First Level Leadership in Schools: Evidence from Secondary Schools Across Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for this interesting manuscript exploring the notion of first-level leadership in a large sample of Australian schools.   There are numerous leadership models in the literature and a key question is whether this additional adjective is helpful and sufficiently distinctive to be valuable for theorists, researchers and practitioners.   Some of my comments below address this fundamental point:

1. The introduction asserts that current literature focuses on senior and middle leadership, but there is growing interest in teacher leadership, which appears to overlap strongly with the 'first-level' notion.

2. Linked to the above, figure 1 omits teacher leadership.   The author needs to give more attention to differences between teacher and first-level leadership, or are they just alternative terms for the same phenomenon?

3. The author's decision to explore this new idea through bureaucratic theory is interesting but requires more justification.   Collegiality or distributed leadership are arguably more useful in understanding this phenomenon.

4. The manuscript is confusing in its discussion about whether first-level leadership is formal or informal.   Because website sources are used (see below), there is evidently a degree of formality in that titles are given.   This ambiguity also affects teacher leadership theory, and is not easy to overcome.

5. The use of website data requires a much stronger justification, even allowing that this is intended as a first phase in a more extended study.   Accessing 675 websites is impressive but only 87 seem to have contributed to analysis.  The large number of different titles leads to semantic confusion and inhibits author analysis and interpretation.   It also says little about what these post-holders do.

6. Linked to the above, the analysis inevitably focuses on positional responsibility, thus missing the chance to assess the influence of informal leaders.

7. The author claims to have found evidence of first-level leadership but, arguably, this is because they were looking for it.  Using a different descriptor (e.g. teacher leadership) is likely to have produced similar findings.

8. Overall, I am not convinced that this notion adds greatly to our understanding of school leadership.  The case for first-level leadership as an adjunct or alternative to teacher or middle leadership is weak but it may be worthwhile to stimulate discussion about this.  

9. References should be presented in alphabetical order of family names.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Good.

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 1

With regard to points 1 and 2 regarding the need to further delineate and distinguish first level leadership from teacher leadership the following revisions were made. On p.6 considerable additional discussion of the concepts was added. This discussion brought to light how the two concepts are often conflated as well as how some scholars distinguish teacher from middle leadership. The same logic was applied to first level leadership at the conclusion of this section. In summary, due to the ways they are positioned in the wider literature, teacher leaders may be identified among emergent, first level or middle leaders. I will try to include teacher leaders in the diagram on p.13 if this paper is accepted, anticipating the kind help of the copyediting team.

 

With regard to point 3 concerning bureaucratic theory, additional justification for bureaucratic theory, and consideration of distributed leadership, has been added on p.2 in the second and third paragraphs. Distributed leadership will be better suited in future work that will investigate first level and emergent leadership alongside teacher leadership.

 

With regard to point 4 concerning ambiguity around formal/informal I must apologise sincerely. The references to ‘informal’ were artefacts from previous drafts. The following steps were taken to clarify. On p.4, ln.28, “or informal” deleted and “mainly informal” added in reference to emergent leadership. On p.5, ln.2 the word “formal” was inserted into the definition. Also done at top of  p.4. On p.6 additional literature used to distinguish teacher leadership from middle leadership and by extension first level leadership. Also, the confusing reference to an AITSL document was removed. In summary the manuscript now frames teacher leadership as informal and first level leadership as formal.

 

With regard to point 5 again I must apologise. The finer detail of how websites showed information was not included. An explanation for the low number is now provided in Section 4.1. on p.9. It had to do with school websites not providing a complete staff listing. This issue was also added to limitations in Section 5.1. The large number of titles reflects the nature of first level leadership influenced by school context needs rather than EBAs etc as mentioned in section 2.  Information about what particular first level leaders do was presented in sections 4.2. 4.3. and 4.4. and came from jurisdictional documentation as well as website information.

 

With regard to point 6 I make the point that first level leadership is now framed as formal.

