Kasper Kofod

Democratic Instructional Leadership in Australia, Denmark, and the United States

In this chapter, US, Danish, and Australian cases studies are used to illustrate how a focus on democratic instructional leadership as key to the success of school principals in the midst of accountability and neoliberal pressures. Drawing on extant literature on instructional in the United States, Denmark , and Australia as well as a model of leadership derived from the ISSPP case studies, principals are shown to have a significant, albeit primarily indirect, impact on teaching and learning. Specifically, successful instructional leaders influence the quality of instruction, curriculum design, assessment and student learning and enhance personal, professional, organizational, and community capacity. In all of the Australian and the US cases, broad outcomes are also evident, including student academic and non-academic achievement, as well as community social capital outcomes. Some of the cases, however, demonstrated a narrowing of the curriculum as a result of current accountability pressures to improve student achievement on state tests. The chapter concludes with an examination of the tension, dilemmas, and opportunities for “successful” instructional leadership in a global accountability environment.

Historical Perspectives on Educational Policy and Political Cultures

This chapter explicates a core assumption of our collaborative project: This history of educational development and policies within a country will affect the way new ideas are received from outside and are incorporated into national and local discussions within that country. We look at history as a critical component of culture because it creates collective memories and “mental models” (Senge, 1990) that frame the opportunities for new ideas to enter political discussions. We do not examine events as historians, who are committed to teasing out the details of what actually happened, and how they affected participants. Our more sociological view is that “[h]istory reveals not only change but continuity. Social structures and cultures possess a resilience that fosters ideologies of stability and preservation” (Warwick & Williams, 1980, p. 333). History and events in the past have been formed not only by broad social or economic trends, but also by the preferences of often powerful groups and individuals who then determine how others react. Culture is the crucial variable that shapes how the powerful view their own interests, and how those possessed of fewer resources respond to leaders and events over which they individually have less control.

“Wer Vorwärts Kommen Will, Muss Auch Mal Rückwarts Denken”: Reflections on the Case Studies

We began our book by outlining a simple set of categories that can be used to describe a political culture, but we have concluded that the dimensions that we chose are, by themselves, too simple a tool to capture all of the challenges that await each of the governments we have examined. Nonetheless, we also discovered some intriguing confirmation that political culture is a useful lens for understanding how different governments have coped with 25 years of increasing pressure to modernize and reform their school systems. It is worth revisiting our categories to see how they held up in our critical application. What we offer are some conclusions, and also a variety of questions that deserve further investigation.