ARTICLE CRITIQUE

By: Dibekulu Alem Asegu

Email- [email protected]
Bahir Dar University
Title: No Teacher Left Behind: Subject Leadership that Promotes Teacher Leadership

Ghamrawi, N. (2010).No teacher left behind: Subject leadership that promotes teacher leadership.
Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 304-320.
http://dx.doi.gov/10.1177/1741143209359713.
Abstract
This article critique aimed at identifying conceptual, technical, ethical, and methodological
strengths and limitations of an article titled “No Teacher Left Behind: Subject Leadership
that Promotes Teacher Leadership” written by Ghamrawi. To that effect, the article
conceptually brought an important issue in the field of leadership. However, there are some
technical limaitations, like the author forwarded biased suggestions without supporting
strong pieces of evidence. Besides, an in-depth interview was the only tool used to collcet
data for the study that might make it difficult to conclude. In the end, the issue raised was so
important that ensuring the practicality of teacher leadership shall be in focus beyond its
theoretical narration.
Keywords: Promotion, teacher leadership, subject leadership
Introduction
A premium has been placed upon the potential of school leadership to contribute to school
improvement and to create the conditions in which the best teaching and learning can occur
(Harris & Muijs, 2005). Amongst many school leadership approaches, teacher leadership is
increasingly seen as a key option for school reform (Fullan, 2005), and improvement
(Aliakbari& Sadeghi, 2014; Cheng & Szeto, 2016; Day & Sammons, 2016; Smylie & Eckert,
2017). Several studies have been conducted related with teacher leadership: concepts,
perceptions, effectiveness, models, competencies, challenges and the like (e,g. Harris, 2003;
Khan & Malik, 2013; Lee-Piggott, 2014 & Kılınç, Cemaloğlu & Savaş, 2015) in different parts
of the world including this article.
This article entitled “No Teacher Left Behind: Subject Leadership that Promotes Teacher
Leadership” by Ghamrawi (2010) aimed to find out the role of subject leaders to promote teacher
leadership. Qualitative research method stayed for two years guided with 51semi-structured
interviews with principals, subject leaders (coordinators), and classroom teachers belonging to
three private K-12 schools in Beirut, Lebanon was employed to conduct the study. The author
argued that the role of subject leaders is a foundation to promote, establish, and flourish teacher
leadership. Three valuable findings: creating sub-cultures that promote professional collaboration
and distributed leadership; establishing bartered leadership structures; and walking the talk of a
shared system of teacher monitoring and evaluation are reported that might support or impede
the establishment and promotion of teacher leadership linked with the role of subject leaders.
While the article produced significant results showing that the roles of subject leaders to promote
teacher leadership throughout the school system have been clarified explicitly with some
limitations of replicability, sampling, and generalizations.

Norma Ghamrawi, the author, is an assistant professor of Educational Management and

Leadership at the Faculty of Education, Lebanese University: Beirut, Lebanon. Her research
interests include school improvement, school effectiveness, and educational leadership with an
emphasis on teacher leadership and subject leadership, and quality assurance in educational
settings. The biography of the author shows that she is from the right discipline and with ample
academic background. As a result, she seems impressed to know the role of subject leaders to
promote teacher leadership. In the comprehensive review of literature by Wenner and Campbell
(2016), mentioned that studies on teacher leadership are supported empirically as well as
theoretically. To that effect, the author reviewed relevant documents to support, clarify, and
vividly explain the concept. This article critique is focused on some scientific
guidelines/standards of article writing (abstracting, introduction, sampling, and method selection,
analysis techniques, reporting results, making conclusions, forwarding relevant and feasible
recommendations). In addition to this, the knowledge produced (the contribution) of this study is
part of the critique.

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Critique
In the abstract, the author tried to describe the purpose of the study, the samples and from where
they are, the approach employed and the way how data were obtained and the major findings of
the study. In this regard, the author included the expected requirements of and abstract.
According to Neuman (2014:521), the abstract should contain information on the topic, the
research problem, the basic findings, and any unusual research design or data collection features.
Neuman also noticed that “readers use the abstract or summary to screen information and decide
whether they will read the entire report”. Notwithstanding, an abstract may differ from approach
to approach there are some commonalities to be shared across different writing styles or research
designs.

The author introduced the article citing relevant ideas forwarded by different scholars related to
leadership in educational settings. She tried to magnify the intent of her study promoting teacher
leadership in the schools. She seemed to advocate that distributing or sharing leadership
throughout the school community rather than considering as a given for some (principals) is
better for high performance. For example, the following is taken from the article directly stated
on page 305.

