This qualitative case study aimed to identify school principals' early leadership actions in building teacher trust and collaboration in post-Soviet Georgia (vertical organization) and U.S. (more egalitarian organization) school settings. The study was organized around the following research questions:1. How do school principals in post-Soviet Georgia and the U.S. develop teacher trust and collaboration? a. What leadership orientations and behaviors do they draw on? b.What challenges do they describe? c. What do they identify as the most important first steps in developing a collaborative school culture? What organizational conditions do they focus on? 2. How do Georgian and U.S. teachers describe teacher trust and collaboration in their school? What principal supports for trust and collaboration do they point out? 3. How do the accounts of Georgian and U.S. principals and teachers compare? 4. How do the accounts of Georgian and U.S. principals and teachers inform the development of teacher trust and collaboration in post-Soviet and other traditionally vertical school structures and cultures?The qualitative case study involved school principals, assistant principals and teachers in one K-12 capital city school in Tbilisi, Georgia, and two suburban schools in Michigan (one middle, one high school). Overall, seventeen participants in Georgia and twenty-one in Michigan schools were interviewed. Alongside interviews, the study examined documents and observed teacher meetings to better understand how teachers collaborate and what support they get from their peers and school leaders. The data suggest some fundamental leadership behaviors were common to leader efforts to initiate or extend teacher trust and collaboration in both school contexts. All three cases show that principals put great emphases on key transactional behaviors such as being present and responsive, listening, following through on concerns and agreements, building open and transparent relations, and offering individual consideration. Transformational behaviors: encouraging community, encouraging professional learning, voice, and leadership were also observed. Levels of trust and collaboration in the two environments differed. Teachers in Michigan schools were more familiar with the role of trust and collaboration and had higher expectations for these working conditions and supports. In Tbilisi's, a new school principal used these behaviors to overcome a history of toxic distrust and no traditions of collaboration to introduce trust and collaboration in small stages amongst groups of interested and willing teachers. Implications are drawn, most specifically for suggested steps in developing trust and collaboration in post-Soviet schools with histories and vertical education organizations similar to those of Georgia.
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