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University teacher teams can work toward educational change through the process of team learning behavior, which involves sharing and discussing practices to create new knowledge. However, teachers do not routinely engage in learning behavior when working in such teams and it is unclear how leadership support can overcome this problem. Therefore, this study examines when team leadership behavior supports teacher teams in engaging in learning behavior. We studied 52 university teacher teams (281 respondents) involved in educational change, resulting in two key findings. First, analyses of multiple leadership types showed that team learning behavior was best supported by a shared transformational leadership style that challenges the status quo and stimulates team members’ intellect. Mutual transformational encouragement supported team learning more than the vertical leadership source or empowering and initiating structure styles of leadership. Second, moderator analyses revealed that task complexity influenced the relationship between vertical empowering team leadership behavior and team learning behavior. Specifically, this finding suggests that formal team leaders who empower teamwork only affected team learning behavior when their teams perceived that their task was not complex. These findings indicate how team learning behavior can be supported in university teacher teams responsible for working toward educational change. Moreover, these findings are unique because they originate from relating multiple team leadership types to team learning behavior, examining the influence of task complexity, and studying this in an educational setting.
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Most nurse leadership studies have concentrated on a classical, heroic, and hierarchical view of leadership. However, critical leadership studies have argued the need for more insight into leadership in daily nursing practices. Nurses must align their professional standards and opinions on quality of care with those of other professionals, management, and patients. They want to achieve better outcomes for their patients but also feel disciplined and controlled. To deal with this, nurses challenge the status quo by showing rebel nurse leadership. In this paper, we describe 47 nurses’ experiences with rebel nurse leadership from a leadership-as-practice perspective. In eight focus groups, nurses from two hospitals and one long-term care organization shared their experiences of rebel nurse leadership practices. They illustrated the differences between “bad” and “good” rebels. Knowledge, work experience, and patient-driven motivation were considered necessary for “good” rebel leadership. The participants also explained that continuous social influencing is important while exploring and challenging the boundaries set by colleagues and management. Credibility, trust, autonomy, freedom, and preserving relationships determined whether rebel nurses acted visibly or invisibly. Ultimately, this study refines the concept of rebel nurse leadership, gives a better understanding of how this occurs in nursing practice, and give insights into the challenges faced when studying nursing leadership practices.
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University teacher teams can work toward educational change through the process of team learning behavior, which involves sharing and discussing practices to create new knowledge. However, teachers do not routinely engage in learning behavior when working in such teams and it is unclear how leadership support can overcome this problem. Therefore, this study examines when team leadership behavior supports teacher teams in engaging in learning behavior. We studied 52 university teacher teams (281 respondents) involved in educational change, resulting in two key findings. First, analyses of multiple leadership types showed that team learning behavior was best supported by a shared transformational leadership style that challenges the status quo and stimulates team members’ intellect. Mutual transformational encouragement supported team learning more than the vertical leadership source or empowering and initiating structure styles of leadership. Second, moderator analyses revealed that task complexity influenced the relationship between vertical empowering team leadership behavior and team learning behavior. Specifically, this finding suggests that formal team leaders who empower teamwork only affected team learning behavior when their teams perceived that their task was not complex. These findings indicate how team learning behavior can be supported in university teacher teams responsible for working toward educational change. Moreover, these findings are unique because they originate from relating multiple team leadership types to team learning behavior, examining the influence of task complexity, and studying this in an educational setting. https://www.scienceguide.nl/2021/06/leren-van-docentteams-vraagt-om-gezamenlijk-leiderschap/
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Nursing Leadership is an important competence to develop for providing quality of care and preventing attrition of nurses. This study looked into the perceptions and experiences of nurses on practising leadership related to performing bachelor nursing competencies. Next to that awareness of the development of nursing leadership was addressed.
