Creative leadership: a new category or more of the same?

New categories of leadership are continually being invented. Because the ways we think are productive of the ways in which we act, it is important to hold these rhetorical innovations to account. This paper focuses on the latest of these categories – creative leadership. Mobilising a Foucauldian notion of ‘discourse’ I deconstruct the notion of creative leadership as it has recently been represented in five published texts. I suggest that the interpretation on offer has a determinist view of the future, ignores the history of debates about creativity, offers creativity as a generic skill and underestimates what it is that teachers and leaders might need to do in order to work creatively. I show that the notion of creative leadership on offer is strongly connected with that of creative learning, and put the ‘recipe’ offered by one set of texts into conversation with a body of empirical evidence about what is happening in schools that aim to promote creative learning. I argue that what is evident from the dialogue between the texts and the empirical studies is that it is pedagogical leadership that is absent but is actually most required, embedded in leadership/management principles and practices that promote social justice.     

Distributed leadership and middle leadership practice in schools: a disconnect?

This article reports on a small-scale collaborative research study on middle leadership (ML) in Iceland and Ireland. It explores the ML role using the theoretical lens of distributed leadership (DL). The majority of DL studies to date examine leadership as an organisational resource that can be cultivated and utilised to serve school improvement. This research, however, situates the teacher at the core of DL and commences a discourse on how MLs experience their leadership practice from a DL perspective. The empirical investigation is based on semi-structured focus group interviews across the range of schools in both education contexts. The findings indicate a disconnect between DL theory as outlined in the literature and ML practice as currently experienced in Ireland and Iceland. While a form of DL exists in both contexts, this is strictly at the gift of the Principal rather than a reciprocal relationship with teachers in relation to leading school activities. The findings also signal a need for a proactive approach in School Leadership Preparation Programmes and in Initial Teacher Education to facilitate school leaders and teachers in understanding and adopting a distributed mindset.     

Distributed leadership in South Africa: yet another passing fad or a robust theoretical tool for investigating school leadership practice?

Distributed leadership, while an established concept in the international literature on education leadership, is slowly gaining prominence in post-apartheid South Africa. This is primarily due to its normative and representational appeal. However, of concern is that the concept has become a catch-all phrase to describe any form of devolved or shared leadership and is being espoused as ‘the answer’ to the country’s educational leadership woes. Drawing on a South African publications-based doctoral study of distributed teacher leadership (Grant 2010. “Distributed Teacher Leadership: Troubling the Terrain.” Unpublished PhD diss., University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg) for its evidence, this article argues for a theoretically robust form of distributed leadership conceptualised as socio-cultural practice and framed as a product of the joint interactions of school leaders, followers and aspects of their situation (Gronn 2000. “Distributed Properties: A New Architecture for Leadership.” Educational Management and Administration 28 (3): 317–338; Spillane, Halverson and Diamond 2004. “Towards a Theory of Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 36 (1): 3–34; Spillane 2006. Distributed Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). It endorses a sequential distributed leadership framing for the South African context and calls for further empirical studies which interrogate the complex practices of distributed school leadership. For without this theoretically robust work, the article argues, distributed leadership is likely to be relegated to the large pile of redundant leadership theories and become a passing fad.     

Teachers’ leadership: a maker or a breaker of students’ educational motivation

Teachers’ leadership plays a critical and central role in students’ educational motivations. This indicates that, in the school context, a teacher’s leadership can have both positive and negative impacts on students’ educational motivation and performance. This article explores these assumptions, building on the path-goal theory, more specifically the effects of teachers’ leadership from students’ perspectives. Using a qualitative research design, this study collected data comprising 35 interviews with children and young people in both primary and upper-secondary school. The results show that the degree of teachers’ developmental leadership greatly affects students’ educational motivation and school performance. Two contrasting teachers’ profiles were found: teachers with a high degree of developmental leadership and teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership. Our findings suggest that teachers with the profile of a high degree of developmental leadership create an environment that fosters educational motivation positively among students, facilitating students’ achievement of high performance levels and a sense of well-being about their studies. In contrast, we show that teachers with a low degree of developmental leadership create an environment that is nonconductive for educational motivation, performance or the welfare of schoolwork.     

Outdoor education: Research topic or universal value? Part Two

Abstract

This paper follows the theme of part one in that it sets out to discover if the history of outdoor education provides its modern exponents with a legacy of prescribed conservatism or alternatively a form of education which embraces, or is capable of embracing, diversity of theory and practice. Focusing on local authority residential outdoor education centres it begins with the 1970s through the 1980s and ends with the 1990s.

