In recent years, educational research has highlighted the potential of teacher collaboration in school-based team meetings for the processes of innovation and improvement of their practices. For this teacher collaboration to be productive, middle leaders, acting as facilitators who deliberately promote certain forms of interaction and discourse among teachers, can play a critical role. This role of facilitation, however, is not straightforward. Thus, more research is needed to delve into how middle leaders, acting as facilitators, promote productive teacher collaboration in school-based team meetings. Within this framework, this paper aims to analyse the middle leaders’ perception of their role as facilitators, in schools that are developing global teaching innovation processes to promote personalised learning.

For this purpose, we conducted 13 in-depth semi-structured interviews with middle leaders who acted as facilitators of school-based team meetings in four schools in Spain (two primary schools and two secondary schools, combining public and private schools). These schools emphasised working from and with students' interests as a strategy for personalised learning in their school educational projects. The participants held different positions as middle leaders in their school structure and coordinated the work of teacher teams that were diverse in their characteristics. A qualitative content analysis of the interviews allowed us to identify some common themes related to the challenges and dilemmas faced by the facilitators.

Our results brought to the fore four of these challenges and dilemmas:
(1) the tension between control and support in the development of innovation;
(2) the interplay of directive and collaborative relationships and forms of interaction within the teams;
(3) the balance between the need of effective problem solving and decision-making and the need to construct and maintain a positive socio-emotional dynamics based on trust and egalitarian inclusion among the participants; and
(4) the tension between pedagogical discussion and logistical and organisational issues.

These results suggest possible directions for further research on how middle leaders, acting as facilitators, promote productive teacher collaboration in school-based teams leading innovation processes. At the same time, the results provide relevant elements for supporting the role of middle leaders as facilitators and for improving middle leaders’ professional development.

Keywords: Teacher collaboration, facilitation, middle leaders, personalised learning.