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A Study of Teacher Leadership Concept in Institutional Documents in Spain

Article Info Although there is interest on educational leadership in Spain, research has focused on principal leadership and little has been investigated about teacher leadership. In the context of the International Study on Teacher Leadership (ISTL), this study aims to develop understanding of the concept of teacher leadership in institutional documents in Spain and to explore and analyze the dominant values and assumptions that can be identified. The review of the documents revealed a limited understanding of the critical importance of teacher leadership. Findings identified some aspects in the teacher leadership literature reviewed such as teamwork, accountability, openness to change, reflection, and advocacy, whereas inclusiveness, risk-taking, shared vision, and stability are scarcely identified. The increasing emphasis on teacher leadership dimensions in recent institutional documents note the need to go further with support for teachers’ secondary roles as a consequence of the required modernization of the teaching profession. Article History: Received February 10, 2020 Accepted September 20, 2020


Introduction
Great economic, political and social changes in our societies are instigating increasing demands on teachers of the XXI century. On one hand, educational systems are required to ensure that people have the skills required for the labor market (OECD, 2016). On the other hand, globalization is pressing the European Union to align the educational policies to facilitate students and staff mobility.
Moreover, changes in social values have increased the expectations of the role of education in solving social problems (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2013;Hargreaves, 1994;Schleicher, 2018). Given this fact, teachers need some professional skills, including leadership, that will enable them to meet the new educational context and improve the quality of education. Teachers Matter report (OECD, 2005) reminded us of the important role that teachers play and their leadership. Research on educational leadership highlights the influence of principals in successful student achievement (Leithwood et al., 2004). More recently, academics are paying attention to teacher leadership (TL) as an important aspect of educational leadership since teachers are the ones able to promote change in schools because they deal with "the complexities involved in teaching" (Wenner & Campbell, 2017, p. 134).

Context of the Study
Spain is a country with a population of 46.7 million and is organized in seventeen Autonomous Communities (AC) which are given powers to legislate by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. This means that each AC has the power to establish its own education regulations based on the national education law enacted by the central government. In the last 39 years, Spain has had 7 national education laws. The existing Education Act (LOMCE, 2013) is now being questioned by the majority of the political parties. A law focusing on teacher identity, functions and professional development has been long required but it is still pending. The Spanish education system comprises pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher education levels. Basic education is compulsory and tuition-free from 6 to 16 years (6 years at the primary level and 4 years in the compulsory secondary level). By the end of the fourth secondary year, students may choose to continue with secondary education and pursue university degrees or opt for basic vocational training.
Students can choose to attend a public school (67.3% of the total population of pre-primary, primary and secondary education), a partially government-funded independent school (25.9% of the total) or a private school (6.9% of the total) (MECD, 2018). For teachers, their access to the teaching profession varies depending on the type of school; in public schools, they are required to pass professional entrance exams and then they can get a position and become public servants. Principals play no role in teacher recruitment and selection; they simply do the best that they can with the teachers they are assigned by the central administration. There are some formal leadership roles that can be assigned to teachers in schools such as the head of studies, department chair, educational level chair, or class chair. Teachers are involved in decision-making processes through their delegates in the school council where strategic plans, annual objectives, and budget are approved.

Rationale
This article will contribute to a better understanding of the concept of educational leadership, from teachers' perspective in the Spanish context. Based on an analysis of institutional documents, we will focus on (1) how teachers are expected to influence student achievement, school culture, decision-making process, and educational community; (2) explore the assumptions about teacher leadership identified in university programs and professional development and, (3) analyze the dominant values and assumptions that can be identified in those documents.

