Joan M. Conway

Creating enduring strength through commitment to schoolwide pedagogy

The term schoolwide pedagogy was once rarely heard and yet has now become a part of most discussions around school improvement. But what does it really mean and why is the presence of a schoolwide pedagogical framework important? Some would say that in their school the adoption of an authoritative approach such as Habits of Mind, Bloom’s Taxonomies or the Productive Pedagogies is a schoolwide pedagogical framework. To some extent they are, but what is often lacking is the intellectual and social capacity that is built through collective professional sharing and articulation of strongly held beliefs about contextually relevant teaching and learning practices. Without this sense of ownership, teacher adoption ends up being sporadic at best with some teachers paying only lip service to imposed quality frameworks. In schools that have engaged with the processes of the Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools (IDEAS) project, personal pedagogical principles and authoritative pedagogical principles are contextualized by the school community as a whole. The story from one school is used to demonstrate the enduring strength of commitment when a school creates its own SWP.

Cocreation of Knowledge: Roles of Coresearchers in Research Teams

Abstract This paper provides insight into how school-based research teams and external researchers conceptualize and act in their roles as coresearchers. The observations and experiences of school-based and external research team members and lead researchers provided the data for this paper. All were Queensland-based educators involved in researching the effect of a three-year school revitalization process on improved school practice.

Leading with Moral Purpose: Teacher Leadership in Action

Mutualistic goal setting enables members of the school community to reinvigorate and build on the past in order to establish clear goals for the future. That past in the case study schools of this chapter is steeped in the various foundations of the schools and manifests in explicit values for action bringing life to the moral purpose of the school. Teacher leaders emerge from the process with zest for open and active work in parallel with their meta-strategic leaders. They lead with members of the professional community, bringing to life in classrooms the underpinning values of the school’s vision for learning. This chapter draws on examples of teacher leaders working in schools that have engaged with the school improvement process of IDEAS (Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievements in Schools) and are leading significant new pedagogical action. Guided by the school improvement process based on building capacity for the alignment of school components through parallel leadership, mutualistic goal setting and collective responsibility, these teachers exemplify leadership that is underpinned by allegiance to an explicit set of values guided by a vision for learning. Each school is different and each teacher leader demonstrates recognised qualities of critical self-reflection, networking, and advocacy for improved student achievement from a contextually relevant vantage point of moral purpose. The result is an identified style of leadership, underpinned by moral purpose, whereby teacher leaders in concert with their meta-strategic principal actively engage in the articulation of their school’s values and vision for learning through pedagogical leadership and strategic planning.

I can see clearly now: Teacher leaders Invoking Reaction

Abstract A clear focus on capacity building is needed to sustain continuous school improvement and to manage change effectively. A recent research project conducted in schools that had adopted the IDEAS process for school revitalisation in an Australian education system has resulted in the development of a framework of capacity-building dynamics. The Invoking Reaction capacity-building dynamic allows for the creation of new knowledge to be critiqued through an ever-widening circle of internal and external networking, asserting advocacy for both ongoing school revitalisation and the power of the teaching profession. Networking, advocacy and organisational critique are the constructs of the Invoking Reaction dynamic: all of major importance in schools that have created significant new knowledge and wish to consolidate that new knowledge into the long-term future. This paper provides contextual detail supporting the research for the capacity building model and the Invoking Reaction dynamic in particular. It also provides questions to consider around the sharing and refining concept of the Invoking Reaction dynamic. This is an invitation for teacher leaders and aspiring leaders to develop clear pictures of what their school might achieve through networking, advocacy and organisational critique to consolidate newly created knowledge into the long-term future (Crowther et al., 2010).

Cross-Cultural Stories of Practice from School Leaders

Educational leadership has been the subject of a myriad of research studies with a plethora of checklists and frameworks, and most educational systems advocate for the evaluation of school leaders against principles of effective school leadership. However, the complexity of leadership is far more than adhering to predetermined frameworks and standards. This chapter delves deeper into the practices of a small sampling of school leaders as they reveal their stories of school leadership. Three sets of data from Australia, South Africa and Canada have been analysed with an emphasis on exposing the emergent themes, and bringing together a heightened level of understanding of, and empathy for school leadership across three countries.