The role of authentic assessment in developing authentic leadership identity and competencies

The need to develop assessment practices that are contextualised, meaningful for students and closely linked to real-world challenges has been increasingly recognised in higher education. This is particularly relevant for leadership development programmes that are assumed to have a work context embedded in their content and assessment components. Assessment practices currently used in higher education focus mostly on testing academic knowledge, rather than on enhancing leadership competencies. This research used an abductive approach to investigate how the application of authentic assessment can assist in developing authentic leadership competencies. Thematic analysis of written reflections of 24 students revealed that authentic assessment, accompanied by self-reflection, not only enhanced students’ comprehension of theories and improved their leadership skills but, more notably, helped students develop elements of self-concept, which is a key aspect of authentic leadership. Our findings demonstrate that authentic assessment combined with a reflective piece can assist students in the development of their self-understanding and authenticity as leaders.     

Group coaching: a new way of constructing leadership identity?

This paper focuses on group coaching, one of the newer school leadership development approaches to recently emerge. Using a group-coaching methodology developed at the University of Oslo, we deconstruct the concept of leadership identity as it is reported in texts from students in the National Principal Programme. We suggest that leaders develop greater confidence in their leadership role through personal and contextual feedback from other leaders. We argue that bringing existing and aspiring school principals together in a target-oriented group-coaching process may have profound positive effect on leaders' context-based identity development.     

School Leader Appraisal — A Tool to Strengthen School Leaders' Pedagogical Leadership and Skills for Teacher Management?

With increasing school autonomy, often coupled with greater accountability requirements, school leaders are increasingly responsible for new human resource management tasks. Policies to improve the teaching workforce, therefore, cannot do without policies to improve the school leadership profession. Teachers' effectiveness depends, among others, on effective school leaders who shape teachers' working environment and influence their motivations. Furthermore, as recent research indicates, school leaders are the second most important school-level factor affecting, even if mainly indirectly through their influence on teachers, student learning after classroom instruction. Considering the role school leaders play for the effective school-level management of teachers and for teaching and learning through their pedagogical leadership, it is essential that school leaders are adequately prepared and supported for their role. As part of their school reform programmes, more and more countries have been introducing a range of evaluation and assessment policies to improve school, school leadership and teaching practices. The individual appraisal of schools leaders and teachers is a key component of evaluation and assessment policies. This article explores if, and how, individual school leader appraisal can develop school leaders' pedagogical leadership, a key element of which is teacher management. It analyses the policy approaches of several European countries and the extent to which formal frameworks in these countries focus on developing pedagogical leadership. The article concludes with ideas for policy to strengthen appraisal as a tool to improve school leaders' practices and behaviours and their competencies for pedagogical leadership and teacher management.     

基于PM理论的高校学生干部领导行为调查及评价

选取苏南地区某综合型高等院校为研究对象,基于徐联仓等学者所修订的三隅二不二PM量表,结合高校学生干部的特点修改成《高校学生干部领导行为调查问卷》。366份有效样本的调查结果显示,不同类别属性的学生对高校学生干部领导行为类型的划分以及对各工作情境因素的满意度均不尽相同,他们对某些因素的评价也存在显著差异,并且学生对其组织内部信息沟通的满意度在很大程度上影响了他们对高校学生干部领导行为的评价。     

Middle leadership roles in universities: Holy Grail or poisoned chalice

Middle leadership roles in higher education have been identified as important for institutional effectiveness yet fraught with tensions, and those in middle leadership roles often feel unprepared and unsupported. This study of the responsibilities, skills and competencies, and support required for heads of school in a New Zealand university, drew on a survey and interviews with heads and focus groups or interviews with a range of stakeholders. The research found that while heads found satisfaction in their role, they also faced challenges associated with people management, workload and impact on their research careers. There was widespread agreement among stakeholders about the capabilities needed for the role and an awareness of the barriers to effectiveness. Suggestions for making the role more appealing include reducing workload, providing learning and development programs, clarifying the balance of professional and personal competencies required, and encouraging the distribution of leadership.     

Leading assessment for enhanced student outcomes

This paper reports the leadership findings that emerged from the Alberta Student Assessment Study, a large-scale study employing a mixed-method design. Findings included the importance of assessment leadership, credibility of leaders, capacity to make hard decisions and ability to lead professional learning. An optimal assessment leadership profile emerged which includes values and assessment knowledge, mediated by personal qualities and accompanied by an interplay between procedural knowledge and professional skills. This informs leadership vision and actions leading to increased assessment literacy, more effective monitoring and reporting practice, enhanced instructional practice, enriched partnerships with parents and community members and positive student outcomes.     

Smarter,Better, Faster,Cheaper

This article examines and critiques the leadership capacity of department leaders in a high school and attempts to gain a deeper understanding of how department leaders perceive their role as teacher leaders, making a distinction between what an individual department leader does in his or her position and teacher leadership as a form of continuous learning and innovation through collaboration. How do department leaders practice leadership to improve student learning? The author provides an investigation and analysis of the current level of leadership capacity exhibited by department leaders in a high school. A close look at the role and function of department leaders in this high school reveals an absence of the teacher leadership necessary to promote the broad-based leadership capacity that results in improved student achievement.     