 

With regard to point 7 relating to confirmation bias, there was indeed rigour applied to circumvent the effects of confirmation bias. I do apologise that these were not made explicit in the manuscript. Explicit information has now been provided in Section 3.3 that mentions random sampling, use of other information sources and use of criteria as strategies to minimize the issue.  

 

With regard to point 8 I make the point that first level leadership is real in other contexts and not a new concept at all. To strengthen the argument I have added a paragraph under 2.5. relating the use of first level leadership citing 3 references.

 

With regard to point  9 the reference list will be properly formatted according to journal requirements if the manuscript is accepted for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper on first-level leadership in schools explores a novel topic and is well grounded in the literature. The paper maintains a strong focus throughout and sets the stage for further research. I'm not convinced authors will be successful in their quest to differentiate teacher leadership from the more hierarchical model they presented, but I think this is a fruitful topic for scholarly discussion and think many of our colleagues will be interested in how it unfolds.

I found the research well executed. The sampling and data collection were particularly well explained. I have only a few suggestions for the authors:

1. The analysis methodology currently seems dangerously close to a mere website review and some readers might find it questionable as research. I, therefore, recommend that the authors explicitly label this as qualitative research and provide more detail about the systematic analysis that elevated this review into the realm of generating new knowledge. It might be useful to consult Hsieh & Shannon (2005) to consider whether qualitative content analysis methods could be used to explain the study's design and provide more detail about how trends were identified.

2. The way the results and findings are depicted suggests some confirmation bias may be present. The findings indicated that across school types and provinces a majority of schools did not appear to have first level leaders. Instead of forging forward with a discussion of how the theoretical framework was justified, the authors need to spend some time explaining this finding. It is possible that the lack of first level leaders in so many schools was due to methodological limitations, which relied solely on a website review. Schools vary widely on what they deem worth of posting on their websites and how updated they are. It is also possible that smaller schools or those without funding to provide extra pay for lower level leaders may have fewer such positions.

Due to the many schools with an apparent lack of first-level leaders, the authors might also consider labeling this as an exploratory study and emphasizing the goal of determining a typology of first level leaders.  Further research can flesh out how prevalent these positions are.

 

 

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 2

With regard to point 1 concerning the research design I do sincerely apologise for not making that clear in the method. This was indeed a qualitative study that employed content analysis. To remedy this oversight a third paragraph was added to Section 3 to overview the method. Then, extra information was added to section 3.3 about the content analysis method and key themes.

 

With regard to point 2 about confirmation bias I can confirm that sufficient rigour was applied to ensure trustworthy results. However, it is also true that there was no explicit mention made of confirmation bias and how it might apply to the study. This has now been remedied with explicit information added in Section 3.3 that mentions random sampling, use of other information sources and use of criteria as strategies to minimize the issue. 

 

With regard to the final point about the limited number of positions and framing the study I can confirm that both have been addressed. The study is now more explicitly framed as exploratory and an explanation for the number of positions identified is provided in Section 4.1. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for this revised manuscript.  You have addressed some of my concerns but others remain.

1. The introduction still does not mention teacher leadership although it is discussed briefly later in the paper.

2. The figure is unchanged.  As previously mentioned, teacher leadership should be added.

3. The author rebuts the idea that first level leadership is new, citing sources from other sectors.   However, this idea is new for education.  As readers of this education journal are likely to be educationists, this should be acknowledged.

4. The author now claims that first-level leadership refers to minor formal roles (plausible given the use of web-site data), but the omission of informal leadership is a limitation of the paper.  

5. What the author describes as confirmation bias remains a problem.

6. Overall, a much stronger distinction between first level and teacher leadership (if this is even possible) is required.

7. References should be sequenced alphabetically by author now and not after acceptance.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your further advice on the manuscript. I believe it is a batter piece of work thanks to your suggestions and I am glad you persisted on the distinctions between FLL and TL as that led to a new section and a better treatment of the terminology problem. My report of the second revisions is attached to this message. I hope you find it acceptable.

Author 1

Author Response File: Author Response.docx