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Introduction
In the last decade, research advances have suggested that leadership practices focus on the student's teaching-learning process and teacher professional development. In this sense, various studies confirm the need to promote effective management practices with a focus on the teacher's pedagogical performance (Bolivar, 2020; Leithwood et al., 2020; Chaucono et al., 2022).
However, traditional leadership practices divorced from professional development and distant from school improvement still prevail in schools nowadays.
Research demonstrates that establishing a professional learning community within the school fosters collaborative learning among administrators and teachers, driven by principles of questioning, inquiry, and mutual collaboration (Mellado & Chaucono, 2019; Stoll, 2019; Martinez, 2021). Likewise, Villagra et al. (2022) maintain that one of the mediating variables to improve student learning is the commitment assumed by the teaching team in their pedagogical work. Consequently, it seems essential to transition from hierarchical management practices, focused on teacher supervision and standardized academic results, towards a leadership training approach that promotes the improvement of the school community.
Given this backdrop, in recent years the Ministry of Education of Chile (2015) has established a policy for Strengthening School Management Leadership1, which promotes guidelines for the development of professionalization of management teams through effective educational practices. In this sense, Hargreaves and Fullan (2014) argue that educational leadership must collectively guide the development of professional capabilities among teachers to lead the teaching-learning process. In other words, it is essential to have management teams that possess solid pedagogical knowledge to carry out leadership practices focused on the professional development of teachers and student learning.
Over the past decade, questioning and reflecting on one's own practices has been key to understanding the network of representations that emerge when making decisions in school leadership (Mellado et al., 2017; Chaucono et al., 2022). In this regard, Mellado and Chaucono (2016) have stated that delving deeper into the representations of teachers and administrators would explain the approach that prevails in the decisions that guide school improvement processes. In other words, the implicit representations held by school leaders are part of managerial knowledge and directly influence their pedagogical leadership practices.
From this framework, the general objective of this study emerges, which consists of promoting understanding of the pedagogies of teachers and administrators in order to transition towards leadership for learning. In this sense, three specific objectives are proposed: 1. to jointly evaluate teachers and administrators' pedagogical leadership practices; 2. to design and implement leadership practices for learning that significantly impact the quality of educational tasks; and 3. to present reflections on the understandings constructed in leadership practices for learning.
Reference frame
Currently, there are multiple investigations that define school administrators' leadership as one of the variables that sustainably affects student learning (Mellado et al., 2017; Bolívar, 2018; Chaucono et al., 2020; Fullan, 2020; Robinson, 2022;Villagra et al., 2022; Aravena et al., 2023). Along the same lines, various authors maintain that developing leadership in schools implies improving the conditions to professionalize teachers (Marshall, 2019; Harris & Jones, 2020; Bolívar, 2021). In other words, to significantly impact learning and the professional development of teachers, it is necessary to shift management practices towards a leadership perspective for learning.
Leadership for learning encompasses a set of practices that school management teams develop in their schools to enhance both teaching performance and student learning (Bolivar, 2020; Chaucono et al., 2022). Within this framework, classroom observation has recently become a recurring practice of pedagogical leadership in schools as a means of evaluating teachers (Elmore, 2019; Leiva & Vásquez, 2019; Mellado & Chaucono, 2019). That is, the majority of school management teams adopt a traditional pedagogical leadership approach, which is restricted to the permanent concern for observing teaching, especially curricular coverage, understood as the percentage of "content completed" and "objectives worked on" by the teaching staff. in classes, to the detriment of focusing attention on the student's learning process.
In this context, various authors (Müller et al., 2013; Cifuentes, 2019; Lopez & Cardenasso, 2022) state that observing teachers performance in their pedagogical work allows them to verify the difficulties of curricular approach and teaching-learning strategies that present in the classroom. Additionally, other studies maintain that timely observation and feedback to teachers can enhance the quality of their pedagogical practices (Neumerski, 2013; Choi & Kang, 2019; Aravena et al., 2023). The effectiveness of this approach depends on school administrators possessing solid pedagogical knowledge, enabling them to provide formative support to teachers in their professional development. It is expected that school administrators move beyond mere teacher observation and feedback on strengths and weaknesses, and engage in teacher support as an opportunity for reflection, collaboration, and learning among professionals, with a focus on student learning in the classroom.
Likewise, it is essential that educational leaders assume the management of teacher professional development based on the demands emerging in the classroom and implement practices that enable the construction of pedagogical principles collaboratively between teachers and administrators, addressing the educational issues and needs of the school (Murphy, 2015; Bolivar, 2018; Robinson, 2019). Similarly, Rincon (2019) maintains that school leadership teams must promote a culture of collaborative learning within the school, aiming to facilitate the rediscovery of pedagogical meaning through the critical analysis of their practices. In other words, teacher professional development lies in a continuous improvement of performance managed within the school for the enhancement of teaching practice.