When leadership is dispersed through all the levels of an organization, it tends to be a

high-performing learning organization (Crowther et al., 2002) where every member of
the school community shares the cloth of leadership (Harris, 2002) and everyone is held
responsible and accountable within his or her area (Spillane et al., 2001).

The author categorizes teacher leadership in two perspectives. The first is restricted to teachers
who participate in the middle-level leadership and the second noted that teacher leadership is
broader and provides opportunities for all classroom teachers to take part in leadership activities.
Here it was important to include and write in comparison with the stated literature. How, in what
conditions and contexts, to what extent leadership is distributed and shared to others shall be
explained to show the issue more visible. For example, in connection with problems of
distributing leadership Spillane and Healy (2006: 253) reported that:

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 A distributed perspective on school leadership and management has garnered
considerable attention…. However, we should be skeptical of its appeal as a measure of
worth. While optimism is high concerning taking a distributed perspective, we urge
caution by arguing for more attention to research fundamentals in the form of study
operations and research measures before seeking causal inferences.

Thus looking in different directions to make a strong argument and to show the gap supported
with evidence might be important. This is also manifested in the responses of the interviewee.
The author reported that some principals and subject leaders were not supporting the principles
to promote teacher leadership throughout the school. This is to suggest that considering the
readiness level of teachers, their maturity, willingness, the situation, and leader-member
relationship should be discussed in the literature for sake of clarity and inclusion of different
leadership perspectives.

The introduction of the article is concluded by writing three salutary findings preceded by the
purpose statement. The gap to be addressed in the present study is not clearly stated rather the
findings which were already reported in the results section, summarized in the conclusion part
and highlighted in the abstract repeatedly mentioned.

Regarding introduction (Kothari, 2004:349) recommends that:

The purpose of the introduction is to introduce the research project to the readers. It
should contain a clear statement of the objectives of research i.e., enough background
should be given to make clear to the reader why the problem was considered worth
investigating. A summary of other relevant research may also be stated so that the present
study can be seen in that context. The hypotheses of the study, if any, and the definitions
of the major concepts employed in the study should be explicitly stated in the
introduction of the report.

Similarly, Cargill and O’Connor (2009) forwarded five sequential stages that a compelling
introduction should contain. Statements about the field of research to provide the reader with a

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setting or context for the problem to be investigated and to claim its centrality or importance
should be included. It should also contain more specific statements about the aspects of the
problem already studied by other researchers, laying a foundation of information already known.
Statements that indicate the need for more investigation, creating a gap, or research niche for the
present study to fill are necessary. It is better to write the purpose/objectives of the study or
outlining its main activity or findings. Finally, the introduction shall end providing an optional
statement(s) that give a positive value or justification for carrying out the study.

Following the introduction the article focus on clearly explaining the context, sample, method,
and procedures used in the process of the study. The study was guided by a qualitative research
approach with an in-depth interview to obtain data from principals, coordinators, and teachers
sampled from three selected high performings K-12 co-educational private schools in Beirut,
Lebanon(labeled as A, B, and C in the study). The schools share common features (number of
students, effectiveness, and structure) except their students’ socio-economic differences. The
author reported that 9 principals (3 from each school), 21 coordinators (7 from each school), and
21 teachers (7 from each school) were samples for study. Moreover, she has secured consent
from participants before everything was going on (ethical consideration). A 60-minute in-depth
interview was conducted with each of the 51 interviewees using 12 items.

The author also explained the context of the educational system in the study area in detail which
might seem less important for the study as far as the study intends to find out the role of subject
leaders to promote teacher leadership (less described in the context). Finally, in the method
section, it is reported that thematic analysis was employed to analyze interview transcriptions.
NVivo 2.0 qualitative computer software from QSR international was used in this stage as it
provided robust coding tools that are compatible with qualitative research strategies.

The study is part of a larger study that has been completed in 2 years that will give the researcher
sufficient chance to broaden her understanding of the issue under the investigation. But, no
matter the length of the time lasted to carry out a full range study, rather the way we handle
unlimited challenges and inconsistencies (policy changes, the unwillingness of participants to

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continue, artificial responses collected) may hamper the findings at the end of the day. Thus the
author shall inform how she has been managed the whole process of the study to come up with
the reported findings.

