Toward the affective process of collaborative leadership : a phenomenological study in managing the complex educational change

Abstract

Collaborative leadership is one of the enthralling concepts for recent decades. A considerable amount of literature has been published on collaborative aspects of leadership as an affective process and its achievement on educational change. However, how collaborative leadership is initiated and maintained to develop long-term educational change successfully has not been widely studied. This indicates the lack of understanding regarding the experiential factors of individuals dealing with challenging problems in educational change by adopting collaborative leadership approaches. Additionally, how these experiential factors develop over time is possible to discern. In this study, phenomenological approach, a qualitative method, is used to explore the lived experiences of exigent problems for individuals in educational change development with the focus on collaborative leadership process. This current study used the available data from the international longitudinal project titled “Collaborative Leading of The Unexpected in The Changing Education” (LED) (2015 – 2018). This study came up with five significant themes including (1) The Tendency toward Collaboration-facilitating Experiences; (2) The Growth in Mind-sets and Skill-sets; (3) The Improvement in Teacher Practice and Student Learning; (4) The Tendency from Individual to Collective Growth; (5) Organizations’ Collaborative Initiatives Coping with Contextual Challenges. These findings reveal important and intriguing explanations to what and how the participants experienced over time in the affective process of leadership executed in collaboration in real-life educational change circumstances. Despite its limitations, this study could offer potential for furthering our understanding of the role of leadership and collaborative leadership as an affective process in facilitating educational change.