Teacher professional development requires managerial practices that challenge teachers' thinking and critically interrogate their representations for continuous improvement in performance. However, various studies have indicated that a linear and instrumental logic associated with improvement as an individual initiative prevails (Imbernon, 2017; Rossello & De la Iglesia, 2021; Chaucono et al., 2022; Alonso & Vera, 2023). Therefore, it is essential to manage collective professional learning opportunities, such as the formation of professional learning communities.
The professional learning community becomes a powerful leadership practice when it focuses on collaborative learning between teachers and administrators, thereby promoting social interaction to construct professional learning that enhances the quality of classroom practices (Rincon, 2019; Stoll, 2019; Chaucono et al., 2020). This aligns with the stance of several authors who advocate for fostering collaborative environments for collective learning. In this regard, professional discussion becomes relevant because it promotes horizontal interaction and reflection on teaching practices among peers (Krichesky & Murillo, 2018; Mellado & Chau-cono, 2019; Fullan, 2020; Barrero et al., 2020; Aravena et al., 2023; Peña, 2023). In other words, it is expected that school leadership teams form a professional learning community whose primary concern is the design of learning opportunities and the delivery of classes, processes that require a robust system of pedagogical support with a formative nature, focused on improving teaching practice and student learning.
Specifically, rethinking leadership practice requires a permanent process of collective construction among teachers, management teams and peers, where pedagogical decisions inherent in learning planning are mutually questioned, leading to the reconstruction of the comprehensive frameworks that are associated with a good lesson, and that serve as references for the discussion of classroom practice. This form of leading professional development favors critical reflection that stimulates questioning and awareness of performance, with the purpose of ensuring self-regulation processes of pedagogical practices. Similarly, Bolivar (2020) argues that teacher professional communities are a formative practice that fosters questioning about the effectiveness of pedagogical practices during the teaching-learning process, in relation to the various opportunities for student learning. Thus, fostering learning within professional communities among teachers allows for the promotion of pedagogical dialogues and the tensioning of school culture for continuous improvement of learning.
In this regard, different studies have maintained that professional learning communities require a collaborative school culture oriented toward the development of joint work between teachers and administrators, to investigate, discuss, and analyze the pedagogical difficulties and/or challenges of the practice in the classroom (Elmore, 2010; Fullan, 2019; Chaucono et al., 2020). In other words, leading professional learning communities within educational institutions not only requires a climate of trust, but also pedagogical leaders who produce cognitive dissonance in the pedagogical assumptions entrenched in teachers' thinking, taking into consideration the construction of practical knowledge and the development of intuitive theories that may hinder the transformation of school culture.
For this reason, various studies have emphasized the need to investigate the implicit representations held by management teams, with the aim of delving deeper into their thinking to understand the underlying approach to educational leadership practice (Aparicio, 2016; Mellado & Chaucono, 2016; Chaucono et al., 2020). These representations are intuitively constructed, shaped by epistemological and conceptual principles assimilated through knowledge, experience, and training (Contreras, 2010; Rojas, 2014). Furthermore, they act as filters for new perspectives on pedagogical leadership and limit a deep understanding of their meaning. n other words, each administrator's implicit representations overlap and accommodate new knowledge, even though it may seem that there was a profound understanding.
These implicit representations can manifest as hybrid knowledge that coexists in the thinking and practices of school administrators (Chaucono et al., 2022), that is, they can be associated with both traditional and non-traditional approaches to school leadership. Therefore, it is necessary to confront these representations by posing probing questions that enable the learner to become aware of their approach when leading the teaching-learning process, aiming to reshape representations that impede educational progress and transform their own practices.
Methodology
This study corresponds to a case of descriptive and participatory scope (Guba & Lincoln, 2012), whose purpose is to contribute to the solution of problems that affect pedagogical leadership practices in schools from a dialogical approach (Ferrada, 2017). This implies that the individuals involved in the research raise a common issue through the analysis of their own practices, to build collective knowledge through the process of permanent reflection and initiate the transformation of practices that contribute to educational improvement in their own communities. The collection of this data was carried out using the following techniques:
a) Dialogical conversation: This involves reciprocal dialogue among all study participants. Its purpose is to critically discuss the issues that arise in different pedagogical meeting scenarios developed in the school setting. In this regard, Chaucono et al. (2022) maintain that these dialogues offer genuine learning scenarios, based on principles of collaboration and mutual respect among participants. To guarantee deep dialogical conversations, a guiding thread is followed based on probing questions that stimulate discussion among participants. To safeguard the content of the conversations, audio recordings were used to capture the twenty-one sessions conducted over a year by the research community. Likewise, the findings were systematized through constant feedback of information to the research community, until data saturation was achieved. Below, Table 1 shows the probing questions that stimulated professional discussion among participants:
Table 1 Probing questions stimulating professional discussion.
