Introduction
Teamwork is integral to creating a collaborative school culture and mutual learning, which contributes to high school performance levels. Building diverse teams and establishing cooperation within the in-school educational process are important processes in managing the educational system. At the present stage, the education content, focused on providing self-determination of the individual, is designed to create conditions for the formation and development of the methodological culture of the teacher (Leal Filho et al., 2018). In the process of creating conditions, some professional and pedagogical problems related to methodological culture are identified and solved. Moreover, the quality of the received education, to a large extent, depends on the professionalism and competence of the pedagogical staff of educational institutions. That is why providing conditions for teachers’ continuous professional development and professional retraining is becoming increasingly critical. Thus, a plan for developing a learning culture in an educational institution should be developed.
School Description
In order to assess the learning culture amongst staff it is necessary to provide a general description of the school. It is important to note that education in Victoria, Australia, is compulsory for children under the age of 17; kids attend Quency schools for 13 years (Virtual School Victoria, n.d.). This school is public has extensive facilities to accommodate students, and employs a professional team of teachers. There are special educational, sports, and recreational facilities on the school grounds. Thus, it provides the proper development for students consistent with the mission of Quency High School. Working together to achieve success is the mission of the school (Virtual School Victoria, n.d.). At the same time, the vision statement at Quency is to develop the potential of every student at the school. In this way, the team works to provide the best educational experience for students (Virtual School Victoria, n.d.). The Quency School focuses on children of different socio-economic statuses. Accordingly, the students of the school are indigenous Australians of different statuses, children of migrants, and other categories of the population (Virtual School Victoria, n.d.). The school’s multiculturalism enables learners to experience interaction in different cultural environments.
Assessment of Learning Culture
It is essential to recognize that the ACER Professional Learning Community Framework is a tool for evaluating training institutions. Thus, it facilitates the assessment of the professional culture of employees. The educational culture of teachers is such a generalizing characteristic of their personality. It reflects the ability to persistently and successfully implement teaching and educational activities combined with effective interaction with learners (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Without such a culture, pedagogical practice is impaired and ineffective. In Quency Schools, teachers have a common professional culture and constantly try to develop it (Good Schools Guide, n.d.). They all consider that the student is the principal value of teaching, and educators should improve learners’ skills, cooperate with them, and grow their personalities.
Teachers have a common approach to work aimed at the development of students. The basis of teachers’ professional activity is the knowledge of age and individual psychological and pedagogical characteristics of school children. Considering them, teachers plan further work and organize learning activities. At the same time, Quency School teachers focus on the needs of children who come from other countries (Good Schools Guide, n.d.). The teachers identify gaps in their knowledge and help them fill them in. It is significant to emphasize that pedagogical innovation is associated with transforming and improving the educational process by introducing new, stable elements. Hence, at Quency School, teachers are constantly undergoing additional training to learn new teaching methods. Accordingly, teachers use various media and information technology to visualize learning (Haiyan et al., 2017). Most educators have a problem with new teaching methods, especially when the students have not yet learned how to use them, as occurred during distance education.
The following is domain two, which includes leadership in a Quency School. The school leader has a constructive leadership style and properly assigns positions and assignments according to teachers’ abilities (Leal Filho et al., 2018). At the same time, when problems with insufficient competence arise, the director organizes additional training for teachers. When positive change does not occur, the principal, as a leader, decides to dismiss employees with insufficient skills. At the same time, the leaders maintain a professional but good relationship with their subordinates (Leal Filho et al., 2018). This promotes the proper use of teachers’ potential to meet the challenges of the school, as well as the personal development of teachers.
Currently, there is a problem with providing a shared vision within the team of teachers. This is due to the fact that staff turnover results in them not being able to learn how to implement the school’s core teaching principles on their own and quickly. In addition, the principal does not have a full-fledged staff management plan. That is, the Quency School does not have an accepted strategy for improving the effectiveness of classes, applying active learning, providing personalized tutoring for talent, and enhancing student success (Good Schools Guide, n.d.). Thus, the principal is looking for his place in the management system. Currently, the instructional leader ensures educational outcomes by improving teaching and learning practices, the school’s top priorities (Good Schools Guide, n.d.). In a Quency School, however, this process needs to be further refined and enhanced.
