Reculturing for Collaboration and Leadership

The findings of a study identifying primary "motivators" for redesigning 3 selected schools as professional learning communities for teacher collaboration are reported. Using a survey questionnaire, teachers were asked to identify leadership sources for implementing new programs and teaching practices. Principals were seen as important for motivation, but they were not always the strongest advocates of innovation. There was ambivalence about the perceived effect of the principal-vice-principal team. Teachers considered informal collaboration to be more effective in terms of leadership provision for change than the more formal structures of planned collaboration. The results prompt new considerations of the role of assistant principal in reculturing schools as well as of the perceived benefit of collaboration by design.