| Issue | Probing questions |
|---|---|
| Learning | How do we ensure that students learn meaningfully and deeply in school? |
| How do students lead their own learning in school? | |
| How do we evaluate what students are learning in our classes? |
Source: authors (2024)
b) Reflective journal: This technique becomes a situated, permanent, dialogic and feedback-based learning pathway among the participants of the research community. Its purpose is to delve deeper from the perspective of the different actors into the understandings built in the transition process of their own pedagogical leadership practices, based on the systematic questioning of the implicit representations about leadership rooted in their thinking and practice. In each session of work with the research community, reflections are recorded in a journal, where each member conducts a critical analysis of the learnings constructed and deconstructed in the various arguments that emerge from the probing questions. Subsequently, the data are systematized to validate the findings among the participants themselves, until reaching content saturation.
Participants
The inclusion criteria for the subjects who participated in this study were to have accumulated more than ten years of experience in the same educational center and to voluntarily participate in the research. In this way, nineteen people were selected: seventeen teachers, one pedagogical technical head, and one principal. The ages of the subjects ranged from 37 to 67 years old; 67% were women and 33% were men.
Data Analysis
The information collected both in the dialogic conversation and in the reflective journals was reduced and analyzed by the Atlas.ti 8.4 software to expedite the analysis. The data coding process was carried out using open coding, and the most significant semantic recurrences were identified. Subsequently, the findings were presented to the research community in order to validate the data from a more participatory and dialogic perspective. This allowed for the upward development of categories to explain the results found in this study.
Results
The results are presented in coherence with the objectives of this study. First, the results of the shared assessment between teachers and administrators regarding their own pedagogical leadership practices developed in the school are shown. Second, the design and implementation of the proposal to improve leadership practices for learning in teachers and administrators are presented. Third, reflections on the understandings constructed in the transformation of leadership practices for learning are discussed.
Results of the shared assessment between teachers and directors on the pedagogical leadership practices developed at the school.
In response to the question "How do we ensure that students learn meaningfully and deeply at school?" only one category emerges:
Category 1: Teaching-learning process practices focused on the transmission of information.
This category refers to the fact that teachers and administrators understand learning as a process focused on teaching, in which the teacher transmits information about the learning content to the student. Textual excerpts explaining this category are presented below:
"We ensure learning through the development of our classes, which are focused on practicing various exercises given on the blackboard and the student's book." (Teacher 5)
"Teachers of different disciplines talk about the subject matter we are planning on teaching the students." (Teacher 1)
"As administrators, we ensure learning when we review lesson plans and observe classes." (Principal)
"I think that reflection on pedagogical practices and active listening to our peers affected student learning." (Teacher 9)
"We must transmit to all students the knowledge required by the school curriculum to ensure that they learn." (Teacher 15)
As can be seen from the arguments expressed by the teaching and administrative staff, all participants conceive that they ensure learning through the transmission of content and the practice of activities, those developed by the teacher and those suggested in textbooks. This decontextualized and unchallenging view of learning threatens the integral development of the student. These results were corroborated by various studies that maintain that having a traditional view of learning directly influences teaching practices and indirectly influences students learning outcomes (Pozo, 2014; Mellado et al., 2017; Chaucono et al., 2022). Thus, there is a need to develop, jointly between administrators and teachers, leadership practices focused on improving the quality of learning tasks from the design and planning of classes.
Similarly, in response to the question "How do students lead their own learning at school?", the second category emerges.
Category 2: Extracurricular activities to level knowledge
This category is understood by teachers and school leaders as an action isolated from the school curriculum and meaningless for the students, in which extracurricular activities planned only by the teacher predominate.
To explain this category, the following arguments, which were recurrent, are presented below:
Students lead their learning through group workshops, which allows them to level their knowledge on what they have not learned in my classes. (Teacher 17)
One of the ways for students to lead their learning is through extracurricular workshops, where they choose the leveling courses that they like the most. (Head of the pedagogical technical unit (JUTP
- Head of Curricular Department)
To me, students lead their learning when they attend workshops because they can choose whether to attend or not; it's up to them. (Teacher 11)
They lead their learning at school when they sign up for workshops that take place in the afternoon to practice what they have learned in class. (Teacher 8)
As observed in the explanations expressed by teachers and administrators, it is believed that learning is led when the student chooses extracurricular workshop options at school; thus disregarding their responsibility in managing the school curriculum in order to design various learning opportunities for students. This superficial view of what it means to lead denotes understandings that affect the quality of learning tasks by omitting the interests, needs, and characteristics of the learner in the school context.