Although domain 2 needs significant improvement, domain 3, indicating the involvement of students, learning, and well-being at Quency School, is highly appreciated. This is because the school constantly conducts anonymous surveys to ascertain the student’s level of knowledge. Learners are offered questionnaires where they can choose subjects in which they require more preparation and help (LinkedIn, n.d.). Based on this, school leaders are spared specialists and change schedules to address common problems for all students. If some learners have specific needs, special additional classes are created for them by the school’s teachers.
It is significant to notice that the school management does not account for the opinion of the parental team when planning the schedule. However, the school has children from different socio-economic backgrounds, which indicates the need to communicate with their parents. Parents of children from the Italian community do not have the opportunity to formally propose to the school management to introduce optional Italian language classes.
The Quency School provides yearly professional development courses to ensure that teachers constantly learn new teaching techniques. All educators at the school engage students in an active learning process. Teachers handle their work and use multiple learning strategies to find an approach for each child (LinkedIn, n.d.). Variety ensures that students will never become bored and better absorb their learning. It also provides that students are likely familiar with strategies that fit their preferred individual learning style. The disadvantage is that teachers do not create opportunities to discuss and evaluate the ways of learning that are offered to children. Thus, the problem arises that progressive methods are not always effective (LinkedIn, n.d.). This also creates challenges in engaging students in new teaching methods, making them ineffective. Even if the methods are implemented correctly, teachers cannot get feedback on children’s interests and engagement.
In Quency School, teachers have individualized learning plans that are reviewed regularly based on the effectiveness of their program and the students’ perceptions of it. All instructors use a common system for measuring progress developed at the school and approved by the leadership team (LinkedIn, n.d.). At the meeting, teachers must discuss the evaluation system and suggest changes in accordance with the new methods and programs. Importantly, exchanging information among colleagues only occurs at the formal meeting. Colleagues collaborate only within an established program; teachers do not engage in interpersonal communication (LinkedIn, n.d.). Therefore, this can decrease productivity because bringing teachers together can enhance students’ learning of specific topics.
The school has some problems with teachers not being formally evaluated. The school leadership conducts ongoing formal instruction monitoring and provides teacher evaluations and recommendations. However, the school does not have a mechanism for obtaining informal evaluations (Virtual School Victoria, n.d.). This becomes a barrier to obtaining a reliable report with teacher feedback at the end of the year. In this way, it is difficult to establish all sides, what qualities teachers need to enhance, and which additional courses to attend.
Recommendations
In order to solve the problem with the introduction of new teaching methods, educators should attend special training seminars where they can review the leading techniques in the educational sphere. This is especially valuable when introducing a distance learning format with which students are not yet familiar and have some difficulties working (Coleman & Cross, 2021). To enhance the results of the use of this method, teachers should compile a special program. The program should have all the attributes typical of face-to-face teachings, such as group discussions, collective discussions of what they have learned, and lively communication. This will decrease students’ stress when they change teaching methods and techniques (Coleman & Cross, 2021). To ensure a full-fledged learning process at a distance, apart from technical tools, a trainer needs to have many professional and personal competencies. Their development will allow them to interest and organize students at the initial stage and hold their attention until the final.
However, this is not enough; the role of parents increased rapidly in the distance learning environment, as it is challenging to demand absolute discipline and concentration from children, especially young children. During distance learning, teachers should constantly communicate with students’ parents to address new issues (Christoforidou & Kyriakides, 2021). At the same time, many parents were dissatisfied with the variety of platforms chosen by teachers. Obviously, everyone needs an individual approach, but for distance learning to become a comprehensive approach to educating parents and teachers is essential.
