How can principal leadership practices promote teacher collaboration and organizational change? A longitudinal multiple case study of three school improvement initiatives

Using a longitudinal data set from three waves of interviews with principals and teachers at three schools in Germany, the present study addresses the aforementioned research gap by investigating the role of principals as initiators of teacher collaboration and organizational change in schools. The data were collected in a research project that studied the implementation of a school improvement initiative over the course of two years. In the following sections, we provide definitions, theoretical rationales, and empirical evidence around the concept of organizational change, teachers as change agents, and principals as facilitators of teacher collaboration for organizational change.