138 Thirdly, it is noticeable in our research that school principals are searching for their roles, one suitable for collaborative innovation within their school. They search for a balance between steering and providing professional space to teachers. Professional development programs for school principals can play a role by preparing them to search for their role, talking about situations from their own school practice and how they can enact leadership practices as Team players. The three leadership patterns and the eleven leadership practices can also be used for reflection during professional development programs. Practicing collaborative innovation provides a new situation within the school. It challenges school principals to reflect on their leadership role. Paying attention to this is relevant for both new and more experienced school principals. 6.3.2.2. Teachers and their professional development programs Firstly, teachers have a responsibility for collaborative innovation, with and without a defined role as coach-teacher. When professional space is provided, teachers are asked to assume their responsibility with a collaborative mindset. Our suggestion for doing so would be to start by realizing the potential of each team member and daring to grant them leadership roles. The four tools of leerKRACHT can help teachers and school principals to structure collaboration and to practice distributed leadership. We advise teachers to talk intentionally about education and minimize wandering off topic by addressing each other when it happens. Many teachers, to illustrate, mentioned they easily discuss the color of the school fence instead of educational quality. Another suggestion is to let teachers reflect on their own roles in the school and their expertise, and to talk about these with colleagues. Researchers could help schools by conducting a social network questionnaire and interpreting the sociograms with teachers and school principals collectively. Interpreting these together could be helpful to start the conversation about who brings which expertise and whether the network has central members. Team members can become more aware of belonging to a network, since social network analysis shows that networks are all about interaction. Since teachers’ and school principals’ roles and professions are changing, insights into each other’s roles and challenges might help to build a collaborative spirit for innovation. Secondly, teachers’ professional development programs can play a role in teaching both teachers that become coach-teachers and regular teachers to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. There are programs for teacher leaders, but our studies highlight that there should be a broader focus on how teacher leaders (coach-teachers) and regular teachers work together. This is all the more important as tensions might arise between teachers and coach-teachers. To deal with distributing leadership, collaborative
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