The school staff of Quency needs to create a personnel management plan, which will specify the approach to the formation of the team and management of human resources throughout the academic process. The plan should include an appropriate approach for hiring employees. The school management can focus on the education of specialists and the results of the probationary period when recruiting them (Hairon et al., 2017). After the formation of the staff, it is crucial to unite them into one team to communicate with each other in the future, even outside the official curriculum. This will unite their efforts and make the presentation of material on different subjects comprehensive (Leal Filho et al., 2018). The strategy can be implemented through teamwork training and improving professional ethics skills.
Meanwhile, the director should prove their initiative, originality, and, most importantly, the ability to manage the team of teachers in the school. Therefore, a professional leader should have pronounced managerial abilities; the manager should listen to the opinions of subordinates (Hairon et al., 2017). This will produce a positive climate in the team and enable the leader to establish a common vision of learning that all employees will use. In order to stimulate teachers to improve performance in terms of human resources management, special attention should be devoted to motivation. This could be non-material incentives such as appreciation at status meetings. It is possible that the Quency School could have whole-teacher motivation programs with monetary bonuses for achieving high-performance indicators (Hairon et al., 2017). In this way, all professionals will attempt to adhere to a common vision of the school and make significant efforts to enhance student learning.
It is also crucial to provide recommendations that will allow involving parents in the organization of education at school. From the first day of working with the parental team, the teacher should ensure that children and parents understand the importance of the school’s requirements for the family. A significant effect on the interaction between the family and the teacher will be if the educator provides an opportunity to demonstrate initiative and support parents in all affairs in the classroom and at school (Coleman, 2018). In communication with the team of parents, the class teacher should be polite and correct, and able to restrain emotions. At the same time, it is essential to organize meetings with the team of parents if the classes have common challenges for all children. If a child has special needs, it is necessary to invite specific parents to the meeting (Coleman, 2018). This will provide a joint effort of teachers and parents to influence the improvement of the learning process.
Moreover, parents should be empowered to discuss the school curriculum. This will permit them to propose the study of issues that they will approve at the parent meeting. After that, the teachers’ meeting will consider their proposals and provide them with a motivated response (Christoforidou & Kyriakides, 2021). This cooperation will allow Quency students to study according to a program that is designed to meet specific needs. It is vital to highlight that parents are encouraged to evaluate the work of all the staff at the parent-teacher meetings. They can complete informal, standard questionnaires about the work of each teacher (Coleman, 2018). Therefore, the involvement of parents in the evaluation process will allow the school management to obtain comprehensive data on the quality of education in the school and to correct weaknesses.
Students should also be involved in the process of creating the curriculum and recruiting staff. Accordingly, their opinion about the teachers’ practice and the relevance of the subjects is valuable for the school. In order to ensure the involvement of students, it is necessary to conduct an anonymous survey once a semester. Each learner should complete the questionnaires and evaluate the teachers’ performance (Christoforidou & Kyriakides, 2021). However, it is especially important that they have the opportunity to write their own comments and suggestions about the curriculum. During the teachers’ meeting, the school leader should demonstrate the statistics of the answers to the tutors and personally talk to the staff that was negatively evaluated (Leal Filho et al., 2018). Based on this, the director needs to propose additional training for them, and in case of further problems, replace the team with more educated ones. Thus, student evaluation is one of the components of the overall teacher assessment.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that in Quency School, the development of learning culture amongst staff is at an average level. This is because there are problems with the introduction of new teaching techniques, informal evaluations of teachers, and feedback from students. However, the school needs to ensure a shared vision of goals among educators and create a staff management plan. The guidelines presented are designed to provide parental involvement in children’s learning through teacher assembly and evaluation. Additionally, the guidelines for creating a personnel management plan will ensure that only professional staff are involved and motivated to educate. It will also create a shared vision among all teachers, which will positively impact teaching methods for organizing a positive team climate. Finally, the method of setting feedback from students is valuable in generating a final evaluation of teachers’ performance.
References
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