La distribution du leadership dans l’organisation d’interventions en santé mentale au travail chez le personnel scolaire : étude de cas dans une école secondaire du Québec

In Quebec, there has been a great deal of research into mental health problems among school personnel, particularly teachers and principals in the public sector at the elementary and secondary levels. Despite the concerns of the Ministry of Education, teacher unions and associations of school leaders, as well as school boards, this problem seems to persist. With the exception of the Healthy School Approach (Approche École en Santé) implemented in 2003, which is more centered on student health, there is a lack of a well-defined occupational health intervention  focused on addressing the needs of school personnel. With limited research found in Quebec and around the world on the topic, we developed a methodology similar to the clinic of activity (clinique de l’activité) approach in order to better understand and influence the collective process by which leadership is deployed in the planning and organization of workplace health interventions. The distributed leadership theory was used as the frame of reference for investigating the leadership behaviors of researchers and staff involved. In terms of process, we accompanied during the 2016-2017 school year, a high school of the School Board des Affluents of the Greater Montreal Area in planning and organizing their healthy workplace strategy. The Global health committee formed at the school consisted of teacher representatives, members of the school leadership team, support staff and other school-related professionals. With the school leadership team, we defined the key elements of the approach and clarified the tasks to be accomplished in preparation for the intervention. Then, we identified the main sources of tension using a more generic questionnaire appropriate for all categories of school personnel. Finally, based on the results obtained, we worked with members of the committee to identify and select intervention priorities in order to find applicable solutions. To achieve the overall research goal of better understanding the kind of leadership deployed by members of the committee, four group meetings were filmed and documented. Using these recordings, we made video montages from extracts illustrating the sources of tension, the positive manifestations and factors limiting agency and distributed leadership within their work environment. Three teachers and the school principal were confronted with extracts of their own activity and then invited to comment on their interventions or those of their colleagues. In addition to observation and video feedback, we also relied on written material (e.g., e-mails) and observation notes collected during non-recorded meetings. The main results highlighted in this thesis relate to three specific objectives: to document and describe (i) the leadership tasks performed by the committee members, (ii) the type of distributed leadership patterns, and (iii) the tools designed and mobilized through the occupational health approach. With regards to the leadership tasks performed by members of the Global health committee, a set of 13 macro-tasks and 76 micro-tasks was identified during the first seven phases of the process. This synthesis has the potential to serve as a reference for schools and researchers wishing to reproduce or adapt this research-intervention approach or methodology. A second contribution of our research consists in the theoretical application of the 16 patterns of distributed leadership extracted from four taxonomies identified in the theoretical framework. The data obtained suggest a conceptual reconfiguration and regrouping of these 16 patterns into three higher categories: the place where distributed leadership can occur, the distribution of leadership tasks, and the execution of those tasks. This reconfiguration offers an interesting alternative to unify existing models, while simplifying the analysis of leadership activity in practice. A third contribution of the research testifies to the importance of documenting the tools designed and mobilized when implementing a healthy workplace strategy within school settings; a component often omitted in research studying distributed leadership.  In conclusion, this intervention-research is the first to link two theoretical/practical frameworks rarely integrated within school settings; i.e., the global health approach and distributed leadership theory. We hope that this newly developed intervention methodology, focused on the occupational health of school personnel, can inspire, enlighten and motivate school decision-makers or administrators to support this type of initiative.

Keyphrases: Santé, Health, Mental health, School setting, School personnel, Agency, Distributed leadership