Leadership in Diverse Learning Contexts

431 Pages·2016·5.531 MB·English

by  Greer Johnson, Neil Dempster (eds.)

Studies in Educational Leadership 22
Greer Johnson
Neil Dempster Editors
Leadership
in Diverse
Learning
Contexts
Studies in Educational Leadership
Volume 22
Series Editor
Kenneth A. Leithwood, OISE, University of Toronto, Canada
Editorial Board
Christopher Day, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Stephen L. Jacobson, Graduate School of Education, Buffalo, U.S.A.
Bill Mulford, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
Peter Sleegers, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Scope of the Series
Leadership we know makes all the difference in success or failures of organizations.
This series will bring together in a highly readable way the most recent insights in
successful leadership. Emphasis will be placed on research focused on pre-collegiate
educational organizations. Volumes should address issues related to leadership at all
levels of the educational system and be written in a style accessible to scholars,
educational practitioners and policy makers throughout the world.
The volumes – monographs and edited volumes – should represent work from
different parts in the world.
More information about this series at h ttp://www.springer.com/series/6543
Greer Johnson • Neil Dempster
Editors
Leadership in Diverse
Learning Contexts
Editors
Greer Johnson Neil Dempster
Griffi th Institute for Educational Research Griffi th Institute for Educational Research
Griffi th University Griffi th University
Mt. Gravatt , QLD , Australia Mt. Gravatt , QLD , Australia
Studies in Educational Leadership
ISBN 978-3-319-28300-5 ISBN 978-3-319-28302-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-28302-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938082
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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Foreword
T he empirical research reported throughout this collection of chapters is mindful
that contextual difference impacts how leaders lead and learners learn. Yet as some
of the authors show, education policy reform internationally frequently ignores
local context in favour of system-driven, paternalistic “one-size-fi ts-all” policy for
educational change. Unfortunately the cost of such normative policy is most keenly
felt in so-called poorly performing schools, where the evidence shows that the need
for contextually aware leadership is a crucial factor in strengthening learning.
For some time now, distributed leadership, as discussed more fully in the fi rst
chapter (Johnson, Dempster and Wheeley), has become the default position for
leading learning in many schools in Western countries. Distributed leadership pro-
vides opportunities for all to develop their skills and have access to leadership that
is not dependent on one’s place in the hierarchy and appears to offer agility and
agency for leaders to act at the local level, inside and outside conventional school
settings. When used uncritically, distributed leadership can soon become generic
and supportive of the one-size-fi ts-all approach.
Throughout the chapters in this collection, distributed leadership is used as a
backdrop for understanding more precisely how leaders share roles and responsi-
bilities to manage and negotiate the contextual differences generated at the system,
school, family and community levels, to improve their schools as learning organisa-
tions or their circumstances for changes that make a difference.
B ogotch, Reyes-Guerra and Freeland (Chap. 2 ) urge us to focus on the action
taking place on the stage, in front of the backdrop, and to ask ourselves and others
the hard questions: What happens when we challenge generic ideas about leader-
ship with the context-specifi c experiences of different schools, systems or communi-
ties ? And, w hat do we learn about leadership and our own blind spots as scholars
of leadership ?
Two themes recur across the 21 chapters in the collection: that leadership for
learning occurs differently across international contexts and that there are new les-
sons to be learned about leadership for learning practices in Indigenous or Aboriginal
contexts. Within and across the two themes, the authors expose the contextual vari-
ables that enable and constrain leaders and learners in a variety of settings, inside
v
vi Foreword
and outside school. As we move through the chapters, the spotlight follows an excit-
ing display of variables that question normative views of what leaders are and what
counts as leading others to learn. Some of the variables might surprise, for example,
contextual awareness that drives the peer-led learning of war veterans as they return
to civilian society (Balfour, Chap. 2 0 ) and how context matters for school leaders
working in post-confl ict societies (Clarke and O’Donoghue, Chap. 7 ).
A dding to the volume’s capacity to shape new understandings of leadership for
learning are the methodological choices employed in some of the chapters. These
