learning was sitting in TRG activities at a fixed time. After I came to this school…I find that teachers are really engaged in active discussion. They will give you a lot of feedbacks on your teaching…I can draw ideas from others and identify my weaknesses that I need to improve. When I first came, I was really impressed by this learning culture. After we observed a lesson, I was amazed that each of them had so much to share. I felt that I had no idea to contribute…. In the past year, I have observed so many interactions between teachers. They always talk about students and teaching…. Now I’ve formed some of my thoughts. So sometimes I also have ideas to contribute. I enjoy exposing my ideas and having them interact with others. For some school-level research projects, we as gugan teachers took more leading roles. We will give younger teachers (with 3 or 4 years’ experiences) opportunities to teach some district-level demonstration lessons. Gugan teachers can teach at municipal- or national-level demonstration lessons. Thus everybody can see the room they can improve. The opportunities are not reserved for a few teachers.
(Re)discovering the value of being a teacher
The three teacher interviewees with prior work experience in other schools all mentioned that School M had reshaped their value perceptions of being a teacher. Teacher Y’s experience was typical: I had been a teacher for eight years before I came to School M. I chose to come to School M not because of any grand education ideals, but for its closer location to my home…After I came to this school, I am impressed by teachers’ continuous pursuit of better teaching…. Now I can understand the value of teaching in a more profound way. I also learn to consider students’ needs and understand students. After we observe a lesson, colleagues will have heated discussion. Then on the way to lunch they may continue the discussion. After we come back to office, one teacher may suddenly get a new idea and this will lead to new discussion. We have a strong pro-innovation atmosphere. Nobody is willing to follow a routine. We want to make a difference.
Working with selfless colleagues
When asked about the interpersonal relationships within the school, the teachers used words such as selflessness, sacrifice and openness. They all said that the school’s panel heads modelled open sharing. They were particularly grateful for the support of the subject heads, as Teacher Y commented: The TRG heads have high professional attainment…More importantly, they have open mindset. They provide professional support without any reservation. They are dedicated to sharing. There is no need to reserve. It [what I know] is not my patent. If I share my ideas and experiences with her, I will not lose anything. In some schools teachers do not want to share because they are afraid other teachers would produce better student exam results. At our school we are not evaluated on the basis of student results.
This paper has provided considerable evidence and examples of what leaders can do to build and sustain a learning culture, as well as how teachers learn and relate to one another in that culture, based on a case study of School M. The final section discusses the implications that can be drawn about leading a teacher learning culture.
Implications
Teacher learning cultures do not just happen. They are crafted by school leaders through the conditions they nurture in the school. To build a learning culture among teachers, leaders need to consciously ‘make connections’ within and across different cultural conditions (Walker, 2010; 2012) in the following ways.
Connecting and aligning structures, values and relationships. Whilst each of these components is important to building a teacher learning culture, it is their combined effect that really matters. If leaders cannot connect values, structures and relationships coherently, they are unlikely to build and sustain a positive learning culture, which in essence concerns ‘successful relationships that are values-based, learning-focused, human centred and action-oriented’ (Walker, 2010: 179). The main reason for School M’s successful teacher learning culture is that different cultural conditions are in harmony and congruence with one another.
Connecting values and actions. Modelling is a powerful force (Southworth, 2004). If leaders want the school community to value learning, they cannot simply claim to hold particular values; they must clearly demonstrate them to others. The leaders of School M demonstrate that they are learning professionals, care for and value teachers, and are willing to share. Such modelling is conducive to a teacher learning culture.
Connecting past experiences and new learning. The example of School M shows that learning demands active experimentation and the embracing of new ideas (Fullan, 2001, 2007). Thus, overreliance on past experiences may hinder learning, although experience itself is invaluable in informing learning. At School M, teachers with rich experience are highly valued because they are able to share their wisdom with younger teachers through mentoring, collective discussion and collaborative inquiry. Leaders need to strategically encourage all teachers to try something new while respecting and harnessing individual experience.
Connecting learning and work. Instruction, classroom teaching and student learning are the core tasks of schools (Spillane, 2013). School M has successfully helped teachers to recognise that teacher learning is essential to achieving these core tasks. Work and learning are not mutually exclusive at the school, but rather go hand in hand (Bredeson, 2003). Teachers become fully convinced of the truth of this proposition when they see the difference their learning makes to classroom teaching and student outcomes.
Connecting leadership strategies with the context. Leaders also need to maintain congruence between their strategies and the macro social context and specific organisational context (Akkary, 2014; Day et al., 2010; Tan and Dimmock, 2014; Walker, 2007). For example, teachers in China have a relatively light teaching workload, which makes it possible for school leaders to allocate blocks of time for teacher learning. Principal H is confident that he has a strong mid-level leadership team, and is thus able to promote a learning culture through a relatively dispersed structure.
Many of the strategies adopted by leaders at School M are culturally and contextually sensitive and as such are not readily transferrable in their pure form to different societal contexts. With this caveat, our research attests to the important role of school leadership in building and leading teacher learning cultures and buffering teachers from rampant accountability demands (Walker and Ko, 2011). The study also supports claims that school leadership matters ‘in sustaining a sense of resilience, commitment and effectiveness among the staff’ (Gu, 2013: 38).
Conclusion
After visiting a Shanghai primary school, Friedman (2013) commented that Shanghai’s secret is a relentless focus on the basics and a deep commitment to teacher training, peer-to-peer learning, and ongoing professional development, all of which appear to be inherent features of School M. In saying that, however, we do not claim that School M’s practices are common across Shanghai. This study reveals that a positive learning culture is dependent on intentional design and a strong commitment to values within and across the leadership team. Successful school leaders are those who can harness traditional structural settings, such as teaching and research groups, and instil in them a passion for change and innovation. The study also affirmed that successful leaders in present day Chinese schools are influenced by traditional Confucian values. For example, leaders are expected to take a parent-like approach to the care and support of teachers in their school. Successful leaders build upon teachers’ respect for positional power and mould this respect into mutual trust by aligning words with deeds. Whilst School M may not be typical, this paper provides an empirical understanding of school leadership embedded in the cultural realities of China, thereby contributing to a knowledge base still on its way to maturation.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The paper is supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong through an Early Career Scheme (ECS 28402814).