Leadership professional learning for accelerating student achievement: the role of a collaborative problem-solving intervention

Abstract

This study explains the impact of a leadership intervention in collaborative problem-solving on the behaviour of eight middle leaders, on the teachers of those leaders, and on the reading achievement of their target students. A theory and practice of collaborative problem-solving, which integrates deliberative problem-solving with interpersonal effectiveness, informed our intervention design. We used a concurrent, mixed-methods approach to identify, using the reports of teachers and leaders themselves, those features of the intervention design which explain the shifts in leaders’ and teachers’ behaviour and the consequent progress in reading achievement. The students’ reading achievement improved, on average, 22.8 months in 12 months, suggesting that well-planned and theorised leadership interventions can change leaders’ and teachers’ behaviour in ways that result in improved student outcomes.