Conceptual Framework
The acknowledgement of education as a crucial factor for the socio-economic development of our societies has influenced educational policymaking, which is increasingly receiving advice by organizations such as the EU, the World Bank, and UNESCO to focus on the competitive perspective in a global arena (Bangs & Frost, 2012). Therefore, international comparison is becoming an important issue. Educational leadership has long been researched because "leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all schoolrelated factors that contribute to what students learn at school" (Leithwood et al., 2004, p.5).
Nevertheless, research on school leadership has tended "to strip away the 'context specificity' needed to help practitioners understand how to apply findings in different schools" (Hallinger, 2018, p.8).
According to Hallinger (2018), the institutional context does not only refer to the role definition and behavior of principals but also of teachers. And yet, as York- Barr and Duke (2004, p. 288) stated, "intentional and systematic efforts to support the capacity of teachers and principals to share in school leadership functions appear to be severely lacking." The focus on teacher leadership is viewed as an opportunity to facilitate teacher participation, improve the professional work environment, promote schools' growth, and provide benefits for the students (York- Barr & Duke, 2004).
Moreover, it is important to know how school contexts may influence leadership practices, and since school contexts are also influenced by culture and legislation, we need to know more about the understanding of TL in context.
Since institutional structures do indeed shape the role definition and behavior of principals (Lee & Hallinger, 2012) as well as the existence of a clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities in schools, the idea of teachers as leaders is easily misunderstood (Harris, 2003). New and different challenges compel teachers to participate and assume greater leadership responsibilities. Some of them opt to become administrators, but some of them wish to continue working in the classroom. These are the ones for whom teacher leadership may be a solution to fulfil their aspirations. Also, teacher leadership has become "an increasingly popular topic among educational policymakers and influential educational organizations as an important component of school reform" (Wenner & Campbell, 2017, p. 135). Educational transformation is more than accountability, standardization, and testing, as "evidence is showing that the 'pull' of teachers leading innovation and change can be more powerful than the 'push' of many top-down reform agendas (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012)" as cited by Harris (2015, editorial).
Nevertheless, the little consensus and the lack of clarity about what teacher leadership is have been highlighted by researchers (Margolis & Huggins, 2012;Neumerski, 2012). As Harris (2014) 246 stated, "the idea of teacher leadership is based on the simple but powerful idea that everyday teachers lead their classroom, lead other colleagues and lead in the community" (Harris, 2014, p. 65).
Moreover, Levin and Schrum (2017) insisted on the idea that every teacher can be a leader in various formal and informal ways as a manifestation of distributed leadership. Therefore, TL means moving beyond instructional leadership to expanded roles which include the evaluation of educational initiatives and the facilitation of professional learning communities, breaking the isolated culture of teaching (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). TL offers the possibility of a

Methodology
In the context of the International Study of Teacher Leadership (ISTL) 1 , "a rationale for researching teacher leadership is presented based on the need to provide clarity to the definition of the concept and to understand better how to facilitate teacher leadership development" (Webber, 2018, p. 1). First, an analysis framework was established based on key concepts and considerations found in the relevant literature, which were named as attributes and indicators.
As an early stage of the ISTL research project, document analysis was used as an analytical method to examine and interpret data "in order to elicit meaning, gain understanding and develop empirical knowledge" (Bowen, 2009, p. 27). We aimed to provide context and data, in order to understand the historical roots of teacher leadership and to track the changes and development of this concept; therefore, the use of document analysis seemed pertinent (Bowen, 2009 These institutional documents were studied through a reflexive iterative process (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009) which started with a content analysis of the documents (Klenke, 2008) and the identification and organization of components of documents related to the attributes in the analysis framework. The characteristics and indicators for each attribute (see Table 2), were used as a code template to organize raw data (Boyatzis, 1998). Teacher training as a responsible professional, with the capacity to make innovative decisions through teamwork in the school (ANECA, 2004, p. 194) Furthermore, a thematic analysis was also performed as it was important to identify emergent attributes from our specific context (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). Therefore, inductive codes were assigned to quotations that described these emergent attributes. To provide rigor and increase the credibility of the study, the team used researcher triangulation. Firstly, researchers identified segments in the text of one document, and classified them in the attributes column in the table. Thus, coder training consisted of manually coding one document by the three researchers to have a clear understanding of the attributes and codes being used. Then, each researcher did the same with the documents assigned to each one. For intercoder reliability, the researchers independently proceeded to review all the fragments selected from all the documents for each attribute, as well as the ones for emergent attributes, that went beyond those considered in the initial analysis framework.
Results were compared and helped to contrast the coding procedures, in order to confirm findings and to bring different perspectives to the analysis (Denzin, 1978). Consequently, the document with all the fragments manually coded was computerized using the atlas ti 7.0 software. Taking into account the team discussions, some segments were recoded. The data reduction process (Miles et al., 2014) was done holistically (both within and across attribute columns), sorting and reassembling data in new significant ways once the initial coding was finished (Creswell, 1998).
This axial coding allowed the connections among the different attributes identified by the team of researchers (Charmaz, 2006). Data was constantly compared and recoded to better organize ideas and pinpoint concepts that seemed to cluster. Possible connections that emerged from this analysis were displayed in charts and graphs, which were discussed and completed by the researchers in light of the data and their reflections about them. At the final stage of data conclusion and verification (Miles & Huberman, 1994), central themes were selected to better depict the concept of teacher leadership drawn from the institutional documents.

