Is There a Typology of Teacher and Leader Responders to CALL, and Do They Cluster in Different Types of Schools? A Two-Level Latent Class Analysis of CALL Survey Data

Abstract

Background Across the recent research on school leadership, leadership for learning has emerged as a strong framework for integrating current theories, such as instructional, transformational, and distributed leadership as well as effective human resource practices, instructional evaluation, and resource allocation. Yet, questions remain as to how, and to what extent, teachers and leaders practice the skills and tasks that are known to be associated with effective school leadership, and to what extent do teachers and leaders agree that these practices are taking place in their school. Purpose of the Study We examine these issues through applying a congruency-typology model to the validation sample of the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL), (117 schools across the United States, including 3,367 teachers and their school leaders) to examine the extent to which there may be significantly different subgroups of teacher and leader responders to the survey, how these subgroups may cluster nonrandomly in schools, and to what extent the subgroups of teachers and principals are aligned or not on their perception that the skills and practices of leadership for learning take place in their school. Research Design We used multilevel latent class analysis (LCA) to identify significantly different types of teacher and leader responders to CALL, including a cross-level interaction to examine the extent to which there is a typology model of teacher responders across schools and the extent to which the teacher subgroup responses align with the leader of the school. Findings We find that there are three statistically significant different subgroups of teacher responders to CALL, low (31.4%), moderate (43.3%), and high (25.4%). In addition, these subgroups cluster nonrandomly across three different types of schools: schools with low leadership for learning (40.2%), moderate leadership for learning (47.0%), and the smallest subgroup, schools with high leadership for learning (12.8%). Conclusions Our findings suggest that a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is useful for understanding the context of practice, as schools may be on a continuum of practice in which there is strong alignment between teacher and leader responder types in the low and high schools—indicating problematic or beneficial contexts—but that leaders in the moderate type may be working to move their school towards instructional improvement through leadership for learning. As a quantitative phenomenology, this study provides a rich contextual analysis of the relationship between teachers and leaders on a multisource feedback survey of leadership for learning in schools.

Second-order meta-analysis synthesizing the evidence on associations between school leadership and different school outcomes

“…The third moderator pertains to the source of leadership data used in primary studies. Teacher-reported data of principal leadership may be more objective than principal-reported data (Bowers et al, 2017), thereby yielding smaller effect sizes. There are no meta-analyses comparing effect sizes from primary studies using different sources of data.…”

Exploring Teachers’ Instructional Practice Profiles: Do Distributed Leadership and Teacher Collaboration Make a Difference?

“…Besides, drawing solely upon teacher perceptions may provide a narrow view of educational endeavors, as schools include a variety of other stakeholders, such as parents and principals (Ahn et al, 2021; Boyce & Bowers, 2018; Duff & Bowers, 2022). We thus suggest that future research develop and test the congruency-typology model by using both teacher and principal ratings, which could yield deeper insights into the different types of teachers who perform instructional practices in their classrooms (Bowers et al, 2017).…”

“…Two years later, Urick (2016) classified the different leadership types of teachers and principals, as well as the distribution of teacher types across principal types, to investigate the extent to which these types predicted teacher retention. Subsequently, Bowers et al (2017) used the LCA approach on the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) to classify "leadership for learning" practices at high, moderate, and low levels. Furthermore, Agasisti et al (2019) employed LCA to identify the subgroups of school leaders and assessed whether and to what extent individual characteristics and school context factors were associated with the probability of demonstrating a certain leadership style.…”

“…Despite growing interest in identifying the typology of schools, school principals, and teachers (e.g., Bowers et al, 2017), little research has attempted to explore teachers' instructional practice profiles. The majority of the research on teaching has followed a traditional modeling approach contending that all the respondent teachers fit a single type (Bellibaş, Gümüş, et al, 2021;Doğan & Yurtseven, 2018;Özdemir, 2019).…”

“…We use a person-centered approach that unmasks the diversity of ways that teachers deliver instruction. Such an approach provides a more precise picture of the current situation of instruction in schools and holds the potential to shape policy-level interventions to address the varying instructional practice needs of the different typologies of teachers (Bowers et al, 2017).…”