Abstract:

Numerous studies confirm that teacher learning occurs primarily as the result of teachers' professional, collaborative interaction, which has a significant impact on their education. Teacher collaboration views as a dynamic, on-going, collaborative process in a team of professionals where the school principal and teachers work purposefully and collectively to create a school-wide supportive culture. The culture enhances teacher learning and teachers' effectiveness for the sake of improved student performance and school development. The purpose of this study explores the experiences of a secondary high school principal in developing a collaborative practice for teachers in an international school in Beijing. Specifically, the study aimed to answer the three research questions: how do the school principals succeed in developing a collaborative culture that contributes to a teacher collaborative practice in schools? What practices do the school principals employ to help teachers developing their professional skills for the sake of improved student performance? What contributions of the study would offer to the current body of knowledge by describing the experiences of a secondary school principal in creating and developing a teacher learning community in the school. Also, the study aims to provide a potential contribution for school principals to understand their role of school principals in creating a collaborative teacher practice and ultimately influencing student performance. A qualitative research design was employed to determine the views of the principals in initiating and maintaining a collaborative culture in school. The critical narrative analysis used to analyze the author's experiences, document analysis, an observation based on the experiences from 2012 to 2020, working in the five top secondary high schools in China, along with 10 teachers and 10 students' observation data. The findings show that the necessity of supportive leadership for school principals to share their intellectual property and the benefits of creating supportive conditions for teachers' collaboration. The study provided a theoretical framework for a better understanding of the role of leadership in teacher collaboration and suggested them to develop practice learning communities in schools. The future research is to build and maintain collaborative learning teams in various school social contexts, such as in rural schools, to focus on teacher collaboration on how professional collaborative culture impact school improvement.

Keywords:

Teacher collaboration, the role of leadership, professional development, narrative, a case study.