In this regard, Elmore (2019) states that leading learning involves transforming the role of the student in the classroom and improving teaching skills to design and develop challenging and contextualized educational tasks. In other words, it is necessary for teachers and school leaders to reflect on their implicit representations of learning built in their training in order to challenge these understandings through reflection and collaboratively propose action theories that allow for the reframing of understandings for the transformation of their pedagogical leadership practices.
In response to the question "How do we evaluate what students are learning in our classes?" the third category emerges:
Category 3: We evaluate with tests
In this category, it is evident that both administrators and teachers conceive assessment as tests that allow to check the mastery of the content that the student retained in class. Below recurrent arguments that represent this category are presented:
I evaluate with tests at the end of the class unit to verify if the student learned. (Teacher 8)
Mainly, tests are conducted at the conclusion of a unit to assess the student's comprehension of the subject matter studied. (JUTP - Chief of Curricular Department)
We evaluate with tests to check if the student learned. (Teacher 13)
At the school level, we evaluate with standardized tests at the end of a period because it is a way to objectify what the student learned. (Principal)
These insights regarding assessment indicate a persistent belief that testing remains an evaluative method with certain objectivity. These results are consistent with various studies that explain that assessment has become a pathology of teachers, since it is attributed to a simplistic and deep-rooted conception that impedes the improvement of teaching-learning processes (Chaucono et al., 2020; Villagra & Riquelme, 2023). In other words, it is essential to rethink the construct of "assessment" based on educational practice, which entails not only changing the assessment procedures and instruments, but also transforming the learning culture.
In conclusion, it is seen that both school leaders and teachers present a tendency towards pedagogical leadership practices focused on teaching and assessing the content that students must memorize in teacher-designed activities in class. Therefore, there is a necessity to shift towards the development of leadership practices for learning that facilitate questioning the implicit representations about assessment and learning, in order to transform the role assumed by the student, improve teaching skills and elevate the quality of the educational tasks.
Results of the design and implementation of leadership practices for learning among teachers and administrators
The following section outlines the results stemming from the design and implementation of leadership practices for learning.
Table 2 Proposal to improve leadership practices for learning.
| Practice Issue: Leadership practices focused on teaching and learning measurement | ||
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Pedagogical principles | Leadership Practices for Learning |
| Facilitating leadership practices for learning to rethink ways of teaching, learning, and assessing in the school context | Engaging the learner | Analyzing, discussing, and collaboratively identifying among teachers and administrators their understandings of the purposes pursued by curricular bases, learning standards, and school curriculum to design classes. |
| Learning collaboratively | Expressing the representations about learning and assessment that teachers and administrators have constructed through self-assessment, and identifying their beliefs through reflection and description of their pedagogical practice | |
| Self-assessment | Collaboratively investigating articles, videos, and books on learning, assessment, and educational innovations in the classroom. | |
| Problematising the learning task. | Designing, developing, and evaluating learning opportunities based on the pedagogical principles constructed by teachers and administrators, followed by engaging in dialogue with students regarding their preferred learning and assessment methods. This aims to identify their interests, needs, and characteristics to adjust and/or modify their lesson plans to address real-world problems within the s chool community | |
Source: Authors (2024).
As observed, the proposal aims to transition from pedagogical leadership centered on teaching to a leadership for learning. Thus, as an initial step, the purposes pursued by the instruments of the school curriculum are analyzed, questioned, and reflected upon, in order to identify their understandings about learning and subsequently, to challenge the representations to unlearn. Subsequently, both teachers and administrators identify their beliefs through the description of the practice, with the aim of identifying a common practice problem. From this context, participants inquire about readings, articles and books, and watch videos on learning, assessment and educational innovations. This exploration fosters collective discussions on the what, how, why, and purpose of shifting toward leadership for learning. From the construction of this knowledge, pedagogical principles are jointly formulated to move towards a new approach at both management and classroom levels. Finally, learning opportunities are designed, developed and evaluated to improve the educational quality offered to the student in coherence with established principles. At the same time, there is a dialogue with the students about the way in which they want to learn and be evaluated to design true learning opportunities that respond to their interests, needs, characteristics and problems.
In this sense, research advances affirm that the analysis of one's own practices can yield positive outcomes, especially when conducted collaboratively and addressing real and contextualized problems (Berrios et al., 2020; Hargreaves & O' Connor, 2020; Calatayud, 2022).
