Research Questions
Working in the educational institutions is apparently challenging work as teacher leaders needto cope with the school environment whereas at the same time they are required to enhance the progress of students. In my workplace, I have seen that the school culture for most of the time becomes the main barrier behind the effectiveness of teachers and students learning in an educational institution. Epsteinet al. (2011) identified that in educational institutions, highly educated teachers can exists. However, it does not guarantee that educated teachers can help students to learn their studies easily or make progress in their academic level rapidly. The same goes for teachers. Efficiency of teachers can improve if the workplace culture in the institution permits sharing of experience.
For instance, a teacher can be highly experienced in teaching social studies or in science. However, this experience cannot benefit the institution until there is a enrichingwork culture which allows sharing of the experience with other teachers. However, Heck and Hallinger(2014) argue that the main challenge here is not to share, but to overcome the personal attitude of educators. Most educators focus on their own growth and on the growth of their classroom students. They may show little or no interest in learning from colleagues especially those from the SLT seniors regarding the ways of teaching. Teacher leaders often find it difficult to even share their knowledge with those of other educators.
According to Kezar(2014), there is a certain lack of respect and proper work ethics among educators that creates barriers for teacher leaders to develop a good education system or to make changes in the existing system for a better learning environment. Knowleset al.(2014) found out that if all educators share their experience in terms of teaching methods and subject knowledge, it becomes easier for the students to perceive and learn their curriculum in an easier way. Further, a positive work culture, ethical behaviour among educators, sheer knowledge sharing and adoption of a common type of teaching method is quite certain to improve the overall progress and learning outcome of students.
I have been exposed to this particular barrier in educational leadership. I have tried to share my knowledge with others though end by finding that everyone is busy in their own development and growth. The intensity of community development in some educational institutions has tended to lead to the development of such a work culture.
Research Approach
Research questions are mainly developed to point out the research objectives based on the key requirements of the objected topic.
Question 1: What are the main factors that lead to the development of different norms of school culture that act as barriers to educational leadership?
Question 2: What role can the educational leaders take to eradicate the institutional culture issues that impact on student outcome and teachers efficiency?
Question 3: What is the impact of different norms of school culture on student learning outcome?
Question 4: What are the main ways by which educational leaders can help in the development of positive, sharing and positive work ethics within educational institutions?
Research approaches or paradigms are of mainly three types-positivism, interpretivism and realism.Mackey and Gass(2015) identified that positivism research paradigm discusses a phenomena or topic from the point of view of logic and reasoning. Further, positivism focuses on understanding and discovering relationship between the variables of a research and tends to achieve a distinction between theory and research by using quantitative method of research. On the other hand, realism paradigm, which believes that reality, can only be achieved through the appropriate use of methods and in-depth observation. Interpretivism in this regard is entirely different from positivism paradigm (Bell, 2014). Interpretivism philosophy upholds the view that researchers should focus on identifying subjective meaning of a social action as every knowledge gained is from the interpretation of people’s behaviour, their actions and their ideas(Robson and McCartan, 2016). It tends to identify the differences between objects and humans in a research, which is not given importance in quantitative research methods like positivism.
The current research focuses on identifying educational leader’s role in eradicating barriers in the education process as well on the impact of different norms of school culture. In order to answer these questions, quantifiable data is required. Therefore, a positivist approach seems to be appropriate which focuses on understanding people’s behaviour through quantifiable and deductive manner.
Research strategy can be defined as the instrument and method of collecting data in a number of ways. Research strategies are of different types namely survey, interview, observation, focus groups, action research and case study analysis. These strategies are used in either quantitative study or qualitative study as per the nature of the topic and data collection method selected (Flick, 2015). Survey is among the mostly common and favourite research strategy, which makes use of close-ended questionnaires to collect data from a specified targeted sample.
For the current research that tends to identify a professional problem related to educational leadership, it is necessary to understand the perspective of a huge sample to approach to a conclusion. As survey helps in obtaining unmatchable and huge amount of data, Survey can be taken into consideration for this process. Through survey, it becomes possible to gather data from huge population having the same behaviour. However, as said by Tayloret al. (2015), samples used in a research can provide haphazard answer due to the nature of close ended questionnaires which is likely to impact on the research outcome. Therefore, many opt for case study. On the other hand, research on the same respondents regarding the same topic after a while brings different results which question the validity and reliability of the survey approach.However, keeping in mind the nature of the topic that is educational leadership, the use of survey is appropriate to answer the research questions. Further, an interview of the educational leaders or the head of the institution can be conducted to compare and contrast the data gained through survey.
Reference List:
Bell, J., 2014. Doing Your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Epstein, J.L., Galindo, C.L. and Sheldon, S.B., 2011. Levels of leadership: Effects of district and school leaders on the quality of school programs of family and community involvement. Educational Administration Quarterly, 47(3), pp.462-495
Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project.Sage.
Heck, R. and Hallinger, P., 2014. Modeling the longitudinal effects of school leadership on teaching and learning. Journal of Educational Administration, 52(5), pp.653-681
Kezar, A., 2014. Higher education change and social networks: A review of research. The Journal of Higher Education, 85(1), pp.91-125.
Knowles, M.S., Holton III, E.F. and Swanson, R.A., 2014. The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development. Routledge
Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.
Robson, C. and McCartan, K., 2016. Real world research. John Wiley & Sons
Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley & Sons
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