Secondary sources are used and include government and civil service education circulars as well as the body of literature that relates to outdoor education. The paper analyses how discussions of philosophical underpinnings and aims, together with the public perception of safety and risk came to influence the practice of outdoor education. This leads to a discussion of terminology and the role of outdoor education as a curricular subject. The influence of market forces on the provision of outdoor education and the increasing call for cost effectiveness is analysed in relation to the increasingly diverse range of activities coming under the umbrella term of outdoor education.

The evidence shows that throughout this period significant changes regarding the nature of outdoor education are observable. However, within this flux one point is clear. The body of outdoor education literature attaches more importance to outcomes relating to personal and social education than environmental education and this point will be the bridge between part two and part three.     

Secondary School Principals in Curriculum Reform:Victims or Accomplices?

The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission convened an important conference in early 2010. A major focus of the conference was the apparent failure of the New Curriculum Reform to take root in schools. One of the conclusions presented at the conference was that school principals were responsible for the gap between the intent and effect of the curriculum reform. This article uses data collected from a group of Shanghai secondary school principals to examine the state of the curriculum reform from “the inside.” The main purpose of the article is to identify why the principals themselves believe that the reform is not working as intended and indeed whether they are in some way complicit in the slow rate of reform implementation. Principals involved in the study suggest the contradictory messages they receive from government officials about how principals’ work should be formally and informally assessed do little to promote meaningful reform implementation. Therefore, it is suggested that one of the main reasons why curriculum reform has so far not been able to bring about deep change at secondary school level is the enduring cultural norms which continue to underpin societal expectations and accountability, rather than a lack of curriculum leadership on the part of school principals.     

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.     

Achieving Universal General Secondary Education in Ethiopia in line with the middle-income country vision: a reality or a dream?

This article analyses the challenges facing secondary education in the context of Ethiopia’s Growth and transformation Plan (GtP) for 2010/11–2014/15 and its stated goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2025. It does not aim to provide a definitive set of recommendations for universalising general secondary education to meet the demands of a middle-income economy. Rather, the article informs policy makers and other stakeholders about the options available in the context of Ethiopia. It aims to equip them to chart a path for sustainable expansion of the subsector, enabling universalising secondary education to play an important role in transforming the country from a low-income to a middle-income economy. The article investigates the participation rate in secondary education that would support a middle-income economy, and then analyses how teacher preparation, development and management, together with school-based management, can contribute to ensuring quality secondary graduates. However, the following problems still persist in secondary education: the gap between access for urban and rural populations remains significant; gender disparities and disparities between regions remain high; access to general secondary education (grades 9–10) is still low; access to preparatory secondary education is low; and the distance between home and school is far for numerous children, which represents a barrier in particular for adolescent girls. The article summarises policy options for universalising general secondary education. The most critical reform areas identified in the study relate to the financing, and governance and management of secondary education, particularly school-based management.     

The role of the associate dean in UK universities: distributed leadership in action?

This paper reports on findings from a Leadership Foundation for Higher Education funded project exploring the role of associate deans in UK universities. While the number of associate deans leading cross-curricular and inter-disciplinary initiatives appears to be on the increase, there has been very little research focusing on the exact nature of the role and its importance, or otherwise, in the leadership and management of universities. Drawing on mixed-methods data from 15 semi-structured interviews and a follow-up online survey (n = 172), this paper reports on how the role is defined and positioned in relation to university organisational structures and identifies what the similarities and differences are between associate deans working at traditional and modern universities. As the first national survey of the role, it is argued that this paper makes a significant and original contribution to knowledge. By drawing on the concept of distributed leadership, the paper also offers new theoretical insights into how different types of universities in the UK are responding to external pressures as a consequence of the fast-changing and increasingly complex sector environment.     

Precocious readers: a cognitive or a linguistic advantage?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - We investigated the role of linguistic and cognitive processes in reading precocity from kindergarten to grade 2. A sample of 33 precocious readers was...     

An Australian perspective on school leadership preparation and development: credentials or self-management?

This paper provides a review of school leadership preparation and development in Australia through considering the requirements for becoming a principal, how leadership preparation and development occurs, and consideration of recent developments to provide an Australian standard for school leaders. Australian educators have relied mostly on a self-identification and self-managed system in which individuals decide that they want to pursue leadership opportunities and then seek out the support and experiences to help them. Support is available and provided through system, university, and service organization programmes, and the support of colleagues and senior leaders in schools. Whilst there is an extensive range of support provided by systems, universities and service organizations, there is little evidence of their impact on schools. At the school level there needs to be far greater support in identifying and developing leaders. Developments in creating a national leadership standard might lead to some type of credentialing programme that could allow individuals to benchmark their development, and ensure that preparation and support programmes are of the highest quality. An alternative view is to reinforce greater individual responsibility for leadership development and career progress, encourage schools and systems to focus less on individual leadership and more on collective leadership, and consider more innovative ways of providing leadership development.     