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Due to the variegated nature of the teaching profession system, different actors operating in this system (teachers, school leaders, policy makers) are inevitably intertwined and assumably influence each other’s sensemaking processes, especially when system-wide educational change occurs. Gaining insight into how different actors in the teacher profession system make sense of educational change is important, as it might hamper or enable the system's adaptive capacity. That is why we stretched Coburn’s model of collective sensemaking from a teacher-team lens to include different actors and focus on their interpersonal dynamics during sensemaking processes. Performing a conceptual review, we synthesized 87 articles which focus on collective sensemaking of the following actor groups: (1) teachers (micro), (2) school leaders (meso), and/or (3) district/state/national leaders, policy makers, professional development providers, curriculum developers, researchers, community members, and parents (macro). In the results we describe how actors’ involvement varied due to different role distributions and role perceptions of actors. In addition, four contextual factors influencing the interpersonal dynamics were distinguished that were closely related to leadership practices that enable actors to compare the change with their own beliefs and (organizational) practices. We describe three mechanisms which explain how actors valuate a change (valuating), how they are owning this change (owning), and which is shaped by gatekeeping of sensegivers in their social context (gatekeeping).
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Many students graduating in higher education will achieve a managerial or professional position, with leadership qualities being highly important. The need to reflect on leadership as an important developmental goal in higher education is highlighted by pointing out that many curricula, especially in the managerial, organisational and economic domain, include specific courses on leadership. It seems that some of our thinking on leadership needs revision. According to Kellerman, leaders’ ability to connect to followers is paramount to gain and remain in power. Dutch management scholar Manfred Kets de Vries (2004) underlines that the main responsibility of a leader is to envision and inspire. In this chapter we will examine the role of personality and personal values in the ability of informal leaders to inspire other team members. In the first section we will elaborate on transformational leadership and shared leadership. In the next, we will link these forms of leadership to personality and personal values. In the third section the findings of our empirical study will be discussed. We conclude with the implications of our study for leadership practice and the scholarly field of leadership. From an educational point of view our findings are important. The results shed additional light on the importance of personality traits on leadership, and informal leadership in particular. As leadership is an important phenomenon in society and working life, (under)graduates can be assisted in understanding and developing it. But in the context of this book it should be highlighted that transformational leadership is highly relevant in knowledge innovation (García-Morales et al., 2012), which is a core issue in higher education. Consequently, inspiring others is relevant, because group work is commonly used in higher education. Understanding group dynamics within student teams, informal leadership specifically, can help lecturers to explain and discuss effective and ineffective group work. In our opinion, the results of this study offer interesting evidence-based insights to reflect on and develop those personal characteristics that can be important for informal leadership effectiveness.
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Leaders play an important role in creating suitable conditions for and leading change, and leadership is most effective when it is needed most, such as during disruptive change. We used the disruption caused by the pandemic as a case to study how school leaders responded, starting from the framework by Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins (2008. “Seven Strong Claims About Successful School Leadership.” School Leadership & Management 28 (1): 27–42. https://doi-org.hu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/13632430701800060). 89 school leaders in higher education completed an open-ended questionnaire. Additionally, nine of these leaders were interviewed to explore their practices in depth. The leadership practices and paths of influence defined by Leithwood and colleagues (2008. “Seven Strong Claims About Successful School Leadership.” School Leadership & Management 28 (1): 27–42. https://doi-org.hu.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/13632430701800060) largely worked to understand leadership in times of disruption. We identified a new path of influence (relational) and refined the framework based on our insights. School leaders focused on setting directions and developing people and mainly influenced the change process through the relational and emotional path. These findings are an important next step in understanding and supporting leadership in times of disruption. This will become more and more important in a world of growing complexity and uncertainty.
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Educational innovation with technology is complex: it requires innovative ways of teaching with new resources, which implies changing leadership competences. For example, educational teachers need to master ICT skills to keep learning about educational innovations with technology. They have to focus on building bridges within the organisation to lead educational innovation with technology on a team, individual and organisational level.
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School leaders are assumed to be important for the implementation of data-based decision making (DBDM), but little is known about changes in leadership during this implementation. Educational leadership was measured before, during, and after a two-year, school-wide DBDM intervention in 96 primary schools. Advanced analysis techniques were applied: educational leadership was classified based on multilevel latent class analysis, changes were modeled using multi-state modeling. Results indicate that leadership was stable (44%) or improved (40%) during DBDM implementation. Stability was primarily found for schools with initial high leadership for DBDM, whereas improvement was most likely in schools with lower initial leadership.
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In the 21st century, Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences (hogescholen) are creating a genuine connection between teaching, research, professionalization and the innovation of practices and policies, going far beyond the academic approach taken by the traditional universities. In the city of Rotterdam, such networks are evident on at least three levels, each rather like a single piece of lasagna.
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