School autonomy reform in Queensland: governance,freedom and the entrepreneurial leader

This paper examines conceptions of governance and freedom embedded within a new school autonomy policy in Queensland (Australia). Drawing on interview data from case study research, it foregrounds the practices of two school leaders from a secondary school in regional Queensland. It considers how such conceptions foster an entrepreneurial leadership of competition and compliance but also how they create space for something other than these dominant performative priorities. The paper’s theoretical contribution responds to calls for more nuanced accounts of entrepreneurial leadership to better understand how current performative demands are impacting on school leaders amid increasingly autonomised education systems.     

School Management Teams’ Instructional Leadership Role in Closing the Achievement Gap in Impoverished Schools

Abstract

Although the South African government has made numerous strides in addressing equity and social justice in education, significant inequalities still exist in learner performance, especially in many impoverished schools. One of the reasons cited for poor learner achievement is the ineffective leadership role of school management teams (SMTs). This article reports on a study that explored the instructional leadership role of SMTs of public schools with the view to closing the achievement gap in poor performing schools. To gain better insights into the SMTs’ realities and experiences of their work as curriculum leaders, qualitative research located within the interpretivist paradigm was undertaken. The findings revealed that SMTs of impoverished schools exhibit consistently low to moderate instructional leadership competencies which ultimately affect student learning. In order to close the achievement gap in poor performing schools, SMTs should play a more pronounced instructional leadership role by leading and managing core curriculum matters and educational resources effectively and efficiently.     

Classroom teacher leadership: service-learning for teacher sense of efficacy and servant leadership development

Improved student achievement requires the distribution of leadership beyond one individual. Given their daily connection to students, leadership opportunities distributed to classroom teachers are key to school improvement. Complicating the development of classroom teacher leaders are attrition rates and low teacher efficacy among novice educators. Service-learning and servant leadership offer complementary pedagogical and philosophical approaches to shift the role of classroom teachers and address efficacy concerns. This study utilised a pre-/post-test, quasi-experimental research design to determine to what extent changes would occur over time in pre-service educators’ teacher sense of efficacy and sense of servant leadership from participating in service-learning.     

Distributed leadership for personalized learning

Abstract

Personalized learning refers to a collection of practices designed to place student interests and needs at the heart of schooling. Schools that implement personalized learning need leaders that support educators and students in redesigning the core practices of teaching and learning in K-12 schools. To answer the question of how leaders support this redesign, we use distributed leadership theory to focus on the macrotasks and microtasks that leaders enact to create the conditions for personalized learning practices. Drawing on a five-year, qualitative study of 11 personalized learning programs in the Midwest, we identify three macrotasks supporting personalized learning: reorganizing learning environments to support student voice and choice, assembling idiosyncratic technology ecosystems to distribute teaching and learning tasks, and redesigning instructional time to prioritize student’s interests, agency, and learning relationships. After we describe a number of microtasks associated with each macrotask, we discuss how a consideration of these kinds of leadership tasks can open the contemporary discussion of personalized learning from a narrow focus on learning technologies to an expansive vision of student-centered school reform.     

Changing leadership: Teachers lead the way for schools that learn

This paper presents findings from a three-year, qualitative study of teachers enrolled in a Masters of Teacher Leadership program. Researchers sought to understand the ways teachers’ beliefs about and understandings of teacher leadership were affected by their participation in a formal teacher leadership program, as well as the kinds of actions they took up as a result of this participation. Data indicate three significant ways participants’ work as teacher leaders was developed and enhanced, including: (a) identifying and amplifying their professional voice, (b) deepening and extending their voice as they plan, and (c) reframing their work/shift responsibility through constructing widening circles of influence and impact. Authors identify implications of their research for growing teacher leaders, school improvement and change, changing school culture, enhancing student engagement, and building new structures.     

Leading educational improvement in Trinidad and Tobago

School leaders in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) now have the important responsibility of initiating and implementing school improvement. This raises the question of their leadership capacity and the competencies that are required for school leaders to fulfil this new role. This article focuses on school leadership in T&T. The study presented in this article utilised a qualitative interpretive research design employing a range of data collection methods, including questionnaires and interviews. The results of the study confirm a need for developing a new type of school leader who is: better trained, more research oriented, more of a risk taker and autonomous.     

When teachers face teachers: listening to the resource “right down the hall”

This article explores the social and professional dynamics “when teachers face teachers” seeking to impact colleagues’ instructional practices to improve student learning. Specifically, it examines a group of 40 teachers leading staff development sessions at their schools in an effort to bring more literacy strategies into the pedagogies of disciplinary teachers. Drawing from the research on distributed leadership and teacher leadership, the study looks at how three factors impact teacher leaders: (1) the actions of the principal; (2) relationships among teachers; and (3) teachers’ own beliefs about leadership.