Is science a universal or a culture-specific endeavor? The benefits of having secondary students critically explore this question

Cultural Studies of Science Education - In this theoretical paper, I argue that whether science is universal or culture-specific endeavor is a nature of science (NOS) question that needs to be...     

Self-determination for students with learning disabilities: Is it a universal value?

Teaching students with learning disabilities to be self-determining during postsecondary transition planning is considered beneficial for students. Few self-determination studies, however, have focused on the impact students' cultural identities may have on the practice of self-determination during transition planning. A review of self-determination literature is presented and includes concept definition, characteristics, and example components of model programs. Additionally, multicultural special education literature helps frame the need to consider the interplay between programs that promote self-determination and culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Qualitative research methods, used with student participants, have the potential to inform preferred practices as well as research gaps in special education by capturing how diverse students respond to self-determination during postsecondary transition planning.     

Critical perspectives in educational leadership: a new ‘theory turn’?

In this article, I argue that we are witnessing a new phase or ‘theory turn’ in the field of educational leadership. These more critical perspectives in the field of educational leadership have typically been marginalised by the larger body of orthodox approaches due to a perceived lack of focus on best practice and ‘what works’ discourses, and especially in recent years with the rise of the school effectiveness and improvement movement. However, critical perspectives in educational leadership constitute an essential and vibrant part of educational leadership scholarship and discourse. Drawing on Michel Foucault's notion of discourse, through this article, I examine how critical perspectives have been constituted historically, with some of the main themes of research. This foregrounding also highlights a number of limitations with more orthodox and hegemonic leadership discourses. I identify a number of key writers in the field and situate them in the current theory turn, that is, an emphasis of theoretically informed research that have been prolific over the last 5–10 years.     

Education for Sustainability in Scottish Secondary Schools: boundary maintenance or professional reorientation?

This article reports on a study of education for sustainability in Scottish secondary schools. The study was based at the Institute of Education, University of Stirling, and was sponsored (between November 1997 and March 1998) by the Sustainable Schools Partnership, with funding from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Worldwide Fund for Nature Scotland and (between April 1998 and July 1998) by the University of Stirling. It comprised three research strands: a trawl of documentary evidence relating to policy and practice within the field of education for sustainability; interviews with key personnel in secondary schools identified as developing good practice in the field of education for sustainability; and a series of discussions with policy makers having a national and/or international perspective on education for sustainability and its development in schools. Although the prime focus was on Scottish schools, each of these strands also covered as a secondary concern relevant work in the other national regions of the UK. Having briefly clarified some issues of definition, the article offers an analysis of the central problem faced by schools (secondary schools in particular) involved in cross‐curriculum developments of this kind. That analysis focuses upon the aspiration of these schools to bring about whole‐school change within an institutional context characterised by strong boundary maintenance. The article then outlines the first of two findings: where education for sustainability is being developed within a secondary school setting, whole‐school change is likely to be conceived as modest modifications to existing structures. The article goes on, however, to outline some of the changing practices within these schools and, in doing so, introduces the second finding: where education for sustainability is being developed within a secondary school setting, whole‐school change is likely to be conceived in terms of a reorientation of professional interest and practice towards the local community and wider community concerns. These two findings, we argue, should be seen neither as complementary nor as existing in creative tension. They point to a school system seriously at odds with itself: pulled by one set of professional and managerial priorities towards piecemeal change within fixed parameters and by a very different set of professional and educational responses towards the reconceptualisa‐tion of teaching and learning and the closer involvement of schools in the local communities. This increased interest in the outward‐looking school community extends to issues of global concern. The article concludes with some thoughts on how this tension might be resolved through a radical reordering of educational priorities in favour of boundary realignment and community participation.     

Progressing towards a model of intrinsic inclusion in a mainstream primary school: a SENCo’s experience

This article explores a Special Educational Needs Coordinator’s experience of progressing from a ‘mainstream + SEN’ approach to inclusion, defined as an extrinsically inclusive model, and perhaps more closely aligned to integration, towards a model of intrinsic inclusiveness. A three-tiered reading/spelling programme was implemented, using a structured, cumulative, individualised, multi-sensory approach for all children, with accompanying shared strategies and methods. Progress was evaluated through standardised tests, pupil questionnaires/interviews and discussion with staff. In addition to recorded progress in reading and spelling ages, the data revealed the majority of staff and children’s satisfaction with the methods/strategies used, and the shared ownership of them. The article concludes by discussing areas for development.