Findings
The first result from the search of the documents was the realization that there were no documents disseminated by teacher unions or patronal institutions. A study financed by a Confederation of Parents' Association (COFAPA) was found. Moreover, there was not a single document with a title directly related to our research (such as teacher standards or teacher competencies). Teacher competencies were highlighted in general in educational laws, or when talking about initial teacher education, respect for teachers or professional development. In fact, from the ten documents reviewed, three of them referred to requirements for initial teacher education; another three were published by the Ministry of Education (the two educational laws -LOE and LOMCE-), and one by the Department of Education of the Madrid Autonomous Community. Another one emerged from the professional association of teachers (a non-union professional graduates organization to represent and help teacher graduates in their professional lives). Another was a study report done by a confederation of students' parents, and the last two are recent proposals to modify initial formation and professional development of teachers (a draft for a "teacher statute", still pending).

A quantitative analysis of the institutional documents started
with frequency counts of the word "leadership", "leader", "lead*" which could give us an idea of the importance given to this concept in the documents under study. Results showed that the word leadership or lead* appeared in the following documents: ANECA (19 times), UCM teacher degree competencies (twice), LOMCE (once), and the report for the Ministry of Education (26 times).
Results indicated the limited use of the word leadership, leader, lead* in the documents, with few exceptions such as the documents from the quality accreditation agency (ANECA), the teacher education program descriptions, and the report written for the Ministry of Education (2015).
After the first coding of the documents, new attributes emerged and new codes were established: teaching prestige, professional identity, families, school coexistence, teachers' professional responsibility, social values, and citizenship. Moreover, some fragments coded in the accountability attribute required two new subcodes which were added: personalized education and students' holistic formation. After this process, codes and subcodes were counted to identify the frequency of all of them and the documents from which they emerged (see Table 3).

Community-Teacher Relationship
This perspective was the most distinctly emphasized, with 94 citations out of a total of 233 (40% of the total). This approach included two clearly identified topics: social justice and teacher social responsibility (see Figure 1). Social justice emphasized aspects such as

Connections between TL Attributes Related to Community-Teacher
Relationship

Student-Teacher Relationship
This perspective was the second most distinctly emphasized in all documents analyzed (29% of all citations). As illustrated in Figure   2. It specifically included the category of accountability with the subcategories of holistic formation and personalized education, with a strong connection to students' learning needs (as a part of advocacy). In the Spanish context, aspects referring to students whose identities could have been insufficiently considered raised topics such as immigration, multiculturalism, gender, and respect for different religious beliefs. It was remarkable that all documents -except for ANECA (2004)

School-Teacher Relationship
This dimension was the one with fewer references in the institutional documents studied (only 6% of all). As depicted in

Transversal Attributes of Teacher Leadership
There are some attributes present in the documents that seemed to connect the perspectives previously described. They represented 25% of the codification. These categories were teamwork, reflection, and professionalism (see Figure 4). Professionalism was depicted as the need to keep updated through professional development with methodologies that better meet students' attitudes and interests, especially with the aid of technology.
The first one, teamwork was the attribute with the most number of citations (30)

Connections between TL Transversal Attributes
We further realized that the attribute openness to change played a role as a connector among the three perspectives. It gave sense to the teachers' function to go beyond their classroom and empower them to go further in school influence, in order to promote the social values that society needs. In the Figure 5, all of the connections between TL attributes are represented.

Discussion and Implications
Results from the study of a sample of the institutional documents in Spain confirm the fact that TL is a topic that basically appears in government laws, requirements for teacher training and proposals for its improvement. It is interesting to note the absence of Although the importance of teamwork is critical, the reality of teachers' work is characterized by a culture of isolation and a lack of professional feedback from mentors, peers, and principals (TALIS, 2018). Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that literature on TL in the Spanish context insists on professional learning communities as well as on the importance of sharing best practices (Tintoré et al., 2019). The fact that teachers face difficulties inherent to their work, such as the loss of authority, bullying, attending to students' diversity and lack of family involvement, highlights the importance of adequately preparing committed teachers who can face these challenges (Pedró et al. 2008;Sarramona 2005 achievement is teacher quality (OECD, 2005); but we also know that the second more important factor for quality in education is principal leadership (Leithwood et al., 2004). The connection between them is well explained by Bangs and Frost (2012, p. 6) who stated that "a more helpful interpretation of distributed leadership is one where the school principal engineers the professional culture so that the capacity of teachers to lead is enhanced." Enhancing TL requires that "initial teacher education programs have to prepare new teachers to play an active role in the design and running of education, rather than just following standardized practices" (OECD, 2011, p. 13