Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic created a need to transform the content and delivery of professional learning for middle leaders. This chapter discusses an innovative multi-tiered professional learning approach to build middle leaders' capacity to lead during times of crisis and beyond. It explores how the approach works and its impact on middle leaders. Data were collected via online surveys and feedback from live interactive professional learning sessions. The chapter proposes the approach as a model to build collective middle leadership capacity to lead in times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as for and in emergencies. The findings from data collected show that the multimodal platforms, such as social media lives, websites, webinars, YouTube, and Zoom that were used to deliver professional learning, fostered collaboration, knowledge, and skill acquisition and built and improved the well-being of middle leaders. Additionally, the multi-tiered professional learning approach built a global professional learning community of middle leaders.
TopBackground
This background provides definitions of key conceptual terms, such as: what it means to lead from the middle; middle leadership; who are middle leaders and what they do; crisis management; what is professional learning and how it engenders capacity building. This background also provides deeper discussions of theoretical perspectives that relate to these definitional and conceptual issues about middle leaders in education, professional learning approaches and strategies that build middle leadership capacity.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Professional Learning: An interactive on-going cycle which is customised to suit the educators’ needs with the intent of improving teaching and learning outcomes.
Multimodal: Having or using several methods or ways to deliver professional learning.
Crisis Management: The course of action taken by a school when an emergency occurs which threatens to disrupt the institution’s goal with the intent of implementing an effective response.
Modality: The way in which the professional learning is delivered such as face-to-face, online, blended or hybrid.
Leading From the Middle: Refers to persons who are in the mid-leadership roles at different tiers of the education system such as at the district or Ministry level and how they take control of the leadership from the middle by working cohesively with the top-tier leadership and lower-tier colleagues to accomplish a goal.
Middle Leadership: Refers to educators who have a formal leadership role such as responsibility for a department or team of colleagues, while they simultaneously teach at the institution.
Multi-Tier: A deliberate holistic layered system designed for middle leaders to access high-quality professional learning.