Conclusion, Contributions, and Suggestions 6 137 coach-teachers and teachers and between coach-teachers and school principals deserves attention. Since the coach-teacher role seems comparable with teacher leaders, these insights are relevant for teacher leadership literature. In addition, the role of school principals in collaborative innovation deserves further attention. For instance, we found that safety within school teams increases the influence of school principals’ leadership in collaborative innovation, but how this works exactly is not yet clear from our studies. 6.3.2. Practical suggestions for schools 6.3.2.1. School principals and their professional development programs Firstly, school principals must be aware of their important roles in stimulating both collaborative innovation and distributed leadership. They have to search for the right balance in their degree of steering and providing professional space, matching the phases of development of their school team. When school principals read the descriptions of the three leadership patterns that we found, they can reflect on them and talk about them with their teachers or colleague school principals. Questions to ask themselves (or other school principals and teachers) might be: Do I recognize one of the patterns? Is this how I want to fulfil my leadership role? What do teachers say about my role? Secondly, we recommend that school principals enhance the collaborative spirit within schools. They can do so by showing that they view collaborative innovation as a joint process and behaving as a team member. They can choose to be present at meetings, to show their commitment and the importance of the meetings. Furthermore, they can ask teachers about innovations’ progress to be up to date, share their insights and ideas, and develop vision plans with teachers collaboratively. School principals can also talk transparentlywith teachers about their role and teachers’ role in leading collaborative innovation to improve their working relations. During the interviews with teachers and school principals, we noted that these talks rarely take place, while both teachers and school principals mentioned silent expectations. Teachers told us things like: “The school principal never asks anything and doesn’t hold anyone accountable”. Their school principal said: “It all goes well because if they want something they will come, and they don’t come to me”. Especially in the context of retention of teachers, it seems important to distribute responsibility, utilize everyone’s expertise, and talk transparently about expectations and roles to design an attractive work environment. Conversations between school board members and school principals about leadership roles and responsibilities might also be relevant. We recommend that school board members reflect on how they relate to their school principals. We advise school board members to start a conversation with their school principals on how they can help each other practice collaborative innovation in their schools.
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