NZEALS 2010 Conference Themes
This conference focused on three related
themes:
Leadership for Learning
Children, teaching and learning need
to be the major foci of educational leadership theory and practice.
As Hopkins (2003, pp. 5-6) states, “the
prime function of leadership for authentic schools is to enhance
the quality of teaching and learning”.
Schools should be seen as ‘communities of learners’ (Barth;
1990; Senge, 1990) that enable teacher and institutional learning,
as well as student learning. Such a focus on the learning opportunities
of students and teachers is often referred to as instructional
leadership, which, as Crow et al (2002, p. 203) state, “encompasses
those behaviors and processes principals implement with the explicit
goal of improving educational outcomes”.
Leadership practices can only be considered effective if they result
in enhanced learning for students (Elmore, 2000; Harris, 2003).
By providing the environment and resources necessary for high quality
teaching, educational leaders have a crucial role to play in ensuring
optimum outcomes for students.
People Leadership
There is no organisation where people are
more important than in schools and early childhood centre’s.
At all levels and from every aspect, these organisations are about
people; people who interact and form relationships with each other
and with the institution. Leadership involves people with particular
values, beliefs, knowledge and attributes. It involves interactions
with and between people, the institutional structures and processes,
and the environment or context in which the institution operates.
Effective leadership requires leaders to ensure that there is alignment
between how individual and organisational needs are met. Leading
people requires the distribution of responsibility and power as
widely as possible, encouraging collaboration, and shared decision-making.
It also requires acknowledgement that teaching, leadership and
change involve intensive emotional work on the part of the individual.
People leadership involves not only interactions between people
and their environment, but also ‘leadership from within’.
Such leadership focuses on the need to promote among educational
leaders, an “intrapersonal understanding of their ‘platform’ of
belief about their work and, most important, about themselves as
people and as leaders” (Donaldson, Bowe, McKenzie & Marnik,
2004, p. 540).
Sustainable Leadership
The sustainability of leadership is a key factor in achieving meaningful,
long-term educational change. It acknowledges the need for lasting,
meaningful, widespread improvement, rather than temporary, localized
change.
Sustainable leadership includes, but is much more than, succession
planning. Hargreaves and Fink (2004) argue that leaders develop
sustainability by: committing to and protecting deep learning in
their schools; by trying to ensure that improvements last over
time, especially after they have gone; by distributing leadership
and responsibility to others; by considering the impact of their
leadership on the schools and communities around them; by sustaining
themselves so that they can persist with their vision and avoid
burning out; by promoting and perpetuating diverse approaches to
reform rather than standardized prescriptions for teaching and
learning, and by engaging actively with their environments.
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