Leadership for Inclusion: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Collaboration with Teachers, Families, And Communities

Abstract

Cooperation between teachers, families, and communities is a well-known platform of inclusive education, but the representation of it in policy and leadership documents often demonstrates a disconnect between the symbolic and the real worlds. The current research investigated collaboration within the frames of publicly available online resources concerning leadership to be included. The research had four aims including attempting to conceptualize collaboration, emphasizing practices that are overemphasized or underemphasized, evaluating the level of emphasizing collaboration symbolically and practically, and exploring issues that impede collaboration and how inclusive leadership is relevant. A qualitative content analysis of the data was performed with the help of the thematic coding to determine recurrent patterns and tensions according to the Bowen document analysis framework. The results show that the idea of collaboration is always placed at the top in terms of the inclusive leadership but often articulated in the form of aspirational words instead of being implemented in the form of sustainable structures and accountability systems. There is a focus on teacher collaboration especially in professional learning communities and mentoring, but little to no family or community partnerships which are predominantly event-driven. The primary barriers are the unavailability of resources, work overload among the teachers, the absence of training, cultural stigma and poor accountability mechanisms. Such issues are addressed through inclusive leadership by institutionalizing teamwork, strengthening partnerships, building professional capacity, and promoting culturally responsive practices.