choices offer the reader fresh approaches with which to understand and study lead-
ership for learning in different contexts. At one end of a continuum are the fi ne-
grained conversation analytic methods used by Gardner and Mushin (Chap. 1 5 ) to
display how teachers of Indigenous children in the early years of schooling produce
a responsive decision-making context for the children to learn to demonstrate exist-
ing knowledge. This method contrasts with the high-level narrative policy overview
delivered by Townsend in the concluding chapter.
T his foreword aims to give the reader a start-up position with which to begin to
navigate the ethos of the collection. Further guidance is offered at the beginning of
each of the book’s sections.
As editors, we sincerely thank Griffi th University’s support and commitment to
the Griffi th Institute for Educational Research (GIER) over the past 8 years. The
institute’s strong engagement with the international leadership research community
is evidenced in the author collaborators represented throughout the book. Finally,
we thank our academic colleagues for the intellectual debate and the friendships
established and maintained during the research-related activities resulting in this
book.
Brisbane, QLD, Australia Greer Johnson
Brisbane, QLD, Australia Neil Dempster
Contents
Part I Distributed Leadership: Theory and Practice
1 Distributed Leadership: Theory and Practice Dimensions
in Systems, Schools, and Communities ................................................. 3
Greer Johnson , Neil Dempster , and Elizabeth Wheeley
Part II Leadership and Systems
2 Turnaround School Leadership: From Paradigms to Promises ......... 35
Ira Bogotch , Daniel Reyes-Guerra , and Jennifer Freeland
3 Examining Policy Intersections: Democracy, Technologies,
and the Implications for School Leadership ......................................... 59
Kathryn Moyle
4 Leadership Learning: Blended Power .................................................. 79
Neil Dempster
5 Multilevel Leadership for Assessment for Learning,
and the Potential of Critical Friendship ............................................... 93
Sue Swaffi eld
6 Utilising a Leadership Blueprint to Build the Capacity
of Schools to Achieve Outcomes for Students
with Autism Spectrum Disorder ............................................................ 109
Amanda Webster
7 Leadership, Learning, and Change in Post- Conflict Schools:
Much Ado About a Lot ........................................................................... 129
Simon Clarke and Tom O’Donoghue
8 School Leadership for Learning and Change:
Progress of an Asian Agenda ................................................................. 145
Allan Walker and Philip Hallinger
vii
viii Contents
Part III Leadership in Schools
9 Leading with Moral Purpose: Teacher Leadership in Action ............ 175
Joan Conway and Dorothy Andrews
10 To Lead or Not to Lead? That Is the Question ..................................... 201
Susan Lovett
11 School Leadership in Assessment in an Environment
of External Accountability: Developing an Assessment
for Learning Culture ............................................................................... 221
J. Joy Cumming , Graham S. Maxwell , and Claire M. Wyatt-Smith
12 Shifting Practices and Frames: Literacy, Learning
and Computer Games ............................................................................. 239
Catherine Beavis and Joanne O’Mara
13 Distributed Leadership Policies and Practices: Striving
for Educational Equity in High Poverty Contexts ............................... 255
Parlo Singh and Kathryn Glasswell
14 Curriculum Leadership: Reforming and Reshaping Successful
Practice in Remote and Regional Indigenous Education .................... 275
Robyn Jorgensen
15 The Impact of Interaction and Language on Leading
Learning in Indigenous Classrooms ...................................................... 289
Rod Gardner and Ilana Mushin
16 Cogenerative Dialogue for Collective Curriculum Leadership .......... 311
Wolff-Michael Roth and Michele Salles el Kadri
Part IV Leadership in Communities
17 Developing Student Leadership Through Peer
Teaching in Schools ................................................................................. 333
Bruce Burton
18 Conceptions of Learning Leadership in Remote Indigenous
Communities: A Distributed Approach ................................................ 347
Bev Flückiger and Helen Klieve
19 Capacity Building for Parental Engagement in Reading:
A Distributed Leadership Approach Between Schools
and Indigenous Communities ................................................................ 365
Greer Johnson and Lynanne McKenzie
Contents ix
20 The Difficult Return: Supporting Returning Veterans
Through an Arts-Based Social Leadership Program .......................... 389
Michael Balfour
Part V A Synthesis of Ideas
21 Leading Schools in the Twenty-First Century:
Careful Driving in the Fast Lane ........................................................... 411
Tony Townsend