Results of reflections on the understandings built in leadership practices for learning
This section presents the results of the reflections on the comprehension of leadership practices for learning constructed by teachers and school administrators.
Reflection on the understandings of school administrators
It has been an ongoing process of introspection regarding my role as a school administrator. Together with the head of the pedagogical technical unit, we have scrutinized our decisions concerning pedagogical leadership, which occasionally focused solely on evaluating the actions of the teaching staff in the classroom, disregarding the students' learning progress. (Principal)
Similarly, we acknowledged that curriculum coverage was paramount, interpreted as imparting the entirety of the curriculum content to the students. Consequently, we dedicated considerable effort to observing classes to ensure adherence to this managerial directive. (Head of Curricular Department)
This reflection on our practices revealed that I perceived learning as a mere transmission of information to the learner. Consequently, I dominated discussions in meetings and dictated to teachers what they ought to do in their classes based on decisions made collectively as a school. I refrained from entertaining discussions on these decisions, fearing it would impede progress, and assumed they should comply with my directives because of my position as principal. (Principal)
This hierarchical and instruction-centered leadership perspective is evolving towards a leadership approach centered on learning, as I have reignited my passion for pedagogy. Engaging in dialogues with colleagues and peers about our interpretations of teaching, learning, and assessment has led to a heightened awareness of our perspectives and the realization that our school harbors divergent views on "learning" and "assessment". Consequently, we have embarked on collaborative explorations of literature and videos to understand what, how, and why we need to effect changes, culminating in the formulation of principles that guide our endeavors to enhance our leadership for learning. (Principal)
In this regard, Elmore (2019) affirms the need to transform schools from within the classroom, emphasizing that progress ensues when the pedagogical nucleus is revitalized. In essence, identifying shared challenges through collaborative discourse, with a focus on student learning, facilitates the construction of insights that inform more contextually relevant and situated teacher professional development tailored to the needs of the school environment.
Reflection on teachers' understandings
Realizing that our pedagogical practices were very traditional has been a very complex process, because we thought we were the best teachers. However, questioning among peers, together with the principal and the head of the curricular department, about the fact that students were not learning and were only memorizing the content of the subjects, invited us to evaluate our learning tasks. (Teacher 3)
These tasks were mostly of low quality, where students only practiced and answered very superficial questions that did not promote critical thinking. Furthermore, the questions only focused on what and how, leaving aside the development of more reflective and challenging questions. (Teacher 8)
These reflections highlight that peer and managerial learning instances have helped raise awareness of the beliefs about learning entrenched in teachers' pedagogical practices, fostering the development of small changes in the classroom and a new culture of learning in the school that contributes to redefining the roles of both students and teachers when facing an educational task.
Thus, fostering a culture of learning in the school makes it possible to redefine the roles of both students and teachers when facing an educational task.
Discussion and Conclusions
Regarding the shared assessment among teachers and administrators about their own pedagogical leadership practices, superficial understandings about learning and assessment associated with teacher-centered leadership are evident. These directly affect student learning. However, continuously and collaboratively questioning their own practice helped identify common problems, which were discussed and analyzed with the aim of raising some pedagogical principles that would guide the new established practice. This understanding of leadership from the perspectives of the participants enables addressing real and contextualized issues in the school. In this regard, research advances have shown that leading the school from real problems transforms the school into professional learning communities (Bolívar 2020; Leithwood et al., 2020).
Regarding how teachers and administrators design and implement leadership practices for learning, it can be concluded that critically reflecting on the quality of student tasks and how teachers assess them determines what students actually learn in the classroom. In this sense, Villagra and Riquelme (2023) emphasize the importance of understanding learning in school to to promote learning scenarios and opportunities in all educational areas. Likewise, co-constructing practices between teachers and administrators facilitates the transformation of the pedagogical core, changing the role of both students and teachers in the educational task.
In this sense, Chaucono et al. (2022) argue that promoting intellectual curiosity in the face of real problems allows education professionals to collaboratively investigate possible solutions. This facilitates the development of action theories that are implemented iteratively to consolidate a professional learning pathway. In simpler terms, it is essential to challenge traditional leadership paradigms and, above all, rethink the assessment culture, as it shapes the learning ethos in schools.
In conclusion, it is suggested for future studies to create learning communities involving teachers, administrators, and researchers in schools. This collaborative approach can help improve learning outcomes for children and young people in the region of La Araucanía. Additionally, it is important to expand the participant sample (a limitation of this study) and investigate the understandings developed about the leadership for learning approach from the learning tasks.