Using primarily qualitative methods, supplemented by pre‐and‐post quantitative survey data, the study found: strong administrative and collegial support for teacher leadership, the use of savvy and emotionally attuned leadership techniques by teachers, and overall impactful sessions. However, not all school environments were conducive to teacher leadership. The article concludes with suggestions for better utilizing teacher leaders for the local enhancement of education reforms.     

Assessing impact: the role of leadership competency models in developing effective school leaders

The purpose of this case study is to examine the impact of the development and design of a district leadership competency model on leadership development outcomes in one Georgia school district. Specifically, we seek to illuminate the importance of Leadership Competency Models for (1) increasing clarity among aspiring leaders about the expectations for leadership within their system; (2) increasing shared understanding among school leaders and district administrators about the core elements of leadership required for success within their system; (3) increasing uniformity of practice in the identification and selection of candidates into the Aspiring Leader Program; and (4) improvements in the development and support provided for aspiring school leaders. As districts continue to work towards systemic improvement in leadership development nationwide, our findings have real-world implications for districts interested in identifying and developing aspiring leaders within their own systems.     

The Leadership of Transition: Correction, Conciliation and Change in South African Education

This paper focuses on educational leadership in the context of social transition to post-apartheid democracy in South Africa. Transitional leaders manifest behaviours, attitudes, values and strategies that are deeply related to the contexts within which they work. Social norms and political climate may not be supportive of educational leaders wishing to rise to the challenge of unplanned transition; however this paper focuses on leaders who take up this challenge. Narratives of three educational leaders, two white and one black, provide an understanding of the complexities and challenges involved in bringing about change that goes against the grain of social, community, or institutional expectations. Five common strands that bind the narratives of the three leaders are revealed. These commonalities are: a sense of moral purpose, a sense of human frailty, a sense of racial inclusion, a sense of political complexity, and a sense of personal growth. In conclusion, seven propositions that may form the building blocks for new ways of thinking about leadership in post conflict societies are presented.     

综合实践活动课程中培养学生的领导能力——基于上海市七宝中学的实践探索

学生领导能力培养,具有推动人力资源强国建设的国家战略意义,有利于学生未来生活与就业。在综合实践活动课程中培养学生的领导能力,是促进学生全面而有个性发展的一种尝试,有助于推动新课程的深入实施。上海市七宝中学的实践探索表明,实践活动与教师指导对有效发展学生的领导能力同等重要。要积极转变学科教师、班主任和家长的传统观念,尽可能将学生领导能力培养渗透到学科教学活动之中;要设计系列主题,形成实践活动与理论反思相互交替的课程模式;要混合运用多种教学方法,重视教学效果的综合评估。     

校长道德领导力的提升

校长的道德领导力是校长引领学校全校师生培育和践行核心价值观及实现积极变革的过程、行为和能力。校长的道德领导力呈现为愿景领导力、变革领导力和课程领导力,具有5个方面的表现特征。在校长道德领导力建设过程中,需要处理好个人认识与全校共识、愿景提出与实践落实、目标实现与内部协调、常态领导与危机领导、思想感召与制度规范之间的关系。     

VET leadership for the future – characteristics,contexts and capabilities

This paper examines leadership in Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector. VET leaders make a vital and growing contribution to learners, industry and society, yet research on their work is limited. This has direct implications for ensuring leadership is most effective, and for framing evidence-based capacity development. The current research draws together reviews of complex and often competing contexts, analyses of prior research, and results from a national survey of 327 practising VET leaders. Analysis of what VET leaders report doing in their jobs suggests that while they are attuned to the education-focused demands of their roles, they now need new capabilities to respond to internal and external developments. To identify the powerful forces which shape leadership, the study established criteria seen to mark out effective performance in each role. It highlighted a set of indicators identified by VET leaders as those most important in making judgements about the effective delivery of each role. Identifying indicators of effective performance is important, as it is these which, ideally, drive leaders’ aspirations and behaviours. The future capacity of VET in Australia will be underpinned by the capability and regeneration of its leadership. New programmes need to focus on concrete ‘change management’ skills, working through complex real-world problems and leading change in ambiguous environments. The more authentic and active modes of learning were advocated by VET leaders, who expressed an overwhelming preference for practice-based and self-managed, as opposed to formal, forms of professional learning.     

Learning through Leading: A Self-Study in District Administration

There is little research in the area of understanding educational leaders’ psychological processes. This lack of understanding leaves educational leaders to develop their own sense-making practices while in the complex and stressful act of leading. This self-study, conducted over more than half a school year in 2014–2015, was my own effort to do just that: to understand myself as a leader by examining various influences on my role using a four-quadrant framework for leadership. The findings highlight two significant areas influencing my leadership practices: the internal-entity quadrant, defined as the leader’s personal values and beliefs, and the internal-context quadrant, defined as the leader’s perception of the various contextual influences surrounding her role. Adopting this framework for my thinking allowed a more objective view of my practice and the beliefs and assumptions operating within my practice. While this work is, at a personal level, my own struggle to understand the complexities of leading, it is also examines one way in which district leaders might begin to think about their own sense-making practices using self-study methods.