The role of school leaders Sample Clauses

The role of school leaders. The support of collaboration by school leaders in different ways featured strongly in my participants’ answers. Most of them contended that principals and vice-principals should provide facilities, allocate time and funding, and encourage teachers to collaborate. The comment by Teacher 3 from School A explicitly corroborates the above, ‘‘They are supposed to provide facilities, funds, encourage teachers to collaborate’’ (Xxxxxxxx, 21.9.2021). His answer implies that the teachers at his school may not receive all the support they need to make collaborations part of school culture. In addition, school leaders should consider making the collaborating teachers’ timetables more flexible, allowing them for the needed time for collaboration. Teacher 3 School B thus said, ‘‘Sometimes we need flexible timing, depending on the project, we may need some time off for meetings’’ (Xxxxxx, 22.9.2021). Indeed, finding time to collaborate is often difficult, if not impossible, and it pushes teachers to work overtime. That in turn makes collaboration a heavy burden that can only be done occasionally. It is no surprise that a few teachers noted that receiving benefits for doing additional work, such as collaboration, would encourage them to collaborate more. The mentioned benefits are largely of a financial nature. Half the teachers, two from School B and one from School A stated that they would be more motivated to collaborate on projects with colleagues if financial incentives were offered to them. These are the words of Teacher 1 from School B, ‘‘But they should also offer incentives, perhaps financial at the end of the year’’ (Grace, 18.9.2021). Another teacher from School A said this, ‘‘Having tangible benefits could encourage teachers to collaborate more’’ (Xxxxxxx, 6.1.2022).