Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

4-2023

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8254-4448

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Maria Mongillo

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Sandy Harris

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Karen Maxwell

Abstract

This qualitative, phenomenological study examined the nature of conflict within professional learning community (PLC) collaborative groups and the teacher leader’s management of the conflict from the teacher, teacher leader, and administrator perspective at suburban secondary schools. Purposive, criterion sampling based on job title and having at least one year of experience at a PLC campus qualified participants to capture the phenomenon’s characteristics. Semistructured interviews of three administrators, four teacher leaders, and two teachers were recorded and transcribed before an initial round of open coding. After analyzing open codes, the data were analyzed using closed coding, which established common themes. The findings described conflicts resulting from curriculum differences, personality differences, and external pressures with campus structures directly affecting the level of conflict. Participants described teacher leaders as managing the conflict by absorbing, tackling, or deferring the conflict, with rationales for the choices being levels of experience, levels of clarity, lack of options, and lack of training. The conflicts and the teacher leader’s conflict management affected task completion, relationships, and the overall function of the PLC, resulting in productive or destructive conflicts. The results of this study could be used to improve the training and support of teacher leaders guiding the day-to-day functions within PLC collaborative groups.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.