Most of the time, in qualitative research representativeness of a population, is irrelevant (Cohen,

Manion& Morrison, 2018) so that sampling is not given much emphasis, however, it is the
necessity to select the ‘right’ cases, groups and materials in a somehow defined way (Flick,
2007). In this regard, the author has gotten 51 interviewees from different categories (teachers,
coordinators, and principals) and also from different private schools but relatively under similar
performance levels. However, the participants involved in the study were quite enough the
results obtained might oblige to raise some questions (e.g. Data from schools under similar
category and performance level).

Concerning the instrument used to collect data, the author reported that an in-depth interview
was conducted with each of the participants for an hour using 12 questions. Here, the author
didn’t explain how these items were prepared, validated, and employed except mentioning two
of the items were asked for the interviewee related to the role of subject leaders. Besides, using
different types of instruments to collect data enable me to have cross-checked information so that
it was better to use observation, focus group discussion in addition to the interview used. There
were chances to apply these methods as far as the time used for the study was long enough.
Concerning this Barbour et al. (2018) in Flick (2018) underscored that collecting information
using a variety of sources and methods reduces the biases of conclusions or limitations of a
specific source or method, and allows gaining a broader and more secure understanding of the
issues under the study.

The author has categorized the results of the study into four main parts containing sub-themes
under each category focusing on subject leaders. The four categories and subcategories are
subject leaders’ roles and aspects (identified 14 themes); subject leaders’ creation of
departmental subcultures (containing 3 themes); subject leaders bartered leadership structures
(containing 2 themes) and subject leaders monitoring and evaluation (containing 2 themes). And

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finally, the author came up with a comparison of the findings across and within the school. The
author coded the interviewee as well as the schools for anonymity throughout the ethically
acceptable report. The approach used to report the results and the themes formed are interesting
to address the purpose of the study.

But it has been reported that the findings were almost the same except few individual
participants, and the results of the comparison made across and within schools were also found
indifferent. This might be the case that all participants were taken from schools identified under
effective and high performing by the Ministry of Education in the study area. It is reported that
all the students in selected schools were 100 percent successful for the last 10 years in the
official exams given which is called Lebanese Baccalaureate (LB). This has to be seen in caution
to use the results further and the author shall clearly show how it has been controlled in the
study. Moreover, many of the interviewees’ responses are not reported in the study. That is, only
12 out of 21 subject teachers, 9 out of 21 coordinators, and 3 out of 9 principals interview
responses are reported. Besides, the distribution of interview responses reported across the three
sample schools is not fairly treated. There is no response reported from the principal interviewee
taken from the school labeled A. This highly affects the findings reported in particular and the
recommendations forwarded in general.

In the end, the author concluded with a message that emerged from the study. The critical roles
played by subject leaders to establish, promote, and nourish teacher leadership in schools are
important. The conclusion made goes in line with the argument stated form the outset. Thus, the
author addressed the intended goal of the study regardless of the similarity of samples taken
which might affect the result. The way how the differences and similarities among schools,
individuals, situations, and contexts are neglected and these factors should be considered further.

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Conclusion

To put my concluding remark the author brought a timely and interesting agenda looking at
school leadership from its effectiveness aspects despite the study has been conducted taking
samples under the same context. Teacher leadership allows teachers to take part in all aspects of
the school activity in turn it promotes school effectiveness as minds of different individuals come
together. Thus, ensuring the practicality of teacher leadership shall be in focus beyond its
theoretical narration. Therefore, a comprehensive study that gives attention to different contexts
shall be conducted to enhance understandings of practitioners, policymakers, and the stakes in
the school and outside of the school.

Authors Outobiography

Mr. Dibekulu Alem Asegu is a Ph.D. candidate at Bahirdar University, Ethiopia attending his
education in Education Policy and Leadership program. He has been working at Haramaya
University, Ethiopia being a lecturer for the 3 years before he joined Bahirdar for his education.
The author has published three articles on leadership issues. He has extensive experience in
teaching starting from primary to higher education. He taught for 10 years in primary schools,
for 3 years in secondary schools and the other 3 years in higher education. He taught more than
13 educational leadership-related courses and has been advised and supervised undergraduate
students in the Department of Educational Planning and Management. He has been also taken
part in preparing and providing training to primary and secondary school principals and
supervisors in collaboration with others. The author also is participating in every social issue
sharing his experiences to solve everyday problems. Reading, writing and solving problems are
special hobbies of the author.

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